Digital Democracies Institute

Global Media Education Summit 2023 Keynote by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Amy Harris
2023-03-02 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Vancouver)
KEYNOTE: How to Sense the Future: Global Climate Change and Media Edu-cologies – Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Amy Harris
Global climate change has been predicted for at least a century, and yet little has been changed in response. This inaction has revealed the importance and inadequacy of knowledge: at first, many scientists and activists believed that simply educating the public would be enough, but the continuing lack of action and the debates over the existence and cause of global climate change – even after many predictions have materialised – has proven otherwise. Although there are many reasons for this failure to act – such as concerted political efforts to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt – our talk explores the difficulty of scale and attempts to overcome it. A fundamental difficulty is the fact that we experience weather, not climate: climate is an abstraction based on global inputs and dynamics that seem impervious to individual actions. To register the intricate and interwoven impact of climate change, we turn to arts-based interventions that deploy affectively intense hyper-local experiences. Ranging from individual VR experiences, to large scale art installations, they reveal how the senses can be deployed to create affective and effective relationships with our future world.
The Global Media Education Summit (MES) brings together an international network of researchers, educators, and practitioners across all aspects of media education, media and digital literacies, youth media production and media and technology in education. As the leading global showcase for research, pedagogy, and innovation, MES explores the changing currents across media education and media literacy communities around the world.
Held at Harbour Centre, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada on March 2nd – 4th 2023 – in person, with virtual panels.
More information, including registration here.

Data Fluencies Speaker Series - Joan Donovan
2023-03-01 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver)
Joan Donovan from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy will present on their new book Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America.
This presentation is part of the Data Fluencies Speaker Series, co-sponsored by the Ahmanson Lab/Harman Academy at the University of Southern California and the Social Science Research Council Just Tech Program.
Email ddi_comms@sfu.ca for details and Zoom link.

Fenwick McKelvey presents to DDI
2023-02-22 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver)
Fenwick McKelvey (Concordia University) will be joining the DDI in person for a presentation, as part of the Spring Speaker Series.
“You Played Yourself: The Origins of World Politics as Computer Game”
In 1959, political scientist Oliver Benson created the first computer simulation of world politics. Written to run in the drum of an IBM 650 machine, Benson’s Simple Diplomatic Game simulated international crises between nine nations. “Players” could read the print-outs if the United States declared all-out-war against the USSR (codename HBOMB). The simple game was a “modest beginning” that Benson thought had no utility for prediction. In spite of its humble origins, Benson was not the first nor the last to imagine the world as a game. Benson’s slippage to describe international relations as a computer game has stabilized into a power socio-technical imaginary about politics and world order central to American defense intelligence. In 2020, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — what Sharon Weinberger calls the “imagineers of war” — announced a new program to support its work on military artificial intelligence, GAMEBREAKER (https://www.darpa.mil/program/gamebreaker). It trains a new generation of strategic AIs to master commercial computer games, presuming that masters these virtual competitions will port to predicting and defeating American opponents in the game of realpolitik. My presentation explores how it became sensible to imagine global politics as a computer game. The chapter focuses on the early prototypes that gradually legitimated computer simulations of world politics to understand how a simple game became GAMEBREAKER.

Email ddi_comms@sfu.ca for details and Zoom link.

Symposium: Korea University's Center for ICT and Society - SFU's Digital Democracies Institute & Transnational Culture and Digital Technology Lab
2023-02-08 12:00 - 17:00 (America/Vancouver) | DDI, 7460 - TASC 2, SFU, Burnaby, BC, Canada
The SFU – Korea University Symposium is taking place on February 8 from 12:00-5:00 PST. This event is in partnership with The Center for ICT and Society, Korea University, the Transnational Culture and Digital Technology Lab, SFU & The Digital Democracies Institute, SFU.

