Information, Medium & Society Parallel Session
Slow and Steady: The Inception of a University Committee to Promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rosalie Barrera
In the immediate aftermath of the public murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, academic entities scrambled to determine what they could do at a micro level to address the macro-level racial issues of systemic racism and societal inequality. At many universities (including mine), departments and academic offices took up the mantle by creating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committees. In the fall semester of 2020, our department chair convened a DEI Committee and asked me to chair it. As I have no formal education in this form of work, I accepted the role with trepidation. Now, over one year into the endeavor, I would like to share my experiences and advice. In this paper I share the work our committee has done since its inception. I share our reading list, our website, and our carefully crafted objectives. I also share our recent events as well as the activities that are in the works in order to help us meet the stated objectives.
Addressing the Unseen Power: An Ethnography of Machine Life View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Karla Erickson
“The point is not just to look between these categories, but to pay closer attention to the surfaces themselves.” (Benjamin, Race After Technology 2019:44). In the movies, the Terminator shows up at the door with a gun. But that’s not how it happened this time. Algorithmic injustice, the concretizing of inequality via surveillance capitalism, seeps in, barely recognizable and we find ourselves already nudged, studied and directed, with little insight into the social control mechanisms that are gathering and moving ever closer to our interiority. No gun was needed, sometimes in the face of the listening, observing, and recording infrastructure of a wired world, we even swoon before the new power that seeks to sell to and direct us. How do we condition ourselves to recognize and resist existing harm and prevent future intrusions into the very stuff of human existence? I have been building epistemological tools to understand this crisis, connect to human rhythms and build collective tactics to redress the unseen powers that seek to concretize inequality. My students and I have developed a method for “peering into” machine/human relations. I introduce and apply that method to a self-check machine and a Paro robot (baby seal that is used in nursing homes) to surface the anti-Black, mysognist and colonizing intentions of the seemingly mundane, and seemingly innocuous machine life to which we are adapting. Using ethnographic tactics related to embodiment and sensory exploration, I compare these two devices to the humans they propose to extend, charm, and nudge.
Overcoming the Gatekeeper Effect: How Social Media and Small Presses Highlight Marginalized Voices in Publishing View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marissa Lemar
Small, independent presses that highlight underrepresented groups and social media networks that bring together such communities can work together to overcome the gatekeeper effect, improving diversity and representation in publishing. This paper describes how small press publishing ensures marginalized voices are heard and how communities of difference (e.g., BIPOC, LGBTQ) use social media to join the conversation and ultimately impact social knowledge production. This research is vital because publishing greatly impacts culture; publishers, as gatekeepers, determine which stories are amplified, and when certain communities are left out, publishing risks providing an incomplete, imbalanced picture. The findings contribute to the field of communication. The source material was collated through a literature review focused on studies as well as reports detailing small presses, diversity in publishing, and social media communication. The knowledge work involves close reading of studies on representation in publishing and the impact of small press publishing. There are dozens of small press publishers, and my findings will demonstrate that small presses represent a robust, powerful way to raise otherwise unheard communities into the knowledge production of publishing. Further, social media conversations and networking bring together the individuals (publishers, writers, and editors) who make this possible. Traditional publishing is still relevant as a means to reach a wide audience and create overall knowledge, and social media and small presses are a necessary step to bring in voices and communities that may otherwise be left out.
