A PDF version of the print program will also be available soon. A list of corrections and additions to the print program will be available here.
You will be able to watch the live streams from all sessions here.
/// 10:30am | Doors Open
/// 12:00pm–1:15pm | Session 1
Unpaid affective labor, social debt through social media metrics, and Silicon Valley's courting the apocalypse fuels today's post-rational techno-capitalist economy.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Guy Schaffer |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Angela Cirucci | @angelacirucci | Invisible Female Labor: How Women Drive “Institutional Interaction” Online |
| Ricky Crano | Between Gregariousness and Governance: Social Media's Cult of Debt | |
| Marika Rose | @MarikaRose | Deus in Machina: Digital Capitalism and Technological Re-Enchantment |
| Gwera Kiwana | @whoisgwera | Telecoms to the Rescue? What Is the Role of Mobile Money Platforms in Providing Financial Services?: An Exploration of M-Pesa in Kenya |
Knowledge creating is a matter of organization as well as content, an endless negotiation with what is already known and the forms in which that knowledge circulates. Knowledge work means not only creating new ideas but assessing the containers and habitats in which they might take root and flower.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Safy | @Safyhallanfarah |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| S. E. Hackney | @fiiidget | The Wikipedia Page for "Shorts" |
| Jason Farman | @farman | Loading: How Buffer Icons Shape Our Sense of Time and Our Practices of Waiting |
| Nicholas A. Hanford | @NicholasHanford | Expanding Open Access: Building a Feed-Forward Journal |
| Sylvia Gutierrez | @knifedom | Faith and Technology in a Post-Religion Society: A Panacea to Apocalypse |
As images circulate, they provide a grammar for political expression. Even when they are only barely tweaked, they can take on whole new meanings and contexts in connection with previously shared content.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Seth Barry Watter |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Abdelrahman Hassan | @Abdorepublic | Mannequin Challenge: Reclaiming Space and Time |
| Hannah Barton | @hhannahhbarton | Operation Mindfuck: A Photocopier, a Conspiracy, a God, a Frog |
| Siân Brooke | @SianJMBrooke | “There Are No Girls on the Internet”: Gender Performances in the Advice Animal Meme Genre |
| Maggie Mayhem | @MsMaggieMayhem @HarmReduxSF | #NodSquad & #TweakerNation: Why Getting High Online Leads To Better Substance Use Outcomes |
/// 1:30pm–2:45pm | Session 2
Ethics of Connection Studio A #a2
Networks aren't neutral: They perform an implicit moral function in how and when they link their members and serve as ethical actors in their own right.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Michael Lachney |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Joshua McWhirter | @joshuamcwhirter | Dispositioning Systems: Infrastructures of Affect in the Locative City |
| Benjamin Haber | @benjaminhaber | Queer Temporality and the Performance of Risk |
| Caitlin Turner | The Case for Bolts: A Critical Analysis of Media Infrastructures and Mesh Networks | |
| Anna Jobin | @annajobin | Online Advertising, Algorithms, and Intermediaries |
The imperfections of humanity are often most visible when we strive for perfection, as the development of artificial intelligence has demonstrated. Does AI exemplify how our digital creations are extensions of ourselves?