This event takes place in person at the DDI, with keynote speaker Prof. Seongcheol Kim of the Center for ICT & Society / Smart Media Service Research Center presenting “The burgeoning Korean media industry: Its light and shade.”

In addition to our guests and visitors from Korea University, this event is open to faculty and graduate students at SFU’s School of Communication. Space is limited, so email ddi_comms@sfu.ca for registration. Lunch will be provided.

See details and program:

Keynote

Prof. Seongcheol Kim of the Center for ICT & Society / Smart Media Service Research Center.
“The burgeoning Korean media industry: Its light and shade”

Panel I

Prof. Yoonhyuk Jung, School of Media and Communication, Korea University. “Understanding conflicts between incumbent players and entrant platforms from the perspective of social representations: The case of LawTalk”

Chulmin Lim, School of Media and Communication, Korea University. “Examining factors Influencing the user’s loyalty on algorithmic news recommendation service”

Chaeyun Jang, School of Media and Communication, Korea University. “Kids content as IPTV platform’s new differentiator: The Korean Case”

Panel II

Dal Yong Jin/ Hyejin Jo, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University. “Platformization in media governance: A critical case study of the gigantic platform power”

Ben Scholl, Digital Democracies Institute, Simon Fraser University. “Border crisis: Exploring algorithmic power along digital platforms’ shared boundaries”

Alberto Lusoli, Digital Democracies Institute, Simon Fraser University. “From hate to agonism”

Yushu Zhu presents to the DDI
2023-01-25 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | DDI, 7460 - TASC 2, SFU, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Yushu Zhu, Assistant Professor, SFU Urban Studies and Public Policy.
With a background in human geography and urban studies, Yushu’s research focuses on housing and community issues against the backdrop of urbanization and globalization. Her empirical research examines the spatial and temporal patterns of housing stratification, sense of home, and social relations that constitute urban neighbourhoods. She pays a special attention to communities of immigrants, low-income populations, and ethnic minorities. Her research has appeared in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Urban Studies, Urban Geography, Habitat International, and Environment and Behavior. Yushu teaches courses in housing, urban transformation, public policy, and research methods.
Previously, Yushu worked at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and held postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute of Asian Research at UBC and at Brown University. Yushu received her Ph.D. in Architecture from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her M.Sc. and B.Sc. (Hons) in geography from Sun Yat-sen University, China.
Email ddi_comms@sfu.ca for Zoom link and details.

Michelle Ferrier presents to the DDI
2023-01-18 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | By zoom
Dr. Michelle Ferrier is the founder of Troll-Busters.com, a just-in-time rescue service for women writers and journalists experiencing online harassment. She is a digital content architect with 30 years experience in media entrepreneurship and new media technologies. Ferrier is an associate professor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and was named one of the top 20 journalism innovation educators for 2018.

Ferrier holds a Ph.D. from the University of Central Florida in Texts and Technologies where she developed online communities, online learning and new media storytelling technologies; a master’s degree from the University of Memphis in journalism; and a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Email ddi_comms@sfu.ca for details and link to join.

Kick off 2023 with CBC/Radio-Canada in Vancouver
2023-01-17 11:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | Joseph & Rosalie Segal Center, Simon Fraser University, 515 West Hastings, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Join CBC/Radio-Canada President Catherine Tait and guest panelists for a conversation about building trust and protecting our democracy. This important discussion will touch on journalism and reporting, building relationships with the audience, online safety and public policy.
CBC/Radio-Canada and partners University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University invite interested members of the public to join them for a light lunch, followed by the panel discussion and a brief question and answer period.
Moderated by:
Anita Bathe, CBC Vancouver News at 6 pm
Panelists:
Catherine Tait, President and CEO, CBC/Radio-Canada
Jeanette Ageson, Publisher, The Tyee
Jeremy Kinsman, Distinguished Fellow, The Canadian International Council
Linda Solomon Wood, Publisher, National Observer
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Canada 150 Research Chair / Professor, Simon Fraser University
Registration and proof of identification is required. We also ask that you be prepared to check any large bags in our complimentary secure bag check. Please note that this is an in-person event and no live stream will be available.

