We're thrilled that Desmond Patton, associate professor in the School of Social Work at Columbia University, is visiting us for the first half of 2020. He's a rare bird in our field, able both to explain the importance of cultural contexts in data science techniques to technical experts, and to do the important ethnographic work …
Continue reading SMC news: two new articles from Desmond Patton and his SafeLab team
Now that we have said goodbye to our most recent long-term visitor, Henry Jenkins, we can look ahead to our next, Paul Dourish. It's a fine time to do so, as he has just been awarded two honors that testify to his important contributions to the study of computation and society. His 1992 paper "Awareness and Coordination …
Continue reading kudos for upcoming SMC visitor Paul Dourish
Several years ago, I introduced a class at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism which was designed to encourage scholars in training to think more deeply about the public-facing dimensions of their work. I wanted to call the class, "How to Be a Public Intellectual," but this is a university, …
Continue reading my latest syllabus: “Public Intellectuals: Theory and Practice”
SMC is excited to welcome Tom Streeter, who will be soon making occasional visits to our New England lab, beginning later this month. To mark his arrival, we wanted to highlight the essay he has just published in the International Journal of Communication: “Steve Jobs, Romantic Individualism, and the Desire for Good Capitalism.” (Borrowing from the summary …
(written up with Nikki Usher, GWU) Anyone tackling fieldwork these days can chose from a wide selection of digital tools to put in their methodological toolkit. Among the best of these tools are platforms that let you archive, analyze, and disseminate at the same time. It used to be that these were fairly distinct stages …
Digital inequality scholarship is well-intentioned. It debunks myths about digital media’s inherent egalitarianism and draws attention to the digital dimensions of social inequalities. Digital inequality scholars have shown, for example, that people with access to networked media use those technologies in different ways, some of which are thought to be more beneficial than others. They …
Continue reading Why Digital Inequality Scholarship Needs Ethnography
We get a lot of wonderful and interesting visitors here at SMC. Today, we had the pleasure of spending time with Jason Mittell, Chair of the Department of Film and Media Culture at Middlebury College. SMC: So what brings you to MSR today? JM: Visiting with Nancy Baym, and chatting to just see how things work …
We get a lot of wonderful and interesting visitors here at SMC. Today, we had the pleasure of spending time with Siva Vaidhyanathan, Robertson Professor and the Chair of the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. SMC: So what brings you to MSR today? SV: For years I've wanted to visit MSR and …
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