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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20180301T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20180301T183000
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SUMMARY:The (Non)Americans: Tracking and Analyzing Russian Influence Operations on Twitter
DESCRIPTION:Deen Freelon\, Associate Professor\, School of Media and Journalism\, University of North Carolina\nIn late 2017\, Twitter and Facebook revealed that agents backed by the Russian government had infiltrated American political conversations for years. Posing as concerned citizens from across the ideological spectrum\, these agents surreptitiously spread propaganda disguised as home-grown political chatter. Two challenges\, one theoretical and the other methodological\, confront researchers interested in studying this campaign of information warfare. First\, the fields of communication and political science offer little theoretical guidance about how to study such tactics\, which are known as influence operations in military studies and dezinformatsiya in Russian and Slavic studies. Second\, Twitter and Facebook removed all such propagandistic content from public view upon confirming their existence\, which makes obtaining the data difficult (but not impossible). In this talk\, the University of North Carolina’s Deen Freelon will explain how he and his collaborators are addressing these challenges and present key preliminary findings from their ongoing project focused on this campaign. \nDeen Freelon is an associate professor in the School of Media and Journalism. His research covers two major areas of scholarship: 1) political expression through digital media and 2) data science and computational methods for analyzing large digital datasets. He has authored or co-authored more than 30 journal articles\, book chapters and public reports\, in addition to co-editing one scholarly book. He has served as principal investigator on grants from the Knight Foundation\, the Spencer Foundation and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He has written research-grade software to calculate intercoder reliability for content analysis (ReCal)\, analyze large-scale network data from social media (TSM)\, and collect data from Facebook (fb_scrape_public). He formerly taught at American University in Washington\, D.C.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/deen-freelon-nonamericans-tracking-analyzing-russian-influence-operations-twitter/
LOCATION:MIT Building 56\, Room 114\, Access via 21 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Deen-Freelon.jpg
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20180308T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20180308T183000
DTSTAMP:20260424T154100
CREATED:20180208T200741Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180208T201309Z
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SUMMARY:The Tip of the Iceberg: Sound Studies and the Future of Afrofuturism
DESCRIPTION:andré carrington\, Assistant Professor of African American Literature\, Drexel University\nIconic developments in the artistic and intellectual ethos known as Afrofuturism are closely linked to music: Sun Ra’s experimental jazz\, Parliament Funkadelic’s Mothership\, John Akomfrah’s film Last Angel of History. What else is on the soundtrack to a livable future? How do we pursue further innovation in the human sensorium without reproducing an “audiovisual litany” that conflates rationality with the colonial gaze and isolates Black creativity to moments of sonic disruption? andré carrington’s present research on the cultural politics of race in science fiction radio drama aims to expand the repertoire of literary adaptation studies by reintegrating critical perspectives from marginal and popular sectors of the media landscape into the advancing agendas of Afrofuturism and decolonization. \nandré carrington is a scholar of race\, gender\, and genre in Black and American cultural production. He is currently Assistant Professor of African American literature at Drexel University. His first book\, Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction (Minnesota\, 2016) interrogates the cultural politics of race in the fantastic genres through studies of science fiction fanzines\, comics\, film and television\, and other speculative fiction texts.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/andre-carrington-sound-studies-afrofuturism/
LOCATION:MIT Building 56\, Room 114\, Access via 21 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/andre-carrington-square.png
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20180315T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20180315T183000
DTSTAMP:20260424T154100
CREATED:20180206T151941Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180206T151941Z
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SUMMARY:Visual Representations of Race and Gender: Analyzing “Me” in #IfTheyGunnedMeDown on Tumblr
DESCRIPTION:Jenny Korn\, Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society\nOn August\, 9\, 2014\, unarmed Black 18-year-old teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by 28-year-old White police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson\, Missouri. As media outlets began to cover the story\, some news accounts chose an image of Brown that featured him as a high school graduate\, in the traditional cap and gown\, holding a diploma cover. Other news sources picked a different photo of Brown in a basketball jersey\, holding his fingers up in what some termed as a “gang sign.” As a response to the media bias\, Mississippi attorney C.J. Lawrence used Tumblr for online social media activism\, starting the blog #IfTheyGunnedMeDown with the subtitle “Which picture would they use?” In this talk\, Jenny Korn examines the answers of the Tumblr’s participants to the question: If “they” gunned “me” down\, which picture would “they” use to represent “me?” \nJenny Korn is a feminist activist of color for social justice and scholar of race and gender in mass media and online communication. Korn is a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Korn has been published in Feminist Media Studies; Hashtag Publics; The International Journal of Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies; The Intersectional Internet; The Journal of Communication Inquiry; Multicultural America; Popular Communication; Harvard University’s Transition; and more. Her publications have won the Outstanding Book Chapter Award from the African American Communication and Culture Division of the National Communication Association and the Carl J. Couch Internet Research Award. Drawing on critical race theories and intersectional feminist theories\, Korn explores how the Internet environment resonates user assemblages of race and gender and how online producers-consumers have constructed inventive digital representations and computer-mediated communications of identity.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/jenny-korn-visual-representations-race-gender-iftheygunnedmedown-tumblr/
LOCATION:MIT Building 56\, Room 114\, Access via 21 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Jenny-Korn-2x1.png
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20180322T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20180322T183000
DTSTAMP:20260424T154101
CREATED:20180129T131728Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180323T185630Z
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SUMMARY:Moving Broadband from Sea to Land: Internet Infrastructure and Digital Labor in Tanzania
DESCRIPTION:Lisa Parks\, Professor in MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing\nAs digital networks are extended across the world\, new forms of labor are required to enable and sustain mediated communication. This talk addresses the need for further critical conceptualizations of the labor and resource challenges inherent in extending the global internet from urban areas to rural\, low-income communities in various parts of the world. The East African country of Tanzania hosts four major undersea cable landings\, suggesting that the country’s 51 million people would be well integrated within global broadband fibre optic networks. Despite Tanzanians’ close proximity to major internet gateways and the country’s innovative regulatory climate (van Gorp & Maitland\, 2009)\, limited electrical and terrestrial telecommunication infrastructure prevents most citizens from benefitting from these cable landings. By 2014 only 15% of the population used the internet in Tanzania (Internet World Stats\, 2016). This study uses ethnographic fieldwork\, including site visits and interviews with workers at network facilities and data centers in Dar es Salaam and the Mara region\, to investigate the material conditions undergirding these paradoxical dynamics. Building on her past research on rural connectivity in neighboring Zambia\, CMS/W professor Lisa Parks‘ study will also explore how labor and resource conditions have effected an initiative called the Serengeti Broadband Network (SBN)\, which began in 2007 to establish broadband connectivity across 15 villages in one of Tanzania’s remote interior regions. Ultimately\, the talk will draw upon this empirical research to contribute to theorizations of labor\, infrastructure\, and (dis)connectivity in the digital era. \nLisa Parks is a global media scholar whose research focuses on three areas: satellite technologies and media cultures; critical studies of media infrastructures; and media\, militarization and surveillance. She is Principal Investigator for MIT’s Global Media Technologies and Cultures Lab.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/lisa-parks-internet-infrastructure-digital-labor-tanzania/
LOCATION:MIT Building 56\, Room 114\, Access via 21 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Lisa-Parks-2x1.png
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