Angelica Lim presents to the DDI
2022-11-23 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | DDI, 7460 - TASC 2, SFU, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Dr. Angelica Lim is an Assistant Professor of Professional Practice in Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. She builds artificial intelligence software for robots to interact in a smart, but fun, way.
She has a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from Kyoto University, Japan, specializing in AI applied to Robotics, and a B.Sc. in Computing Science (specializing in Artificial Intelligence) from Simon Fraser University in Canada. She is also a writer for the robotics online magazine IEEE Spectrum Automaton.

Susan Benesch presents to the DDI
2022-11-02 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | By zoom
Susan Benesch is an Adjunct Associate Professor, School of International Service, at the American Univeristy. She founded and directs the Dangerous Speech Project (dangerousspeech.org), to study speech that can inspire violence – and to find ways to prevent this, without infringing on freedom of expression. She conducts research on methods to diminish harmful speech online, or the harm itself. Trained as a human rights lawyer at Yale, Susan has worked for NGOs including Amnesty International and Human Rights First. She is also Faculty Associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
To join the presentation email ddi_comms@sfu.ca.

Wendy Chun keynote at NYU's Neil Postman Graduate Student Conference
2022-10-27 08:00 - 2022-10-28 17:00 (America/Vancouver) | Online
The Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University is pleased to announce the Neil Postman Graduate Student Conference to be held on October 27-28, 2022 in a hybrid format (in person at NYU, with support for remote contributions).
Keynote speaker is Professor Wendy Chun and the theme this year is ‘Hinterlands of Media and Technology.’ The CFP is attached below. There will also be a virtual CFP launch event on March 24, 2022 at 12.30pm –1.30pm (EST). More details below; Register here.)
Hinterlands of Media and Technology
October 27-28, 2022
Keynote: Professor Wendy Chun, Simon Fraser University.
Format: Hybrid (in person at NYU, with support for remote contributions)
What is peripheral and yet indispensable to media and technology production? What networks and relations may be obscured or revealed if we interrogate the constitution of the center? This year, we focus on the centrality of the ‘elsewhere’ and the ‘otherwise’ in the production of media experiences and media technologies. To consider the many historical, geographic, economic, and material dynamics at play, we center our inquiry around the notion of the hinterlands, and invite contributions to the question: What and where are the hinterlands of media and technology?
The full CFP is attached below; applicants are required to send a 300-350 word abstract, bio, and any supporting media via this application form by May 1st, 2022.
Information is also available at www.postmanconference.org and questions can be directed to postman.nyu@gmail.com. We will also be posting regular updates on Twitter
In addition, we are hosting a virtual CFP launch event on March 24, 2022, at 12:30 PM EST, with a discussion of the theme’s relevance for work in different areas and sites, featuring:
Lily Chumley – Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU
Martin Scherzinger – Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU
Philipp Seuferling – Visiting Researcher at the Dept. of Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU; PhD, Södertörn University, Stockholm (2021)
Ayesha Omer – Postdoctoral Fellow, UPenn Annenberg School of Communications, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication; PhD, Dept. of Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU (2020)
We invite all prospective applicants and those interested in the theme in general to join this conversation. Opportunities for networking and socializing for graduate students have been limited during the past few years, and we hope this event will allow participants to build an intellectual community and engage in conversations in advance of meeting in person this fall.

Nanditha Narayanamoorthy presents to the DDI
2022-10-12 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | By zoom
Nanditha Narayanamoorthy is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life (CITAP) at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her work draws from a Humanities-based framework to understand the relationship between technology and democracy and rethink digital infrastructure and platform design, particularly for marginalized communities in the Global South.
As an interdisciplinary scholar at the intersection of Critical Digital Studies, Gender Studies, and Social Justice, she investigates the role digital infrastructures play in centering vulnerable groups online. She studies digital protest to examine how religious, gendered, and ethnic minorities employ social media platforms in the Indian context to create and perform their political identities and create safe spaces for their digital assembly. She also examines how these marginalized communities are targeted by state-sponsored digital hate campaigns that undermine democracy.