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Yotam Shmargad | @thesickish |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Noah Hutton | Neural Normality | |
| Maya Indira Ganesh | @MAYAMEME | Auto Correct: Fiction as an Approach to Developing Ethics-As-Accountability in Driverless Cars |
| Abie Hadjitarkhani | @abie | Ok Google, I’m Having a Crisis |
| Jacqueline Feldman | @jacquefeld | Other Than Human: AI Personality Design |
Disrupting Disruption Studio C #c2
Silicon Valley's politics and economics of disruption also produce opportunities for both resistance and retrenchment.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Joelle Woodson | @woahitsjo94 |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Renée Reizman | @reneereizman | The Minor Internet: Non-Radical Interventions of Internet-Based Art |
| Elisabeth Friedman | Transforming the Internet through Feminist Activism | |
| Lior Zalmanson | @zalmanson | Hands on the Wheel (and the App) – Regaining Control in the Age of Algorithmic Management |
| Chloe O'Neill | @_plastic_baggie | Meme Magic and the Rise of the Alt-Right |
/// 3:00pm-4:15pm | Session 3
Invited Panel | Get Ready for Some Gaming Theory Studio A #a3
Games allow us to enter new worlds and become new characters, but they are also generators of threshold spaces where questions of identity and authenticity are debated by designers and players alike.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Jeremy Antley | @jsantley |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Austin Walker | @austin_walker | |
| Naomi Clark | @metasynthie | |
| Stephanie Jennings | @stephaniejngs | |
| Michael Thomsen | @mike_thomsen |
Collecting ever more data into ever larger sets does not make for more objectivity. Nor does it water down the effects on those being surveilled.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Wesley Goatley | @wesleygoatley |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Krista Schnell | @kristaschnell | How Big is Your Data? Data and Gender in Silicon Valley |
| Lindsay Weinberg | @Laweinbe | Rethinking Privacy: A Feminist Approach to Privacy Rights After Snowden |
| Jack Kahn | @mgzxr | MSSNG: How the Google Cloud is Changing the Meaning of Autism |
| Jürgen Geuter | @tante | Transcending the Data-Algorithm-Dualism |
Don't Trend on Me Studio C #c3
The web was long hailed as inherently democratic, yet the current moment is marked by antidemocratic politics and manipulated media reaction. How are communications technologies fueling the rise of populist authoritarianism? How might they be used to stabilze political discourse? What of "2016" as a cultural and political style?
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Amanda Hess | @amandahess |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Sara Lillo | @saralillo | Digital Masculinities and the 2016 Presidential Election |
| Jozie Nummi and Thaddeus Atzmon | @jz_rose | Dylann Roof, Trolling and Tweeting While White: How the Psychological Wage of Whiteness Manifests Online |
| Brian Justie | @brian_justie | Dada Data: Seizing the Means of Meaning-Making |
/// 4:15pm–6:00pm | Food / Social Break
Visit our location page for a range of local food options.
/// 6:00pm–7:30pm | Keynote Panel 1
Weblandia Redstone Theater #k1
In the web's early days, commentators often predicted a radical decentralization of work and play. Video chat and email, the thinking went, would render offices, cities, and commuting moot. But cities are more desirable than ever as urban life becomes more predictable, less gritty, and more individualistically oriented. Fueling this transformation is the convergence of the city and the smartphone. Mapping, ride-hailing, and image-sharing apps are among the many recent innovations that require cities’ unique characteristics of density, scale, and diversity to function, but also impose a sort of orderliness and control that was once only found in post-war suburbs. This panel will explore the homogenizing, commodifying, and revitalizing forces that digital networks bring to bear on our built environments.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| David Banks | @da_banks |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Ava Kofman | @eyywa | |
| Kate Losse | @katelosse | |
| Sharon Zukin | ||
| Kyle Chayka | @chaykak |
/// 7:30pm–9:00pm | Keynote Panel 2
Where Truth Lies Redstone Theater #k2
