Global Digital Cultures

Global Digital Cultures

GDC constitutes a vibrant, interdisciplinary research community for comparing and analyzing the profound changes brought about by digitization around the globe. Here you can find discussions from our webinars, talks, interviews and more. For more information about GDC check our website: https://globaldigitalcultures.uva.nl/

Episodes

  1. 04/01/2021

    Children and Data Justice - With Sara Grimes & Veronica Barassi

    With the increased use of digital technologies by children, new opportunities for empowerment and connection have emerged but, alongside this, the possibility of increased exploitation of this vulnerable group. In this webinar, scholars Dr. Sara Grimes and Dr. Veronica Barassi will discuss the current challenges facing children’s rights in the digital realm. What potential interventions can be designed to create data justice and freedom for children in the digital space? In what ways has the increased use of technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic created new challenges and/or opportunities for children in the digital realm?   Speakers  Dr. Sara Grimes is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information (iSchool) at the University of Toronto where her work focuses on children’s digital media culture(s), play studies, and critical theories of technology with a focus on games. She is also the Director of the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) at the University of Toronto that functions as a cross-disciplinary institute that researches the evolving relationship between information, technology, and society.    Prof. Veronica Barassi is an anthropologist and a Professor in Media and Communications Studies in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of St.Gallen in Switzerland. She is also the Chair of Media and Culture at the Media and Communications Management Institute in St. Gallen. She was previously and Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths University of London. Her research focuses on the impacts of social media, data technologies and artificial intelligence on society.   For more information on other events, projects and funding calls check https://globaldigitalcultures.uva.nl

    Children and Data Justice - With Sara Grimes & Veronica Barassi
  2. 02/26/2021

    Global Digital Inequalities - Nishant Shah & Padmini Ray Murray

    This episode is part of the GDC Webinar series #2. Recorded on February 2021. How does digitisation reshape the distribution of cultural, economic, and political resources around the globe? Over the past decades, this has been a central question in activist, scholarly, and policy debate. In this webinar, feminist technologist Nishant Shah and creative practitioner Padmini Ray Murray will discuss the current state of this debate. How is digital inequality framed in different parts of the world and what are the consequences of this framing? What can be the pitfalls of certain rhetorics of inclusion? And what are the current challenges for a politics of design directed at social justice? In light of the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the ongoing (dis-)information crisis, the question of global digital inequality has taken on new urgency. Chair: Guillén Torres Sepulveda Speakers: Nishant Shah is Director of Research & Outreach and Professor Aesthetics and Culture of Technologies at ArtEZ University of the Arts, The Netherlands. His work is at the intersections of body, identity, digital technologies, artistic practice, and activism, with a specific focus on non-canonical geographies. His current interest is in thinking through questions of artificial intelligence, digital subjectivity, and misinformation towards building inclusive, diverse, resilient, and equitable societies. His new book Really Fake is out in Spring 2021 with University of Minnesota Press. https://nishantshah.online/ Padmini Ray Murray is the founder of Design Beku, a collective emerging from a desire to explore how technology and design can be decolonial, local, and ethical. As a creative practitioner, Padmini creates new media work which reflects her research and interests, such as Darshan Diversion (with KV Ketan and Joel Johnson), a feminist videogame about the Sabarimala temple controversy (2016); Visualising Cybersecurity, a project which aims to alter how cybersecurity is depicted and discussed in the media (2019); a speculative comic on the personal data protection bill, “Designing for Democracy” (with Paulanthony George, 2020); and is currently working on a digital performance piece funded by the Goethe Institut, an adaptation of Ionesco’s ‘The Leader’, which explores the themes of misinformation, the attention economy and fake news. https://hcommons.org/members/padminirm/ More information: https://globaldigitalcultures.uva.nl/

    Global Digital Inequalities - Nishant Shah & Padmini Ray Murray
  3. 02/20/2021

    Engaging with Online Sex Work - Lorelei Lee & Antonia Hernández

    Many concepts ‘meet’ each other in the practices of online sex work; physical & digital, pleasure & power, intimacy & publicness, body & labour. Not to forget how gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality intersect in this type of work. How can we engage in meaningful ways with these complexities and entangled realities? Artist and communication scholar Antonia Hernandez and writer, researcher, activist, and porn performer Lorelei Lee will discuss how art, writing, and play might provide methods for engagement with the multifaceted nature of online sex work. Chair: Hanne Stegeman,  Ph.D. student in the Markets, Morals, and Mass Intimacy project (NWO). Speakers: Lorelei Lee (they/she) is a writer, porn performer, sex worker activist, organizer, juris doctor, Justice Catalyst Fellow, co-founder of the Disabled Sex Workers Coalition, and researcher with Hacking//Hustling. Their writing appears in n+1, The Establishment, $pread, Denver Quarterly, The Feminist Porn Book, Coming Out Like a Porn Star, We Too, Hustling Verse, and elsewhere. Their book, 'Anything of Value,' looking at sex work through legal history, memoir, and cultural criticism, is anticipated from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2023. https://twitter.com/MissLoreleiLee Antonia Hernández is a communication studies scholar at Concordia University Montreal and artist who has engaged with the complexity of online sex work both scholarly writing and artistic projects. Through the artwork and research project 'Maintenance Pornography / Sexcams in a Dollhouse',  she investigated platforms, value creation, and the domestic in online sex work. https://www.antoniahernandez.com/

    Engaging with Online Sex Work - Lorelei Lee & Antonia Hernández

About

GDC constitutes a vibrant, interdisciplinary research community for comparing and analyzing the profound changes brought about by digitization around the globe. Here you can find discussions from our webinars, talks, interviews and more. For more information about GDC check our website: https://globaldigitalcultures.uva.nl/