How Are You? Sentiment, Surveillance, and Anti-Asian Racism
2022-10-01 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Vancouver)
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
University of Toronto
Critical Digital Humanities Initiative
In-Person: Saturday, October 1
Campbell Conference Facility
5:00-6:30 pm EST

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is the Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media at the Simon Fraser University School of Communication. Dr. Chun is the author of Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (2016), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (2011), and Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (2006), as well as numerous articles and edited collections. She has received fellowships from various foundations and institutes, including the Guggenheim Foundation, ACLS, American Academy of Berlin, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. She was Professor and Chair of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she worked for almost two decades.

Currently, Dr. Chun leads SFU’s Digital Democracies Institute which was launched in 2019. The Institute aims to integrate research in the humanities and data sciences to address questions of equality and social justice in order to combat the proliferation of online “echo chambers,” abusive language, discriminatory algorithms and mis/disinformation by fostering critical and creative user practices and alternative paradigms for connection. It has four distinct research streams all led by Dr. Chun: Beyond Verification which looks at authenticity and the spread of disinformation; From Hate to Agonism, focusing on fostering democratic exchange online; Desegregating Network Neighbourhoods, combatting homophily across platforms; and Discriminating Data: Neighbourhoods, Individuals and Proxies, investigating the centrality of race, gender, class and sexuality to big data and network analytics.

Thinking With | Wendy Hui Kyong Chun | Discriminating Data & the New Politics of Recognition
2022-09-26 16:30 - 17:00 (Europe/Amsterdam) | Online
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, the Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media at Simon Fraser University, who leads the Digital Democracies Institute, will be in conversation with respondents Alexander R. Galloway, Hannah Turner,​​​​​​​ and Evelyn Wan, moderated by Wayne Modest on MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 | 16.30-18 hours CET.
On the event of the publication of Chun’s most recent book Discriminating Data – Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition (2021, MIT Press), as part of our Thinking With conversation series, we consider how “big data and predictive machine learning currently encode discrimination and create agitated clusters of comforting rage.” As a museum, with extensive histories collecting ‘ethnographically,’ we are interested in how notions of “discriminating data” in the contexts of the digital, which Chun works with, can inform our own collection practices—past, present, and affect how we do so in the future. More generally, in our conversation, we also engage Chun’s overarching question, “How can we release ourselves from the vice-like grip of discriminatory data?”, in order to also ask the same question of ourselves at the museum?
This event takes place virtually, at the Research Centre for Material Culture. More information and registration here.

Charlton McIlwain presents to the DDI
2022-09-21 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver)
Charlton McIlwain – Vice Provost for Faculty Engagement and Development; Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication
Media, Culture, and Communication
Charlton McIlwain’s recent work focuses on the intersections of race, digital media, and racial justice activism. He recently wrote Racial Formation, Inequality & the Political Economy of Web Traffic, in the journal Information, Communication & Society, and I co-authored, with Deen Freelon and Meredith Clark, the recent report Beyond the Hashtags: Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter, and the Online Struggle for Offline Justice, published by the Center for Media & Social Impact, and supported by the Spencer Foundation. He is currently working on a book Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, From the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Email ddi_comms@sfu.ca to join the presentation.

