[Nettime-nl] lezing van Elizabeth Losh aan de Universiteit van Leiden

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

Dr. Elizabeth Losh, Checking In: Placemaking and Digital Activism
Friday, 27 January, 15:30-16:55 | Lipsius/011
Universiteit van Leiden

Title: "Checking In: Placemaking and Digital Activism"
Abstract: Critics of so-called “clicktivism” or “slacktivism” argue that the material and embodied conditions of occupying public space are necessary for social movements to effect real political change. While acknowledging the importance of bodies at risk and countable members of the body politic that demonstrate the impact of representative democracy, this talk looks at recent sites of digital media activism to claim that legitimate forms of co-presence can be constituted through platforms of computer-mediated communication.  From Facebook check-ins in solidarity with tribes protesting the pipeline at Standing Rock to the geolocation of recent anti-Trump women’s marches around the globe, users of computational media often identify themselves with specific landmarks or geographical areas to register their participatory presence.  Of course, the interventions of so-called “phoneurs” who cruise the built environment of cities can be disruptive to the sanctity of memorial spaces, whether it be users of the sexual hook-up app Grindr or of the game application Pokémon Go.  
Elizabeth Losh is an Associate Professor of English and American Studies at College of William & Mary. Before coming to College of William & Mary, she directed the Culture, Art, and Technology Program at the University of California, San Diego.  She is the is the author of Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes (MIT Press, 2009) and The War on Learning: Gaining Ground in the Digital University (MIT Press, 2014). She is the co-author of the comic book textbook Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013) with Jonathan Alexander. 
  
In addition to recent work on selfies and hashtag activism, she has also written a number of frequently cited essays about communities that produce, consume, and circulate online video, videogames, digital photographs, text postings, and programming code. The diverse range of subject matter analyzed in her scholarship has included coming out videos on YouTube, videogame fan films created by immigrants, combat footage from soldiers in Iraq shot on mobile devices, video evidence created for social media sites by protesters on the Mavi Marmara, remix videos from the Arab Spring, the use of Twitter and Facebook by Indian activists working for women’s rights after the Delhi rape case, and the use of Instagram by anti-government activists in Ukraine.  Much of this body of work concerns the legitimation of political institutions through visual evidence, representations of war and violence in global news, and discourses about human rights.  This work has appeared in edited collections from MIT Press, Routledge, University of Chicago, Minnesota, Oxford, Continuum, and many other presses.




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