Stream - Inspiring Critical Thought (E-Journal)
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Facebook for Facebook's Sake: An Aesthetic Usage
Get PDFThe affective labour debate has become mainstream in communications studies. In this paper, I The affective labour debate has become mainstream in communications studies. In this paper, I suggest the Aesthetic Movement of the late 19th century as inspiration for how users can use Facebook with the knowledge that their data is being used for profit. I present Facebook usage as art, creating an analog with aesthete Oscar Wilde’s essay, “the critic as artist” (1891/2010), where he presents critics as artists. Other theorists, especially Walter Benjamin provide grounding for making the argument that Facebook usage is an artistic expression. I then turn to my inversion of Walter Pater’s “art for art’s sake”, the seminal idea of Aestheticism and propose Facebook for Facebook’s sake as a method for Facebook use. While more advanced remuneration concepts have yet to arrive with such force that they could provide the proper payment to users, Facebook for its own sake is a way to appreciate Facebook’s beauty in the meantime. Baudelaire and Debord’s psychogeographic theories provide methods for navigating cities that I apply to examine Facebook as a digital city. The central claim of this paper is the following: By using Facebook for Facebook’s sake, users take back some of the dignity taken away from them in the exploitation of free labour. Finally, I turn to critiques of Aestheticism and how contemporary software might provide insight into using Facebook in an ethical manner. Users will have to consider each action differently; how would liking something affect users’ artistic expression of themselves? In this way, while the affective labour debate continues, users can use Facebook for its own sake
"Blockbotting Dissent": Publics, Counterpublics, and Algorithmic Public Sphere(s)
Get PDFIn 2014, at the height of gamergate hostilities, a blockbot was developed and circulated within the gaming community that allowed subscribers to automatically block upwards of 8,000 Twitter accounts. "Ggautoblocker" as it was called, was designed to insulate subscribers' Twitter feeds from hurtful, sexist, and in some cases deeply disturbing comments. In doing so it cast a wide net and became a source of considerable criticism from many in the industry and games community. During this time, the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) 2015 Video Game Developer Satisfaction Survey was circulating, resulting in a host of comments on the blockbot from workers in the industry. In this paper we analyze these responses, which constitute some of the first empirical data on a public response to the use of autoblocking technology, to consider the broader implications of the algorithmic structuring of the online public sphere. First, we emphasize the important role that ggautoblocker, and similar autoblocking tools, play in creating space for marginalized voices online. Then, we turn to our findings, and argue that the overwhelmingly negative response to ggautoblocker reflects underlying anxieties about fragmenting control over the structure of the online public sphere and online public life. In our discussion, we reflect upon what the negative responses suggest about normative expectations of participation in the online public sphere, and how this contrasts with the realities of algorithmically structured online spaces
The Near and The Related: Positioning and Bounding Knowledge Spheres
Get PDFIn his keynote lecture for the inaugural event of SFU's Institute for Transpacific Cultural Research, Chua Beng Huat spoke of the difficulty of using Western benchmarks to demarcate a new area of Asian studies. A concept like transnational comes with questions already attached regarding the flow of resources or capital between nations. But which nations? From or towards the Global North or the Global South? Westwards towards the US? Or further East towards China? For Huat and the founders of the Institute, if they were to open up new areas of research and discussion, it would be necessary to create a new term, inter-Asian, as well as a new methodology, Asia as Method
PHD Defence: Gateway to Crisis: Discourse Coalitions, Extractivist Politics, and the Northern Gateway Conflict by Bob Neubauer
Get PDFOur dear colleague, Bob Neubauer, will defend his PHD dissertation on Wednesday, May 24, 2017 at Harbor Center Room 2245 (1:00–4:00 pm). Here is the abstract of his dissertation “Gateway to Crisis: Discourse Coalitions, Extractivist Politics, and the Northern Gateway Conflict.â
Public Event: Stream Sessions
No full textThe first Stream Session will be on Wednesday, March 29 from 2:00-4:00 pm at the conference room at the Burnaby Campus (8652). Stream Sessions are intended to be a colloquium where graduate students are invited to present their ideas to fellow students and faculty of the School of Communication. Topics for presentation can range from working papers to discussions of comprehensive or thesis readings to new theories and ideas still in the process of being formed. It’s an opportunity to workshop ideas among peers in a productive yet low-stakes environment while also receiving valuable feedback from students and faculty.