Maria Ressa - How to Stand Up to a Dictator
2022-09-13 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Vancouver) | SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre
Nobel Peace Prize laureate, SFU Honorary Degree recipient and renowned journalist Maria Ressa on how democracy dies by a thousand cuts.
Renowned investigative journalist Maria Ressa received the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her fearless defense of press freedom and democracy in the Philippines as CEO and co-founder of Rappler, an online news site. For her critical reporting of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s government and policies, she faces multiple lawsuits and potentially over 100 years in prison yet remains resolved in her fight to speak truth to power.
Now, in her forthcoming book How to Stand up to a Dictator, Maria Ressa maps out a global network of disinformation from Duterte’s drug wars, to America’s Capitol Hill, to Britain’s Brexit, to Russian cyberwarfare to Silicon Valley and beyond.
“How to Stand Up to a Dictator is the story of how democracy dies by a thousand cuts, and how an invisible atom bomb has exploded online that is killing our freedoms.”
Join us at this SFU Vancouver Speaker Series event where Maria Ressa will discuss the threat disinformation campaigns pose to our increasingly polarized democracies. Ressa will also be formally presented with her honorary Doctor of Laws from Simon Fraser University by SFU President Joy Johnson.
Peter Klein, Professor with the UBC School of Journalism, Writing, and Media and Executive Director of the Global Reporting Centre will provide opening remarks. Santa Ono, President of the University of British Columbia will give closing remarks. Wade Grant (Musqueam First Nation) will begin this event and offer a welcome.
This SFU Vancouver Speaker Series event is presented in partnership by SFU Vancouver, SFU Public Square, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, the Digital Democracies Institute, Ouano Foundation, the University of British Columbia and the Global Reporting Centre.

SFU Vancouver Speaker Series
The SFU Vancouver Speaker Series brings global experts to a local audience. Launched in 2012, the series builds on SFU’s rich history of community engagement by exploring critical issues to contribute to better understanding among Vancouver’s citizens through an intellectually enriching experience.

Register here. Note that there are reserved tickets for DDI affiliates, so contact ddi_comms@sfu.ca to reserve your space if you are affiliated.

This event is in person at the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, and there is a livestream option.
This event is organized in partnership with SFU Vancouver, SFU Public Square, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, the Digital Democracies Institute, Ouano Foundation, the University of British Columbia and the Global Reporting Centre.

Moya Bailey presents to the DDI
2022-08-03 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | Online
Dr. Moya Bailey is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. Her work focuses on Black women’s use of digital media to promote social justice as acts of self-affirmation and health promotion. She is interested in how race, gender, and sexuality are represented in media and medicine.

She also coined the term misogynoir which describes the unique anti-Black racist misogyny that Black women experience.

#HashtagActivism Book Cover

She is a co-author of #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice and is the author of the forthcoming, Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance.

Mellon in-person team meetings
2022-07-27 09:00 - 2022-07-29 17:00 (America/Vancouver) | DDI, 7460 - TASC 2, SFU, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Schedule is currently bring drafted.

DDI Retreat
2022-07-20 10:00 - 16:00 (America/Vancouver)
Members of the Digital Democracies Institute will attend a one-day retreat at SFU downtown from 10-4. More details TBD.

Debora Nozza presents to the DDI
2022-07-19 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | DDI, 7460 - TASC 2, SFU, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Debora Nozza, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Bocconi University and member of an NLP group in Milan, will be joining us for an in-person presentation with a Q & A.
She’ll be, in part, talking about this project: The interdisciplinary MONICA project will create a digital barometer of Italians’ attitudes towards the government measures implemented in response to COVID-19. The pandemic has plunged millions of vulnerable people into abject poverty. The government created financial measures to improve the economic situation and social inclusion. However, it is unclear whether these measures reach those who need them most. To find out, we will uncover the public perception of these measures and provide concrete metrics for three related dimensions: 1) coverage of the potential beneficiaries, 2) attitudes of the Italian population stratified by different demographic factors, and 3) accessibility of the information. MONICA will provide citizens with a tool to automatically rank and simplify articles about requirements and steps to access these initiatives. MONICA will enable policymakers to understand which segments of the vulnerable population are not accessing these initiatives and why.

Email ddi_comms@sfu.ca to participate.

