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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Digital Democracies Institute
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20210908T123000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20210908T133000
DTSTAMP:20260607T202800
CREATED:20210826T000819Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210826T000819Z
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SUMMARY:Tarleton Gillespie presents to the lab
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Gillespie’s research focuses on the ongoing controversies surrounding digital media and commercial providers. His past work examined the move to technical solutions to copyright\, their political and cultural implications\, and how this move reveals underlying tensions between law\, technology\, and culture. His new research examines the implications of online media platforms as the new distributors of cultural and political discourse\, and the mediating role played by algorithms for public knowledge and participation.
URL:https://digitaldemocracies.org/calendar/tarleton-gillespie-presents-to-the-lab/
LOCATION:Online
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20210915T123000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20210915T133000
DTSTAMP:20260607T202800
CREATED:20210909T114242Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210909T114840Z
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SUMMARY:Fenwick McKelvey presents to the lab
DESCRIPTION:Fenwick McKelvey studies algorithmic media – the intensification of software within communication infrastructure – through cases such as advanced Internet traffic management software and political campaign management software. His approach contributes to communication studies by demonstrating the opportunities to integrate software studies into the field while raising questions about the imbrication of software and communication. \nBell Canada\, Canada’s largest telecommunications company\, recently filed a request to Canada’s telecommunications regulator\, the CRTC\, to use machine-learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to filter fraud and spam calls (Marotta\, 2019). Their request seems modest at first\, helpfully eliminating a public nuisance. If approved\, however\, this decision will transform media regulation\, establishing a precedent for using experimental automated systems to solve matters of open and free expression. This paper\, in collaboration with Reza Rajabiun\, takes Bell’s application as a critical case to understand the ramifications of AI for telecommunications regulation. \nBell’s request is part of a turn to increasing data surveillance to train automated systems that function as instruments of media policy (author; Kerr\, Barry & Kelleher\, 2020). We begin by situating Bell’s proposal within the historical and contemporary context of AI as/in media governance. From firewalls to deep packet inspection\, telecommunications infrastructure has been the site of constant innovation in automation (author). AI builds on but departs from this tradition in its demand for data\, its inscrutability and in the promise of ‘zero-touch’ networks. Next\, we examine trade press coverage to identify the myths and motives driving adoption of AI. We conclude by critically reviewing Bell’s arguments before the CRTC\, analyzing their implications for governance. As intervenors in these regulatory hearings\, we bridge policy scholarship and action (Shepherd et al.\, 2014). \nAs the first public hearings about AI before a national media regulator\, Bell’s case has global importance for the future of AI regulation (Balmer et al.\, 2020). First\, the case undermines the effectiveness AI ethics as industry self-regulation (Greene\, Hoffmann\, & Stark\, 2019). Bell Canada is located in Montreal\, where the AI industry has agreed to the Montreal Declaration for the Responsible Development of AI—Bell is not a signatory. Outside of Montreal\, Canada is perceived as a world leader in AI governance. It is among the first national governments to implement algorithmic impact assessments (author)—Bell has made no such commitment. Thus\, this case demonstrates the ineffectiveness of ‘soft power’ regulation of AI through ethics proposals and government standards. Presently under review by the CRTC\, Bell’s proposal could set national and international precedent.
URL:https://digitaldemocracies.org/calendar/fenwick-mckelvey-presents-to-the-lab/
LOCATION:Online
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20210916T153000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20210916T173000
DTSTAMP:20260607T202800
CREATED:20210913T220923Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210913T221035Z
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SUMMARY:Wendy Gives the 12th Annual Attallah Lecture at Carleton University
DESCRIPTION:Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication invites you to the 12th annual Attallah Lecture\, on Thursday\, September 16th at 3:30pm PST. This year’s speaker is Dr. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun\, Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media at Simon Fraser University. \nDr. Chun’s research draws from the humanities and social 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. Dr. Chun’s lecture\, Discriminating Data\, will explore how polarization is a goal – not an error – within current practices of predictive data analysis and machine learning. This is an urgent and timely topic\, and the lecture promises to be thought provoking. \nThe 2021 Attallah Lecture is open to the public and will be held online via Zoom this year. We ask that you please register in advance.