Fake news and post-truth, alternative facts and filter bubbles: our moment’s politics are both too chaotic and too predictably on the nose. On Brexit and Trump, journalists and experts had their expectations refined down to a decimal point, but their odds-making produced more confusion than certainty. Meanwhile, the lack of a basis for shared knowledge has allowed hoaxes and propaganda to proliferate. We are fresh off a campaign that was run, covered, and won like a reality show. What of this chaos epistemology, a tactical approach that has long been part of web culture but is now installed in the seat of power? Do we want to strengthen knowledge-producing institutions? Build new ones? What does it mean to produce and consume news information when the very shape of the world is contested, and any fact feels impossible? We will grapple with these topics on this panel, with a special focus on the role of social media.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Natasha Lennard | @natashalennard |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Tara Isabella Burton | @NotoriousTIB | |
| Alexa O'Brien | @carwinb | |
| Aaron Cantú | @aaron_con_leche | |
| Jay Rosen | @jayrosen_nyu |
/// 9:00pm-10:30pm | Afterparty
/// 11:00am | Doors Open
/// 12:00pm–1:15pm | Session 4
Originally seen as a disembodying force, the web offers opportunities for new kinds of embodiment and identity construction that redraw traditional boundaries while inventing different ones.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Millie Christie-Dervaux | @mchristiederv |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Piergiorgio Degli Esposti and Paola Parmiggiani | @pgde | Celebrity Athletes: Brands and Activism |
| Mitra Azar | Disembodiment of the Gaze as Political-Aesthetic Battlefield | |
| Faye Chevalier | @bratcore | Digital Dualism in Online Sex Work |
| Rachel Katz | Finding Tinderella: Romance and Authenticity on American Dating Apps |
Whether you are leaving home or seeing home from a distance for the first time, the view from the web can be both starkly revealing and subtly distorted.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Christopher Cox | @ChristopherMCox |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Jessika Tremblay | @jessnerz | Internet as Infrastructure: The Development of ‘Cyber’ Neighborhoods in Indonesia |
| Diana Buendía | @buendiag | Soothing the Pain of Rupture: Rethinking Home in the Midst of Messaging Apps |
| Ted Perlmutter | @tedperl | SmartPhones and Refugees: Theorizing and Moving Beyond Information Precarity |
| Shane Tilton | @silnan | The Appalachian Discourse: A Critical Analysis of the Network Communication within the Appalachian region of the United States |
Regulating Bodies Studio C #c4
Bodies are crucial pieces of wetware that keep the web running, and as with all things related to computers, they are subject to the tension between binaries and more inclusive gradients.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Jessie Patella-Rey | @JessiePatella |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Ada Cable | @drcab1e | Traumatized Bodies, Caring Lives: How Does Violence Inflicted on Trans Women Prepare Us for a Life of Care |
| Gabi Schaffzin and Zachary Kaiser | @GabiSchaffzin and @ZacharyKaiser | Resisting Biopolitical Normalization |
| Md Nabil | @Nabilmn0007 | What Does News Media Say About Revenge Porn? |
/// 1:30pm–2:45pm | Session 5
The technologies we fantasize about are just as important as the technologies we actually make. Looking at the way the web plays a character in movies and television can help us understand the role it plays in our lives.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Sarah Wanenchak | @dynamicsymmetry |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Monica Torres | @monifierce | Racebending Towards a Better Future: How People of Color Are Putting Themselves Into Stories They Were Written Out Of |
| Grace Sloan | @trrransducer | Hollywood's Evolution of (human) Good vs. (robot) Evil |
| Cynthia Hua | @cynthiaxhua | Screens Onscreen: Black Mirrors and Other Filmic Narratives of Technology |
| Stephanie Monohan | @shdwbxng | “It Could Look Like Someone You Know”: Trauma, Haunting, and the Impossibility of the Post-human in Modern Horror Films |
Privacy and Control Studio B #b5
As thousands of people compete to get noticed by collecting likes and reviews, thousands more just want to be left alone. Breaking, dodging, and unpacking digital surveillance have become necessary skills in a networked era.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Whitney Mallett | @whitneymallett |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Kate Sim | @katejsim | Predicting Abuse: UK Child Protection Practitioners’ Information Use and the Adoption of Predictive Technologies |
