Global Digital Cultures

In this episode, Stefania Milan joined us behind the mic at Cafe Droog, where we talked about data activism, regulatory data infrastructures, and ways in which justice and equality can be achieved in a datafied society. 

With the increased use of digital technologies by children, new opportunities for empowerment and connection have emerged but, alongside this, the possibility of increased exploitation of this vulnerable group. In this webinar, scholars Dr. Sara Grimes and Dr. Veronica Barassi will discuss the current challenges facing children’s rights in the digital realm. What potential interventions can be designed to create data justice and freedom for children in the digital space? In what ways has the increased use of technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic created new challenges and/or opportunities for children in the digital realm?  

Speakers 

Dr. Sara Grimes is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information (iSchool) at the University of Toronto where her work focuses on children’s digital media culture(s), play studies, and critical theories of technology with a focus on games. She is also the Director of the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) at the University of Toronto that functions as a cross-disciplinary institute that researches the evolving relationship between information, technology, and society.   

Prof. Veronica Barassi is an anthropologist and a Professor in Media and Communications Studies in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of St.Gallen in Switzerland. She is also the Chair of Media and Culture at the Media and Communications Management Institute in St. Gallen. She was previously and Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths University of London. Her research focuses on the impacts of social media, data technologies and artificial intelligence on society.  

This episode is part of the GDC Webinar series #2. Recorded on February 2021.

How does digitisation reshape the distribution of cultural, economic, and political resources around the globe? Over the past decades, this has been a central question in activist, scholarly, and policy debate. In this webinar, feminist technologist Nishant Shah and creative practitioner Padmini Ray Murray will discuss the current state of this debate. How is digital inequality framed in different parts of the world and what are the consequences of this framing? What can be the pitfalls of certain rhetorics of inclusion? And what are the current challenges for a politics of design directed at social justice? In light of the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the ongoing (dis-)information crisis, the question of global digital inequality has taken on new urgency.

Many concepts ‘meet’ each other in the practices of online sex work; physical & digital, pleasure & power, intimacy & publicness, body & labour. Not to forget how gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality intersect in this type of work. How can we engage in meaningful ways with these complexities and entangled realities? Artist and communication scholar Antonia Hernandez and writer, researcher, activist, and porn performer Lorelei Lee will discuss how art, writing, and play might provide methods for engagement with the multifaceted nature of online sex work.

This episode is part of the GDC Webinar series that took place on september 2020.

Public institutions, from universities and museums to public service media and local governments, are rapidly becoming digitized. In this process, they increasingly depend on digital platforms, operated by major corporations, most prominently Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. Consequently, public institutions have limited control over how key services are developed and how data is collected and processed through these services. The Covid-19 crisis, which further accelerates digitization, has made this particular urgent. This webinar discusses whether there is a need for digital public infrastructures. Which digital public services are needed and how should these be developed? What resources are needed to make public digital services successful?