URL:https://digitaldemocracies.org/calendar/wendy-gives-the-12th-annual-attallah-lecture-at-carleton-university/
LOCATION:Online
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20210922T123000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20210922T133000
DTSTAMP:20260607T202800
CREATED:20210826T001124Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210916T061856Z
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SUMMARY:Giulio Dalla Riva presents to the lab
DESCRIPTION:“Prolegomena to Antifascist Data Science: theory\, praxis\, but mostly pizza.” \nIn this talk Giulio is going to try and sketch how it may be possible to do data science in a way that is rooted in antifascist thinking and practice. He will try to do that by reflecting upon two intense years of research and activism around the online spreading of toxic ideologies. Both the research and activism are situated in Ōtautahi Christchurch\, yet he has personal roots in the mountains of Veneto\, in Italy\, and date from long before. The sketch will be incomplete\, idiosyncratic\, and overall unsatisfying. He will offer more questions than answers. He will ask for help more than once. \nData scientist Giulio Dalla Riva explores and tries to make sense of what happens in complex\, dynamical networks. He is interested in ecological networks and the evolutionary processes that modify them in time; in particular he develops mathematical and statistical tools to study the relationship between ecological biodiversity and evolutionary diversity. \nHe is also interested in Social Networks\, especially online. He tries to understand what makes them work in the way they work.
URL:https://digitaldemocracies.org/calendar/giulio-dalla-riva-presents-to-the-lab/
LOCATION:Online
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20210928T183000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20210928T193000
DTSTAMP:20260607T202800
CREATED:20210824T035503Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210824T035503Z
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SUMMARY:Wendy gives President's Lecture at SFU
DESCRIPTION:In this President’s Faculty Lecture\, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (SFU’s Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media) will discuss themes from her forthcoming book Discriminating Data about how big data and predictive machine learning currently encode discrimination and create agitated clusters of comforting rage (MIT Press). \nThe lecture is free with registration\, which you can sign up for here. \nThis lecture will explore how polarization is a goal—not an error—within current practices of predictive data analysis and machine learning for these methods encode segregation\, eugenics\, and identity politics through their default assumptions and conditions. Correlation\, which grounds big data’s predictive potential\, stems from twentieth-century eugenic attempts to “breed” a better future. Recommender systems foster angry clusters of sameness through homophily. Users are “trained” to become authentically predictable via a politics and technology of recognition. The predictive programs thus seek to disrupt the future by making disruption impossible.
URL:https://digitaldemocracies.org/calendar/wendy-gives-presidents-lecture-at-sfu/
LOCATION:British Columbia
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20210929T120000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20210929T133000
DTSTAMP:20260607T202800
CREATED:20210826T044049Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210923T000207Z
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SUMMARY:Anti-Asian Sentiment Before Covid-19
DESCRIPTION:Join Grace Kyungwon Hong (UCLA)\, Lisa Nakamura (UMich) and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (SFU) for a discussion on anti-Asian sentiment before Covid-19. As many media accounts have recounted\, Stop AAPI Hate reported that anti-Asian violence soared during the first wave of the 2020 COVID19 pandemic. From mid-March 2020 to the end of February 2021\, 3\,795 “Anti-Asian hate incidents” were reported to Stop AAPI Hate. North of the U.S. border in the Canadian province of British Columbia\, “Anti-Asian hate crimes” reportedly increased by 717% in 2020. Focusing on recent developments in social media\, this event will examine the longer historical context of anti-Asian violence\, interrogating why and how sentiments such as “hate” and acts of violence committed by individuals have become the primary framework for understanding Asian racialization. Within this context\, Wendy Chun will briefly outline the historical ties between sentiment analysis\, homophily\, discrimination and anti-Asian violence\, Grace Hong will speak about “Affect\, Sentiment\, and the Human: Love and Hate in a Time of Anti-Asian Violence”\, and Lisa Nakamura will discuss “Women of Color and the Digital Labor of Repair”. \nThis event is moderated by Kirsten McAllister (SFU)\, and respondents are Siyuan Yin (SFU)\, and Sun-ha Hong (SFU).\n\nFor registration\, please click here\, and we will then send out zoom link details 24 hours before the event.