Co-presented with Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology (ICCIT)
*All events are FREE and open to the public.
Join us for a five-session reading group on the politics and culture of social media, presented in conjunction with the Wages For Facebook campaign. For more information, or to sign up for all or some of the sessions, please email nicole.cohen@utoronto.ca at least 2 days prior to the session.
All sessions run from 2pm to 3:30pm at the Blackwood Gallery, Kaneff Centre.
Free and open to the public, and all staff, faculty, and students welcome!
Click here to download a printable PDF of the Reading Group schedule and assigned readings.
The Blackwood Gallery is hosting a ONE DAY Workshop on Wednesday October 29, 1 - 4PM with artist and founder of Wages For Facebook, Laurel Ptak. The Workshop will examine the Wages For Facebook campaign, discuss the results of the student-based poll recently conducted at UTM and explore the potential for future organizing strategies around digital labour. Click here for more information.
Introduction: Social media, audiences, and agency
Friday, September 26, 2 - 3:30pm
Facilitated by Prof. Nicole Cohen
Readings:
Mark Andrejevic. 2011. “Surveillance and Alienation in the Online Economy.” Surveillance & Society 8(3): 278-287.
José van Dijk. 2009. “Users Like You? Theorizing Agency in User-Generated Content.” Media, Culture & Society 31(1): 41-58. Library DOI: 10.1177/0163443708098245
Is it work? Social media and the great labour debate
Friday, October 10, 2 - 3:30pm
Facilitated by Prof. Nicole Cohen
Readings:
Tiziana Terranova. 2000. “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy.” Social Text 18(2): 33-58.
Nicole Cohen. 2008. “The Valorization of Surveillance: Toward a Political Economy of Facebook." Democratic Communiqué 22(1): 5–22.
Gender and social media
Friday, October 24, 2 - 3:30pm
Facilitated by Prof. Leslie Shade and Prof. Victoria Tahmasebi
Readings:
Leslie Regan Shade. 2014. “’Give Us Bread, But Give Us Roses’: Gender and Labour in the Digital Economy.” International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 10(2): 129-144.
Melissa Gira Grant. 2013. “Girl Geeks and Boy Kings.” Dissent 60(1): 46–49.
The economics of selling personal information
Friday, November 7, 2 - 3:30pm
Facilitated by Prof. Brett Caraway
Readings:
Stephen Lilley, Frances S. Grodzinsky, and Andra Gumbus. 2012. “Revealing the Commercialized and Compliant Facebook User.” Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society 10(2): 82-92.
V. Kumar and Bala Sundaram. 2012. “Lessons Learned from GM’s Pullback from Facebook Ads.” Forbes.com, June 18.
Alternatives and resistance?: Rethinking social media
Friday, November 21, 2 - 3:30pm
Facilitated by Prof. Brett Caraway
Readings:
Ariel Bleicher. 2011. “The Anti-Facebook.” IEEE Spectrum,June 2011: 54-83.
Manuel Castells. “Prelude to Revolution: Where it All Started.” 2012. In Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
