In conversation with Thomas Poell and Stefania Milan, Zeynep Tufekci talks about her educational journey from Turkey and Texas, tactics and infrastructure of 20th century and ongoing protest movements, and how the excess of information online has created new forms of censorship. She also discusses the importance of institutional credibility, legislation, and gives advice to young academics today.

In this episode, we had drinks with Justus Uitermark at Cafe Droog, where we discussed the theories, methods, and work processes driving his and John Boy’s upcoming book: On Display: Instagram, the Self, and the City. Justus Uitermark is professor of Urban Geography at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of the University of Amsterdam. He studies cities from a comparative and historical perspective, looking at how power relations are expressed in the built environment: which groups and interests prevail and which are pushed into the background?

In this episode, we invited Linnet Taylor to Thomas's cozy office at the University of Amsterdam to discuss global data justice and the growing power of contemporary tech firms over a hot cup of tea. 

Linnet Taylor is a Professor of International Data Governance at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT), where she leads the ERC-funded Global Data Justice project. Her research focuses on the use of new sources of digital data in governance and research around issues of human and economic development.

In this episode, Stefania Milan joined us behind the mic at Cafe Droog, where we talked about data activism, regulatory data infrastructures, and ways in which justice and equality can be achieved in a datafied society. 

Stefania Milan is an Associate Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam. She is the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded DATACTIVE project, Co-Principal Investigator of the e-LADDA project, and the Project Leader of the Citizenship and Standard-Setting in Digital Networks. Her research lies at the intersection of technologies and society, as she investigates the possibilities of self-organization, emancipation, and autonomy that digital infrastructure opens up. 

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

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.

Guillén Torres Sepulveda

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/

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:

This episode is part of the GDC Webinar series that took place on September 2020.

Digitization is transforming the global sex industry. With their low barrier of entry, live and highly interactive character, webcam sex platforms such as Chaturbate or LiveJasmin have become one of the sex industry’s most profitable and fastest-growing segments. This development has been further propelled by Corona, which forced many sex workers to look for alternative sources of income online. But what does their work entail? Which new risks and opportunities do they encounter, compared to offline sex work? Does ‘camming’ lead to a new global proletariat of sex workers? Or can it provide new forms of empowerment?

Olav Velthuis, Professor of Sociology, University of Amsterdam

This episode is part of the GDC Webinar series that took place on september 2020.

How do digital technologies mediate racism? It is increasingly clear that digital technologies, including auto-complete function, facial recognition, and profiling tools are not neutral but racialized in specific ways. This webinar focuses on the different modes of programmed racism. We present historical and contemporary examples of racial bias in computational systems and learn about the potential of Civic AI. We discuss the need for a global perspective and postcolonial approaches to computation and discrimination. What research agenda is needed to address current problems and inequalities?

Lonneke van der Velden, University of Amsterdam

Sennay Ghebreab,  Associate Professor of informatics, University of Amsterdam and Scientific Director of the Civic AI Lab, for civic-centered and community minded design, development and development of AI

Linnet Taylor, Associate Professor at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT), PI of the ERC-funded Global Data Justice Project.

Payal Arora, Professor and Chair in Technology, Values, and Global Media Cultures at the Erasmus School of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Author of the ‘Next Billion Users’ with Harvard Press.

This episode is part of the GDC Webinar series that took place on september 2020.

Public institutions, from universities and museums to public service media and local governments, are rapidly becoming digitized. In this process, they increasingly depend on digital platforms, operated by major corporations, most prominently Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. Consequently, public institutions have limited control over how key services are developed and how data is collected and processed through these services. The Covid-19 crisis, which further accelerates digitization, has made this particular urgent. This webinar discusses whether there is a need for digital public infrastructures. Which digital public services are needed and how should these be developed? What resources are needed to make public digital services successful?