For more details, please see the attached PDF.
The following students will be presenting work for the first Stream Sessions. Each presentation will run 10-15 minutes with 15 minutes for discussion afterward.
Stream Sessions - Wednesday March 29 2:00-4:00 pm SFU Burnaby Room 8652
2:00-2:30 - Alberto Lusoli (PhD Student) - “From Social to Critical Constructivism. An Exploration of the Main Schools of Thought in the Field of Science, Technology and Society"
2:30-3:00 - Geneva Lam (Master’s Student) - “Explaining Ethnic Media through the Lens of Language, Identity and Culture “
3:00-3:30 - Shawna-Kay Thomas (Double-Degree Master’s Student) - “‘Portia Loves the Poor’ - Portia Simpson Miller and Affective Politics in Jamaicaâ€
3:30-4:00 - Peter Zuurbier and Darren Fleet (PhD Students) “It Just Feels Right: Affective Veridiction in the Contemporary West.â€
Faculty Referee: Frédérik Lesage
There will be light refreshments served. Following the event, we encourage everyone attending and participating to make their way to the Highland Pub for drinks and continued conversation
Public Event: Visual and Sonic Imaginations: Montage as Illusion
No full textOn January 19th, 2017, Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier from Anthropology, University of Victoria in conversation with Vincent Andrisani from the School of Communications, SFU will present CONVERSATIONS WITH UNUSUAL SUSPECTS on the sensorial, art and ethnography: A new seminar series by the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography (CIE) & the Institute for Performance Studies (IPS), in HC room 7000 at 3:00-5:30 pm. Please see the attached poster for details. 
Positioning Myself Between West and East
Get PDFWhy would communications scholars want to present their positionality to the public? This was the first question I asked myself when I came across the term "positionality". Throughout my studies, I have approached communication as social science, and I have thought about communications researchers as scientists. I certainly understand that the objects of research in social science are social phenomena such as social relations and institutions, and that these are difficult to explain with quantitative data most of the time. But for me, being a scientist means holding back personal emotions and being objective in the production of knowledge about society. I believe that even a single case study should offer explanations not just of its immediate context, but also of broader social problems or phenomena
Introduction: Positioning Ourselves as Global Communicators
Get PDFThis special issueof Streamfocuses on positionality as an approach to researching issues in global communication. It is the result of an assignment that I crafted for a graduate course on Communication and Global Social Justice which is part of the School of Communication’s Global Communication MA Double Degree program. I have given this assignment for many years, and it has generated all manner of essays, but this spring—perhaps because geopolitics is in the air? —five of the papers addressed positionality in direct relationship to spatial-temporal considerations. This emergent set of papers has been brought together here as an exploration of how positionality shapes researchers’ engagements with translocal, transnational, geopolitical, networked or space-making processes
PHD Defence: Networks of Memory: Vernacular Photography, (New) Media, and Meaning Making by Megan Robertson
Get PDFOur dear colleague, Megan Robertson, will defend her PHD dissertation on Wednesday, January 25th, 2017 at Harbor Center Room 2245 (10:00 am – 13:00 pm). Here is the abstract of her dissertation “Networks of Memory: Vernacular Photography, (New) Media, and Meaning Makingâ€
MA Defence: Spaces of convergence of genomics in a cancer clinical trial: A survey examining genomic literacy among medical oncologists in British Columbia by Dung Ha
No full textOur dear colleague, Dung Ha, will defend her MA dissertation on Monday, April 10, 2017, at Harbor Center Room 1315 (10:00 am – 12:00 pm). Here is the abstract of her dissertation “Spaces of convergence of genomics in a cancer clinical trial: A survey examining genomic literacy among medical oncologists in British Columbia.â