\n\nGrace Kyungwon Hong is Professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA; she also holds a joint appointment in Gender Studies. Her research focuses on women of color feminism as an epistemological critique of and alternative to Western liberal humanism and capital\, particularly as they manifest as contemporary neoliberalism. \nShe is the author of Death Beyond Disavowal: The Impossible Politics of Difference (University of Minnesota Press\, 2015) which won the Association for Asian American Studies Cultural Studies book prize\, and The Ruptures of American Capital: Women of Color Feminism and the Cultures of Immigrant Labor (University of Minnesota Press\, 2006). She is the co-editor (with Roderick Ferguson) of Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization (Duke University Press\, 2011). She is the co-editor (also with Roderick Ferguson) of the Difference Incorporated book series at the University of Minnesota Press. \nLisa Nakamura is the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Cultures at the University of Michigan\, Ann Arbor. She is the founding Director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan and she has been writing about digital media\, race\, and gender since 1994. She is author of Racist Zoombombing\, with Hanah Stiverson and Kyle Lindsey (Routledge 2021); Technoprecarious\, written as part of Precarity Lab Collective (MIT and Goldsmiths Press 2020); Race After the Internet\, co-edited with Peter Chow-White (Routledge 2011); and Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet\, (University of Minnesota 2007). She has written books and articles on digital bodies\, race\, and gender in online environments\, on toxicity in video game culture\, and the many reasons that Internet research needs ethnic and gender studies. \nWendy Hui Kyong Chun is Simon Fraser University’s Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media in the School of Communication. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature\, which she combines and mutates in her current work on digital media. She is author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT\, 2006)\, Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT 2011)\, Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (MIT 2016)\, and co-author of Pattern Discrimination (University of Minnesota + Meson Press 2019). She has been Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University\, where she worked for almost two decades and where she’s currently a Visiting Professor. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania\, Member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton)\, and she has held fellowships from: the Guggenheim\, ACLS\, American Academy of Berlin\, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. She has been a Visiting Professor at AI Now at NYU\, the Velux Visiting Professor of Management\, Politics and Philosophy at the Copenhagen Business School; the Wayne Morse Chair for Law and Politics at the University of Oregon\, Visiting Professor at Leuphana University (Luneburg\, Germany)\, and a Visiting Associate Professor in the History of Science Department at Harvard\, of which she is an Associate. \n  \nKirsten E. McAllister is a Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. Her research and teaching focus on political violence\, racism\, migration and diaspora and her approach is interdisciplinary. She has conducted community-based research projects in national and transnational contexts.  \nSiyuan Yin is an assistant professor of Migration and Communication in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. She engages in interdisciplinary scholarship spanning the fields of cultural and media studies\, feminist studies\, social movements\, and political economy. Siyuan’s current project examines mediated activism and cultural production among women and migrant workers in the local and transnational contexts. \nSun-ha Hong is an Assistant Professor at SFU. His research focuses on how the way we think and talk about technologies shape their human and social implications. He is currently working on a SSHRC-funded project entitled Personal Truthmaking. It traces the cultural and historical resonances between two different ways in which the idea of ‘truth’ and ‘facts’ are being weaponised today: (1) in the politically polarised\, platform-amplified practice of ‘fact signalling’ that demonises the other side as irrational and antimodern; (2) constantly recycled technological futures that encourage us to dream of fully automated luxury objectivity through the power of algorithms and AI. \n  \nSimon Fraser University respectfully acknowledges the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam)\, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish)\, səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh)\, q̓íc̓əy̓ (Katzie)\, kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem)\, Qayqayt\, Kwantlen\, Semiahmoo and Tsawwassen peoples on whose unceded traditional territories our three campuses reside. While this is a virtual discussion\, the servers that make this event possible are physical and also reside on unceded traditional territories.
URL:https://digitaldemocracies.org/calendar/anti-asian-sentiment-before-covid-19/
LOCATION:Online
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