Yesterday our second fall speaker, Nancy Leong, delivered a talk centered around her book Identity Capitalists: The Powerful Insiders Who Exploit Diversity to Maintain Inequality.
Nancy coins the term “identity capitalist” to label the powerful insiders who eke out social and economic value from people of color, women, LGBTQ people, the poor, and other outgroups.
Identity capitalism can be very degrading to outgroup members. It can create a situation where outgroup members are treated as products or as commodities. Nobody wants to feel like their school only admitted them or employer only hired them because they want to put their photo on the website and count them in the statistics.
You can watch Nancy’s full talk below. We highly recommend it!
Publications and appearances
“It’s not even just that the lies are surface level in the ads themselves. It’s when people search for more information about these half-truths it’s easy to sway opinion because you can make sure your content is rising to the top of search engines.” Francesca Tripodi spoke to CBS17 about keywords and phrases in political ads.
“If you’re trying to game a system, you don’t want to use a word that’s already in circulation.” Francesca Tripodi was a guest on the Lincoln Project Television’s “We’re Speaking” to discuss her new book, data voids, and more.
“While I think it’s possible for the system to be used to monitor whoever, I find it interesting that that bias tends to reflect the way that police have traditionally treated different types of protesters.” Deen Freelon spoke to The Daily Tar Heel about UNC’s use of Social Sentinel to monitor Silent Sam and pro-choice protests.
“You have to think of it as a long game. The people you’re speaking to need to see that you’re ‘personally invested in the outcome.” Deen Freelon contributed to an evidence-based guide on how to talk to misinformation-believing friends and family. Affiliate Madeline Jalbert also contributed!
“WeChat allows for disinformation to flourish in part because of how users are able to form large, closed groups and post information without being checked or held accountable.” Affiliate Rachel Kuo spoke to Yahoo News about right-wing disinformation ramping up on WeChat ahead of the midterms.
Coming soon
November 10: The CITAP fall speaker series continues with Tamara K. Nopper delivering a talk on Crime Data and Policing Data as Open Data: Considering Research Ethics, Transparency, and Privacy. Event information here. RSVP is required for livestream access.
Rest of Web
📽️ ICYMI: CITAP faculty Francesca Tripodi, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Daniel Kreiss, and Shannon McGregor participated in First Amendment Day’s panel “Weaponizing First Amendment Rhetoric” moderated by postdoc Nanditha Narayanamoorthy. Watch the full session below.
👋 If you’re in North Carolina, you’ll want to check out this new website that makes it easy to learn how to vote in this state. This project was a collaboration between UNC professor Rebecca Kreitzer and Meredith College professor Whitney Manzo.