Note: Each panel will be hosted as a one-hour-long parallel session, either on Day 2 (July 17) or Day 3 (July 18) of the conference. The schedule will be available in June 2024.
Panel: Queer Cultures in Transnational Digital Spaces
Yener Bayramoğlu (University of York, UK), Łukasz Szulc (University of Manchester, UK), Radhika Gajjala (Bowling Green State University, USA), Tanvi Ratnakar Kanchan (SOAS University of London, UK), Eshile Lupindo (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA), Daniele Metilli (University College London, UK), Beatrice Melis (University of Pisa & Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy)
The panel addresses the ambivalences of contemporary queer cultures by zooming in on their intrinsic transnational and digital condition. The panel will demonstrate how LGBTIQ+ people use social media in different sociocultural contexts to create new digital counterpublics. The transnational perspective of each panellist will not only bring questions of how queerness is imagined, experienced and practiced through social media across borders, but also how it is restricted, controlled and turned into data by transnational social media platforms. By attending the panel, the audience will learn the empowering and yet limited potentials of transnational digital platforms for LGBTIQ+ people in places that include India, South Africa and Poland. The panel brings together social media researchers with expertise on different countries across the Global North and Global South with each of them focusing on an under-researched topic within academia. All presentations argue for going beyond methodological nationalism and highlight the importance of transnational analysis in social media studies. The panellists come from different disciplinary backgrounds including media studies, political science, sociology, computer science, linguistics, gender studies and digital humanities, which will provide vibrant interdisciplinary dialogue on how social media affects LGBTIQ+ people in different social contexts. The panel consists of emerging and established scholars, thereby opening the possibility for an intergenerational exchange.
Panel: Re-Imagining AI with Afrofuturist Speculative Design
Sanjay Sharma (University of Warwick, UK) and Anita Shervington (BLAST Fest, UK) | Panel Chair: Abdullah Hasan Safir (University of Cambridge)
The objectives of the panel are to explore the challenges of developing technologies that serve the common good by centering the perspectives of marginalized groups: – To address the difficulty of unravelling AI technologies, and offer an innovative approach that encourages authentic and meaningful engagement with these complex sociotechnical systems. – To challenge existing power structures in the development of an ethics for AI technology that promotes racial equity and social justice. – To imagine possibilities that reclaim technologies and create alternative futures, which are empowering for communities traditionally excluded and marginalized. The panel consists of members of a project team (funded by a grant from the ESRC Digital Good Network), involving a collaboration between academic researchers and an activist community group. The academic researchers, Sanjay Sharma and Kavin Narasimhan, are in partnership with the third-sector community-based organization BLAST Fest, collaborating with its Director, Anita Shervington, and Creative Practitioner, Juice Aleem. BLAST Fest is a diverse group from the multicultural communities that the organization seeks to serve. It pursues social justice concerning issues of science and technology by creatively drawing on Black arts and culture. By using a ‘flipped-engagement’ approach, BLAST Fest centers the agency of communities in establishing agendas, areas of exploration, and forms of collaboration and knowledge co-production. Each of the panel members, via lightning talks and inter-group dialogue, will explore and present the outcomes of our research project, re-imagining AI through an Afrofuturist speculative perspective.
Panel: Topic Modelling for Research on Social Media Platforms
Daniel Angus , Axel Bruns, Tariq Choucair (Queensland University of Technology, Australia); Fabio Giglietto (University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy); Kateryna Kasianenko (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
The panel aims to: 1) make explicit the key conceptual and methodological benefits and limitations of topic models for research on social media data; 2). consider a better way forward that would not only involve doing topic modelling with new tools such as embeddings, Large Language Models (LLMs), and so on, but also include visual-first or interactive approaches that, while maintaining the scalability and ease of exploratory research that topic models offer, would be better aligned with the research objectives of various sociologically-grounded projects studying digitally networked spaces. The panellists will first discuss conceptual considerations involved in utilising topic modelling for research on social media platforms. They will address the fit of the notion of a “topic” for their respective studies that examine polarised discourses, citizen engagement with political campaigns, spread of false or problematic narratives, and practices of knowledge exchange and solidarity on social media. The speakers will then address methodological complications they have encountered with applying topic modelling as well as approaches that allowed them to address these complications.
Panel: Selling play and perfection in the digital imaginaries of young people
Natalie Coulter (York University), Beatriz Feijoo (UNIR International University of Rioja), Patricia Núñez-Gómez (Complutense University of Madrid) & Lidia Marôpo (Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal & CICS.NOVA)
The panel consists of three papers that are thematically connected. Each centers around young people and their families’ engagement with social media. Together they forge a larger argument that teases out the tensions between young people’s social media use and the pressures of commercialization. The papers question how the discursive cadences of social media content impact the lived experiences of young people and their families. As well as how the commercial affordances of social media shape the way that young people engage with the content. By presenting these three papers in conversation with each other, the panel hopes to push for a broader understanding of how such social concepts of play and perfection are shaped by the digital imaginaries of young people under the pressures of digital capitalism. *The work presented at the panel was conducted in collaboration with Ana Jorge (CICANT, Lusófona University), Francisca Porfírio (CICANT, Lusófona University), Patrícia Dias (Catholic University of Portugal).
Panel: Analysing Controversies Amongst Online Music Communities
Jenessa Williams (University of Leeds, UK), Edward Katrak Spencer (Queen Mary University of London, UK), Steven Gamble (University of Bristol, UK)
The panel presents three interrelated investigations into controversial debates concerning music cultures on social media, with a shared research question: how do social media users negotiate allegations of music industry misconduct in the context of the culture wars? Our case studies are the fandoms of artists accused of sexual misconduct, the revival of the ‘Free Britney’ movement following the end of Britney Spears’ conservatorship, and Blackfishing accusations aimed at Ariana Grande. Given this scope, we engage closely with the complexities of #MeToo, online conspiracy theories, algorithmic outrage fatigue, and cultural appropriation. Our studies address online cultural activity across Reddit, Twitter/X, Tumblr, and TikTok, with a concern for platform idiosyncrasies as well as uncovering throughlines of controversial online discourse. The audience will be encouraged to participate in an extended, reflective Q&A. This will enable them to learn more about not just the subject matter of our papers, but how we might collectively explore the ethics of studying online culture wars, providing directives and discussion on our own negotiations of these highly contentious and often combative research environments.