| Chris Kerich | @ffuok | The Agony and Ecstasy of Breaking Shit |
| Kate Mannell and Robbie Fordyce | @KateMannell and @r4dyc | Tensions in a Social Model of Privacy |
| Geoff Shullenberger | @daily_barbarian | We Are All Targeted Individuals Now |
Woke Up Like This Studio C #c5
The web’s foregrounding of attention metrics such as shares, upvotes, and likes reshapes beauty standards just as it transforms self-expression.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Whitney Erin Boesel | @weboesel |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Britney Summit-Gil | @bsummitgil | Thou Shalt Covet: The Trials and Tribulations of Diversity in a Fashion Game |
| Sara Reinis | @sarareinis | Beyond First Blush: The Hegemonic and Subversive Potential of Beauty Content on Instagram |
| Leah Schrager | @onaartist @leahschrager | Self-Made Supermodels: A Talk and Slideshow on Being an Instagram Model As a New Form of DIY, Digital, Feminized Performance |
| SofyaGlebovna | @placeboglebovna | You are Your Own Meta-Voyeur; The GIF as a Feminist Medium |
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Ingrid Burrington | @lifewinning |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Tim Maughan | @timmaughan | |
| Damien Patrick Williams | @Wolven | |
| Jade E. Davis | @jadedid |
Invited Panel | The (mis)Use of Culture Studio B #b6
Virality is often the result of effacing the cultures from which the memes emerged; at the same time, "real time," and "live" sharing imposes hegemonic attitudes about race and other forms of difference. How things circulate articulates cultural values as much as any image's apparent content.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Zara Rahman | @zararah |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| manuel arturo abreu | @Deezius | |
| Mayukh Sen | @senatormayukh | |
| Maya Binyam | @mayabinyam | |
| Rooney Elmi | @zenonthesequal |
The web was never going to free us from all inequality and racist violence, but it has made these more visible and possibly more susceptible to organized action.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Apryl Williams | @AprylW |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Roshan Abraham | @roshantone | Race is a Feature, Not a Bug: Colorblindness in the Sharing Economy |
| Liat Berdugo | @whatliat | Shooting Back at Shooting Back: The Civil Contract of Videography |
| Nicole Brown and Ben Grosser | @bengrosser | The (In)visibility of Black Death: Questioning the Image on Social Media Feeds |
| Mariela Libedinsky | @MarielaLib | Surveillance as a Bystander: An Analysis and Critique of Police Interrogation Surveillance Methods Regarding Inequality |
/// 4:15pm–6:00pm | Food / Social Break
Visit our location page for a range of local food options.
/// 6:00pm–7:30pm | Keynote Panel 3
Misinfo Wars Redstone Theater #k3
Kompromat, disinformation, or propaganda — whether you think these are the same, different, or otherwise related, it is clear that all of them will be prominent in our lives for the foreseeable future. Examining who benefits from these media practices and how that shapes our future political environment is of primary importance. It is critical to take an international perspective, with a special focus on Russia: Has Russia’s role in the worldwide politics of disinformation been accurately described? Instead of focusing on the supposed unprecedented nature of Putin’s Russia, might there be other analogues for our current politics that provide cautionary tales for this uncertain time?
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Rachel Rosenfelt | @rachelrosenfelt |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Vasily Gatov | @vassgatov | |
| Adrian Chen | @adrianchen |
/// 7:30pm–9:00pm | Keynote Panel 4
Twitter and Tear Gas Redstone Theater #k4
Our century has already seen its fair share of world-changing political events. The web's role in these events is no longer in question, but the character, scope, and political valence of its influence certainly are. How social movements form with and around social media is a pressing question with still too few answers. Join Zeynep Tufekçi, who has spoken at each Theorizing the Web, as she sits down with John Knefel to discuss her new book, Twitter and Tear Gas.
| Moderator: | ||
|---|---|---|
| John Knefel | @johnknefel |
| Panelists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Zeynep Tufekçi | @zeynep |
*The Wi-Fi network MoMiEvents is password protected. The password is MuseumEvents (caps sensitive).
*Jess Maddox will not be presenting
*Ashley Dallot will not be presenting