Advertisements are important social and cultural documents. A representative sample often reflects a society’s concerns and values as accurately as well-executed surveys do. But how is this possible? How could images designed by people who don’t know, or haven’t talked to, us — and who are completely self-interested to boot – possibly reflect our innermost thoughts and feelings? Figuring out how exercises in persuasion by self-interested advertisers somehow manage to create reliable indicators of public sentiment has puzzled social scientists for a long time. Fortunately, it looks like the new social media may provide a key to solving that puzzle.

An interview with Joyce Sebag and Jean-Pierre Durand, University of Evry, France. They are interviewed by Jordanna Matlon, postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse.

This exhibit features an extract from an ongoing documentary project aiming to provide an insight into Kyrgyz culture and its influence on everyday life in Kyrgyzstan. The film features an interview with an artist we met during visits to the Issy Kul region of Kyrgyzstan in 2011. Our visit took place a few months after a a short but bloody revolution and subsequent ethnic violence in the South of the country that had a seriously disrupting impact on the Kyrgyz national psyche.

This documentary has been created as part of the Digital Anthropology (MSc) program at UCL and has been nominated one of the three best films in the autumn/winter class in 2012.