The 17th Technology, Knowledge & Society conference, hosted by University of Melbourne and held entirely online, takes place April 8-9, 2021, with the overall theme “Considering Viral Technologies: Pandemic-Driven Opportunities and Challenges”. Very excited about doing a live plenary & garden conversation (8 April 2021 08:00AM CST Chicago // 8 April 2021 16:00PM Finland // 8 April 2021 11:00PM Melbourne) around my soon out book, Dependent, Distracted, Bored: Affective Formations in Networked Media (MITP).
Category Archives: data culture
technology, knowledge & society
Filed under academic pleasures, affect theory, data culture, internet research
deep mediations
Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures, edited by Karen Redrobe and Jeff Scheible for University of Minnesota Press, is just out and includes a discussion we did together with Shaka McGlotten and John Paul Stadler, titled “The Deep Realness of Deepfake Pornography”.For those interested, there’s a 40% discount in the US til April 15: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book…/collections/mla-2021…
and a 30% discount on pre-orders in the UK with the code CSFS2021: https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/97815…/deep-mediations/
Filed under academic pleasures, data culture, porn studies
dependent, distracted, bored, in Padova
J
oin us February 25 for a webinar with the Padova Science, Technology & Innovation Studies (3pm, GMT+1). I’ll be talking on my forthcoming book on affective formations in networked media (out in April with MITP), with an intro from Cosimo Marco Scarcelli (University of Padova) and with Manolo Farci (University of Urbino) and Paolo Magaudda (University of Padova) as discussants.
Register here: https://unipd.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dUESW2T5TlqrAKGPmiERUw
Filed under academic pleasures, affect theory, data culture, internet research
intimacy
Filed under academic pleasures, data culture, NSFW, sexuality
mediating presents
Mediating Presents, a special issue I coedited with the fantastic Rebecca Coleman, is just out with Media Theory (on open access). As we suggest in our summary, “it is both productive and necessary to think together ‘the present’ and mediation to understand how various interlocking aspects of socio-cultural life are currently produced, organised and arranged, embodied and affectively experienced. The contributions to the special issue see time not as a neutral backdrop to, but as actively constituted by and constitutive of, (digital) media, and develop broad understandings of both media and the temporality of the present/present temporalities. The special issue develops theoretically informed and engaged understandings of digital media presents, drawing from and expanding a range of theoretical traditions, including feminist, queer and anti-racist theory, science and technology studies, media theory, philosophy and cultural theory. They similarly take seriously an array of objects, practices and processes, extending from public and academic debates and figurations, mundane and routinised activities, the affordances of specific platforms and computational and data-driven software.”
Contributors include Xin Liu, Beckie Coleman, Ella Harris, Chris Ingraham, Nishat Awan, Helen Pritchard, Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting and Tony D. Sampson – plus yours truly with Distracted Present, Golden Past? critically examining zeitgeist diagnoses equating networked media with notions of loss.
nipples, memes, and algorithmic failure
Our “Nipples, memes, and algorithmic failure: NSFW critique of Tumblr censorship” is just out on open access with New Media & Society. Elena Pilipets is very much the first author with her methods magic.
And here’s the abstract: In November 2018, after being suspended from Apple’s App Store for hosting child pornography, Tumblr announced its decision to ban all NSFW (not safe/suitable for work) content with the aid of machine-learning classification. The decision to opt for strict terms of use governing nudity and sexual depiction was as fast as it was drastic, leading to the quick erasure of subcultural networks developed over a decade. This article maps out platform critiques of and on Tumblr through a combination of visual and digital methods. By analyzing 7306 posts made between November 2018 (when Tumblr announced its new content policy) and August 2019 (when Verizon sold Tumblr to Automattic), we explore the key stakes and forms of user resistance to Tumblr “porn ban” and the affective capacities of user-generated content to mobilize engagement.
Filed under academic pleasures, affect theory, data culture, internet research, NSFW
what’s intimate about data?
Join us for a Zoom spectacle on the intimacies of data on October 23 with Deborah Lupton, Minna Ruckenstein and Irina Shklovski! Organized by the Strategic research Council consortium, Intimacy in Data-Driven Culture and open for all: follow the link here. Talks will also be recorded and uploaded on our site for later viewing.
Filed under academic pleasures, data culture, internet research
Susanna Paasonen 