Matthew Fuller presents to the DDI
2022-07-06 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | By zoom
Matthew Fuller is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Goldsmiths London. With Usman Haque, he is co-author of ‘Urban Versioning System v1.0’ (ALNY) and with Andrew Goffey, of ‘Evil Media’ (MIT), Editor of ‘Software Studies, a lexicon’ (MIT) and co-editor of the journal Computational Culture. He is involved in a number of projects in art, media and software and is the author of the forthcoming, ‘How to Sleep, in art, biology and culture’ (Bloomsbury).
To join this presentation email ddi_comms@sfu.ca.

Eleanor Drage & Kerry Mackereth present to the DDI
2022-06-29 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | By zoom
Eleanor Drage is a Christina Gaw Post-doctoral Research Associate at the Centre for Gender Studies and a member of the Gender & Technology Research Project team at the University of Cambridge. Her publications focus on how humanity defines and constitutes itself both through unstable socio-cultural processes such as race and gender and through fallible technological systems. Eleanor is particularly interested in how technology can prompt and develop certain kinds of behavioural skills, and how anti-racist and anti-sexist critical theory can be implemented at industry-level to develop ethical and socially transformative technological products.
Kerry Mackereth is a Christina Gaw Post-doctoral Research Associate at the Centre for Gender Studies and a member of the Gender & Technology Research Project team at the University of Cambridge. She is also a Research Associate at St. John’s College, Cambridge. Kerry’s work broadly explores how histories of gendered and racialised violence shape new technologies. Kerry’s PhD thesis examined how women’s violent protests, specifically, their hunger strikes in the contexts of women’s prisons and immigration detention centres, complicate theories of political violence.
To join this presentation email ddi_comms@sfu.ca.

Sean Cubitt presents to the DDI
2022-06-22 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | By zoom
Sean Cubitt is a Professor of Screen Studies, Culture and Communication, at the University of Melbourne. His research links film and media studies with ecocriticism, technological, aesthetic, economic and political history, and the media arts and aesthetics. He is series editor of Leonardo Books (MIT Press) and serves on the boards of the Media Art History network, Goldsmiths Press, Media Art 21 (CAFA Beijing / SFMOMA / He Foundation), Delocating Mountains (Austrian Science Fund) and a number of journal and books series including Screen, Cultural Politics, Visual Art Practice and the Journal of Environmental Media. He is currently working on the latest of nine funded research projects, this dealing with social media and photography.
To join the presentation email ddi_comms@sfu.ca.

Cindy Ma presents to the DDI
2022-06-08 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | By zoom
Streaming to transgress: the racial politics of reactionary YouTubers and their audiences
Cindy Ma is a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute doing work on the discourse of white racial resentment, with a focus on YouTube personalities and their audiences. Her research examines the interactions between online ecosystems, political discourse, and racial inequity. Prior to starting her PhD, she completed an MSc in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and worked in the nonprofit sector. She is a 2019 Trudeau Scholar and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow.
To join the presentation email ddi_comms@sfu.ca.

Lorena Jaume-Palasí presents to the DDI
2022-06-01 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | By zoom
Lorena Jaume-Palasí – Normative solutionism: Commonalities and frictions between European law and algorithmic systems
Rescheduled from March 16

Lorena Jaume-Palasí is the founder of The Ethical Tech Society, a non-profit organization researching processes of automation and digitization with regards to their social relevance. Lorena researches the ethics of digitization and automation. In this context, she also deals with questions of legal philosophy. She is a Fellow of the Bucerius Foundation and a member of the Advisory Board on Education and Discourse of the Goethe Institute. She additionally heads the secretariat of the German National Section of the IGF as well as projects on Internet Governance in Asia and Africa. She has co-authored and edited various publications on internet governance and regularly writes on data protection, privacy and publicity, public goods and discrimination.

