Given the overwhelming SMC presence at the 2021 Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) annual meeting, we thought we’d assemble a list of panels chaired by, organized by, and featuring SMC members and alums. Tune in on October 6th - 9th to hear a wide range of presentations on topics such as dead and dying platforms, “caring” for data, the sexual politics of the polygraph, “Green …
Continue reading SMC goes to 4S: a list of panels to look out for
Inspired by a burst of new, exciting books from some of our past postdocs and interns, we thought we’d pull all the books from our SMC alums together in one place. What a list! The books presented here cover a wide range of topics and represent the SMC’s deep interest in the sociocultural histories, meanings, and implications of technology. Authors explore the consequences of algorithmic police surveillance, map …
SMC postdoc Niall Docherty has a new publication in the International Journal of Communication, 'Digital Self-Control and the Neoliberalization of Social Media Well-Being'. Check it out! Abstract: Popular debates surrounding social media well-being target individual habit as the locus of critique and change. This article argues that this constitutes a commitment to responsibilized constructs of …
Continue reading new publication from Niall Docherty on “digital self-control”
UPDATE: One more to add! Muira McCammon is a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and holds a Master in Law from Penn Law. She studies how information flows through the U.S. administrative state, and her dissertation examines government deletion practices on Twitter. She has published on this work in …
Join panelists Taina Bucher (University of Oslo), Brian Jefferson (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Niall Docherty (Microsoft Research) to discuss digital temporalities as they intersect with apparatuses of power and knowledge. Monday April 12th -- 9am CDT/3pm BST/4pm CEST -- Online Hosted by the Social Media Collective Each speaker will give a ten-minute presentation, followed …
Continue reading Digital Time/Power Symposium, April 12 2021
The SMC loves good books. And we especially love books that tackle vital societal problems in a way that's timely but also deeply researched, that ask biting questions of institutions without turning them into straw men, that investigate technology in its real use contexts, and that complicate things that may at first appear simple. And …
APPLICATION DEADLINE: December 1, 2020 The Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research New England (MSRNE) is looking for a two-year social media postdoctoral researcher. This position is an ideal opportunity for a scholar whose work draws on communication, media studies, anthropology, sociology, and/or science & technology studies to bring empirical and critical perspectives to bear …
In the confusion of our current times, we were not as quick about announcing the newest members of the Social Media Collective as we usually are. Like everyone, we find ourselves out of step with the timelessness of pandemic time. But as these new faces are showing up and settling in with us - on …
Continue reading new faces in the Social Media Collective… welcome!
In a new op-ed, published yesterday in The Hill, Mary L. Gray and her co-authors argue for the importance of human labor behind contact tracing and argue for a more human-centered approach in current tech strategies. As the Center for Disease Control (CDC) plans to massively scale up testing and contact-tracing for COVID-19, Gray argues …
Continue reading New op-ed from Mary L. Gray, on the vital human labor behind contact tracing
Many of our colleagues in academia have had to very quickly migrate their teaching online, in response to changes made by their universities in addressing the coronavirus. This can be so much work - our hats off to everyone who has done so gracefully and ingeniously. An online course can be a lot of hours …
