Social Media and Digital Activism Events
I. Content Creators, Digital Labour, and Online Identities: A SCDS Graduate Resident Panel
What role do social media platforms play in forming and negotiating digital labour? How do platforms frame online selves and lives as intelligible or otherwise? What are the cultural and communicative practices Creators and users rely on to mediate their identities in digital spaces?
At this virtual panel, Sherman Centre Graduate Residents will share their in-progress research and address these timely questions. Drawing from exciting interdisciplinary fields such as Cultural Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Automedia, and Human-Computer Interaction, the papers in this session consider the on and offline impacts of affective labour and attention economies, self-branding practices, and the mediation of identity.
Adrianna Michell analyzed the Twitter hashtag #PaidSickDaysSaveLives, where workers in Ontario, Canada, expressed concerns over government sick leave policies amidst the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Emma Croll-Baehre examined how twin content creators across diverse platforms articulate and mediate their digital selves and lives. Jess Rauchberg explored the communicative strategies that censored or “shadowbanned” disabled TikTok and Instagram Creators rely upon for platform engagement. Special guest Professor Jessalynn Keller (Communication, Media, and Film, University of Calgary) then joined the session for a formal response to the Graduate Residents’ presentations.
Watch a Recording of the Graduate Resident Panel
View the original here.
Relevant Links
- Jess Rauchberg’s SCDS Blog Post, “Bestie Vibes Only? Disabled Content Creators, Shadowbanning, and the Politics of Authenticity”
- Learn about the 2021 SCDS Graduate Residents
Continue viewing this suite of events by watching Jessalynn Keller’s Keynote.