To virtually join: email ddi_comms@sfu.ca

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun & Giorgia Aiello at École universitaire de recherche ArTeC
2022-05-25 14:00 - 18:00 (Europe/Paris) | By zoom
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun & Giorgia Aiello
Event is in English
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun est l’une des plus importantes théoriciennes de la digitalité, de la programmation, du contrôle algorithmique, de l’utilisation des big data et des plateformes, reconnue internationalement mais encore très peu traduite en français. Elle dirige le Digital Democracies Institute at Simon Fraser University au Canada, après avoir enseigné à Brown University et avoir été invitée dans de nombreuses universités à l’international. Elle parle à partir d’une double formation en Systems Design Engineering et en Littérature. Elle a publié une trilogie pionnière avec Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT Press, 2006), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT Press, 2011) et Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (MIT Press, 2016). Son plus récent ouvrage s’intitule Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition (MIT Press, 2021).
Giorgia Aiello est professeure de culture et de communication à l’université de Leeds (Royaume-Uni), et professeure associée en sociologie de la culture et de la communication à l’université de Bologne (Italie). Après avoir obtenu son diplôme du programme d’études en communication fondé par Umberto Eco à Bologne, elle a obtenu son doctorat à l’université de Washington à Seattle, aux États‑Unis. Ses recherches visent à découvrir comment se forment les identités, comment la différence et la diversité sont négociées et comment les inégalités sont maintenues ou surmontées grâce à la communication visuelle. Elle a été chercheuse invitée, conférencière invitée et conférencière principale dans des universités, des conférences et des ateliers dans douze pays différents. Giorgia est co-autrice du livre Visual Communication: Understanding Images in Media Culture (avec K. Parry, SAGE, 2020) et directrice de l’ouvrage Communicating the City: Meanings, Practices, Interactions (avec M. Tarantino and K. Oakley, Peter Lang, 2017). Une traduction française de quatre de ses articles vient de paraître dans la Petite Collection de l’EUR ArTeC en co-édition avec Les presses du réel : Communication, espace, image, préfacée par Marta Severo et postfacée par Maria Giulia Dondero.
Wendy Chun présentera les enjeux politiques actuels de l’utilisation des big data en régime de capitalisme de plateforme, en mettant la lumière sur ce qui fait des algorithmes et IA d’aujourd’hui la continuation de théories eugénistes et de statistiques discriminatoires (racistes, sexistes) héritées du XXe siècle.
Giorgia Aiello présentera son travail autour du rôle des “visuels génériques” dans la culture publique. Elle prend au sérieux l’abondance de la photographie de stock dans la vie quotidienne, en faisant valoir que ce que nous considérons souvent comme une imagerie banale et de “seconde classe” est au contraire devenu l’épine dorsale visuelle de notre imagination culturelle et sociale.
Join Zoom Meeting :
https://univ-paris8.zoom.us/j/99178198467?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 991 7819 8467
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Wendy at Alliance Program Symposium
2022-05-23 10:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Paris)
Reshaping our Digital Interactions: Subjectivity in the Post-Cinema Age
Colloque en traduction simultanée anglais / français | Simultaneous French / English translation available at symposium
ENQUÊTES SUR LA SURVEILLANCE ET LES LOGIQUES ALGORITHMIQUES, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Keynote), Antonio Somaini, Félix Tréguer
À propos de cet évènement
REMODELER NOS INTERACTIONS NUMERIQUES : La subjectivité à l’ère du post-cinéma
À l’ère de ce que Gilles Deleuze a appelé les « sociétés de contrôle » – gouvernées aujourd’hui à la fois par la prédictibilité algorithmique, les nouvelles formes de travail numérique ou l’« économie de l’attention » – quelles stratégies sont explorées par des artistes, des chercheurs et des usagers, pour produire de nouvelles relations aux dispositifs numériques, réflexives et émancipatrices, plutôt qu’addictives, compulsives et conspirationnistes ?
Ce colloque souhaite questionner des enjeux esthétiques, psychiques et politiques de la transformation rapide des technologies et des plateformes numériques, en confrontant différents diagnostiques critiques et en examinant des expérimentations artistiques à l’ère du « post-cinéma » (celle des reconfigurations du médium cinématographique à l’époque des médias connectés).
Projet Alliance porté par Nico Baumbach (Columbia University)et Judith Michalet (Université Paris 1)avec la participation de Aline Caillet (Université Paris 1), Yves Citton (Université Paris 8), Jane M. Gaines (Columbia University), Gwenola Wagon (Université Paris 8) et Damon R. Young (UC Berkeley), comme membres du comité scientifique.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.fr/e/billets-colloque-international-remodeler-nos-interactions-numeriques-337204938047

