This week, we’re reading excellent work from neighbors and friends and planning for fall events. Fall events? Is it really time to think about October already? Yes, if you’d like to speak at either of these conferences! So mark your calendar and consider submitting a proposal.
On October 16, CITAP is hosting a one-day symposium on Misinformation and Marginalization—stop through Chapel Hill on your way to AoIR! We’ll explore global and comparative frames for mis- and disinformation studies that center marginalized perspectives, investigating how online mis- and disinformation spreads and functions differently within different communities, how it can contribute to further harm in such communities, and asking how critical disinformation studies perspectives like these might transform the field as a whole.
This hybrid, one-day symposium will consist of an opening keynote speech by Dr. Sarah Banet-Weiser, and three subsequent themed panels. The first panel will explore gender, sexuality, and misinformation; the second will address misinformation in diasporic communities; and the third will look at global perspectives on algorithmically amplified misinformation as it relates to race and religion.
Proposals due by June 30.
And then on October 22, Deen Freelon is co-organizing The Post-API Conference: Social media data acquisition after Twitter with Josephine Lukito, Bree McEwan, and Josh Pasek at the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
Participants will be organized into four informal plenary panels–two in the morning and two in the afternoon–each of which will begin with a series of four 5-minute lightning talks. However, most of the time will be spent in large-scale moderated discussions between participants and panelists. Each of the four panels will focus on one of the following topics:
Gaps. What tools/software/workflows/perspectives are missing from our research toolkits? How can we stay nimble and responsive to a constantly changing data ecosystem?
Education. What tools/software/workflows/perspectives have you developed or used that you’d like to showcase? What broad types of education do people in this area need (e.g. does everyone need to learn to code)?
Storage and access. How can we overcome challenges in post-acquisition data storage and access, especially across institutions?
Ethics. What ethical considerations should we bear in mind as we plow forward? Would it be worth the effort to create a broad, interdisciplinary ethical framework?
Proposals due by July 17.
👏
Congratulations to our postdoctoral researcher Yiping Xia as he departs CITAP to become an ACES Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University! Yiping sat down to talk about his work when he first arrived at CITAP:
Publications and appearances
“While celebrity endorsements of politicians are not new, these endorsements are unique in that their purpose goes beyond mobilizing voters. Through nuanced rhetorical strategies and evocative visuals, these celebrity endorsements seek to highlight shared ethnic/cultural identity (in this case, Indian American identity) in an effort to build community.” Madhavi Reddi proposes the concept of shared identity endorsement narratives (SIENs) for celebrity endorsements of political candidates that intentionally highlight shared social identities between the endorser and the endorsed.
Coming soon
June 29 at the Capitol Visitors Center: Scott Babwah Brennan joins a panel on age verification laws and their potential impact on privacy, free speech, and the online safety of minors. Registration is free.
October 16 at CITAP: Misinformation and Marginalization Symposium.
October 18 at AoIR: Alice Marwick, Yvonne Eadon, and Rachel Kuo are among the co-organizers of an AoIR preconference on future of conspiracy.
October 22 at the Annenberg Public Policy Center: The Post-API Conference.
Not quite beach reads, but…
Summer is for catching up on all kinds of good reading, right?
“This is what we call the recognition crisis: our historical moment, in which recognition of one’s group, derogation of other groups – which we might call agonistic misrecognition—and narratives of one’s group’s own misrecognition, are now primary terms by which citizens understand the political world. These discourses built strength over decades of use by social movements and political media entrepreneurs; they now proliferate in a hybrid media system tuned by its own commercial logics to hyper-focus publics on questions of identity and recognition.” Chris Wells and Lewis Friedland apply recognition theory to political communication.
This entire special issue of Social Media + Society on Political Influencers, including pieces on participatory disinformation, hate influencers on Telegram, and the excellent titular threat “Don’t Make Me Ratio You Again.”