Caroline Running Wolf presents to the DDI
2022-04-20 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver)
Caroline Running Wolf (Crow Nation), nee Old Coyote, is an enrolled member of the Apsáalooke Nation (Crow) in Montana, with a Swabian (German) mother and also Pikuni, Oglala, and Ho-Chunk heritage. As the daughter of nomadic parents, she grew up between USA, Canada, and Germany. Thanks to her genuine interest in people and their stories, she is a multilingual Cultural Acclimation Artist dedicated to supporting Indigenous language and culture vitality. After working for over 15 years as a professional nerd herder and business consultant in various fields, Running Wolf co-founded a nonprofit, Buffalo Tongue, with her husband, Michael Running Wolf. Together they create virtual and augmented reality experiences to advocate for Native American voices, languages, and cultures. Running Wolf has a Master’s degree in Native American Studies from Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

Jason Lewis presents to the DDI
2022-04-13 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | Online
Jason Edward Lewis is Full Professor of Design and Computation Arts. He is a digital media artist, poet and software designer. He founded Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media, where he directs research/ creation projects using virtual environments to assist Aboriginal communities in preserving, interpreting and communicating cultural histories, devising new means of creating and reading digital texts, developing systems for creative use of mobile technology. He is the director of the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, a seven-year SSHRC-funded Partnership focused on how Indigenous communities imaging themselves seven generations hence. Lewis co-founded and co-directs the Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace research network that is investigating how Aboriginal people can participate in the shaping of our digital media future, and co-directs workshop combining traditional stories and game design at the Kahnawake First Nations’ high school. He is deeply committed to developing intriguing new forms of expression by working on conceptual, creative and technical levels simultaneously. Lewis’ creative work has been featured at the Ars Electronica Center, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Urban Screens and Mobilefest, among other venues, his writing about new media has been presented at conferences, festivals and exhibitions on four continents and his work with Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace has won multiple awards.
He received his MPhil from the Royal College of Art for Dynamic Poetry: Introductory Remarks to a New Medium.

Wendy Chun's keynote address at UC Berkeley's Science Ethics and Policy Symposium
2022-04-09 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Vancouver) | Online
Beyond Ethical Tech: Understanding the Sociocultural History of Our Technological Defaults
Before we can talk about science policy issues, we need to talk about trust. How can we make sure science and its applications serve every community? Register to see the #SEPS2022 keynote with Wendy Chun on Saturday, April 9: http://seps2022.com.

Dylan Mulvin presents to the DDI
2022-04-06 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | Online
Dr Dylan Mulvin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE, where he also serves as Programme Director for the MSc Media and Communications.
Dr Mulvin is a historian of media and technology. Drawing on methods from media studies, Science and Technology Studies, gender studies, and disability studies, Dr Mulvin investigates how standards, infrastructures, and defaults encode and crystallise assumptions about human perception and behavior. In other words, he studies the ways people make the stuff that we take for granted. He is the author of Proxies: the Cultural Work of Standing In (published open access with MIT Press).
Prior to joining the Department, Dr Mulvin was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, where he was a member of the Social Media Collective. He earned his MA and PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University.
