Northwestern Events Calendar

Nov
2
2020

Communication Studies Speaker Series

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When: Monday, November 2, 2020
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM CT

Where: Online

Contact: Madeleine Agaton   (847) 467-3551

Group: SOC - Department of Communication Studies

Category: Lectures & Meetings

Description:

This fall, Communication Studies will have Monday brown-bag talks, combining the speaker series of our three affiliated Ph.D. programs and our regular speaker series.  Please mark your calendars for Mondays from 12:00-1:00 PM for engaging speakers and to hear from our faculty and students.

Speaker and topic details are forthcoming.

Nov
9
2020

Communication Studies Speaker Series/Technology and Social Behavior PhD Series Events hosts a Book Club

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When: Monday, November 9, 2020
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM CT

Where: Online

Contact: Madeleine Agaton   (847) 467-3551

Group: SOC - Department of Communication Studies

Category: Lectures & Meetings

Description:

BOOK CLUB: RACE AFTER TECHNOLOGY

On November 9th, the Communication Studies Speaker Series, in collaboration with the Technology and Social Behavior (TSB) Event Series, is hosting a Book Club meeting where we will read and discuss Ruha Benjamin’s book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019).

The e-copy of this book is free to the Northwestern community through our library: https://tinyurl.com/ruhabenjaminnu. 

"BOOK ABSTRACT:
From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity.

Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life.

This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture. Race After Technology is the 2020 winner of the Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award (for anti-racist scholarship) from the American Sociological Association Section on Race & Ethnic Minorities, and it was also awarded an Honorable Mention from the Communications, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS) Book Award in 2020.

RUHA BENJAMIN is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she studies the social dimensions of science, technology, and medicine. She is also the founder of the IDA B. WELLS Just Data Lab and the author of two books, People’s Science (Stanford) and Race After Technology (Polity), and editor of Captivating Technology (Duke). Benjamin writes, teaches, and speaks widely about the relationship between knowledge and power, race and citizenship, health and justice."

Nov
16
2020

Communication Studies Speaker Series hosts Presentation Preview

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When: Monday, November 16, 2020
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM CT

Where: Online

Contact: Madeleine Agaton   (847) 467-3551

Group: SOC - Department of Communication Studies

Category: Lectures & Meetings

Description:

This Monday we will welcome MTS students Jabari Evans and Anne-Marie Singh to share their work with the Communication Studies community ahead of their presentations. Each student will briefly present their papers, after which we will have a Q&A session.

ANNE-MARIE SINGH
“Defining Network Effectiveness in Advocacy Networks”
Abstract: The 21st century is witnessing some of the world’s most catastrophic weather events, pandemics, and loss of human life and natural ecosystems, the causes of which can be traced back to unsustainable anthropogenic activities. To advocate and influence policy against these activities, nonprofits and funders are forming interorganizational networks that combine resources and mobilize action. However, policy wins are rare to come by and collaborations are hard to manage. How then do advocacy networks define effectiveness for themselves? And how do regional variations influence their definitions? Using an embedded case study design, I propose a study that will examine a climate advocacy network spread across seven states in the American Midwest to see how it defines and evaluates effectiveness for itself.

ANNE-MARIE SINGH (BOYER) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society Program at Northwestern University and is working at the Network for Nonprofit and Social Impact Lab under Dr. Michelle Shumate’s advisorship. She has several years of experience working in environmental nonprofits as a communicator and as a science journalist in public media. Her research interests include nonprofit cross-sector collaborations that focus on environmental issues.

JABARI EVANS
“The Anatomy of Digital Clout: Examining the Social Media Self-Branding, Visibility and Relational Labor Strategies of Black Youth in Chicago’s DIY Hip-Hop Scene”
Abstract: Prior literature has suggested that it is through popular music that the social, professional and technological aspirations of Black youth often come together. Nowhere is this more evident than in the context of Hip-Hop culture, where Black youth inventiveness with digital tools is celebrated and valued far more than any other genre of media entertainment. Even so, academic work has paid little to no attention to artist perspectives on how they successfully cultivate sustainable careers as influencers on social media despite experiencing digital disadvantage. Using interviews with 25 artists in Chicago’s local Hip-Hop scene and digital urban ethnographic methods (e.g. Lane, 2019). I examine the relational labor for Hip-Hop artists embedded in the DIY ecosystem. I explore the content and character of their visibility work on social media toward acquiring “clout”- a form of cultural capital rooted in Hip-Hop communities of practice that resists digital inequity to accumulate the status and attention needed to cultivate loyal connections with fans, friends and other cultural producers. I identify three relational labor strategies that respondents described utilizing to acquire clout: a) Corralling b) Capping and, c) Co-Signing. Preliminary findings of this study suggest Hip-Hop artists significantly aid to the understanding of the cultural and communicative diversity arising from global access to social media. To conclude, I argue this scene provides an example of why formal institutions need to rethink how race, class, gender and geography influence the digital practices of influencers and how their practices could likely be harnessed to help build more positive social communities, peer relations and career pathways for Black youth.

JABARI EVANS is a PhD candidate in the School of Communication Studies at Northwestern University and a research fellow at the Northwestern Center of Media and Human Development. His research focuses on the subcultures that urban youth and young adults of color develop and inhabit to understand their social environments, emotional development and professional aspirations. He explores strategies these youth use for self-expression especially regarding digital media. His most recent work is examining the cultural production and social media habits of youth musicians in the DIY Hip-Hop micro-scene of Chicago. His forthcoming dissertation project, which centers on a Hip-Hop Education program in Chicago Public Schools, has been recognized for awards by the International Communication Association and has been covered by the Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, Rolling Out Magazine, Ebony Magazine and Chicago Crain’s Business. He was a 2019 selection for Microsoft Research New England’s Social Media Collective (SMC) PhD Internship.

Nov
23
2020

Communication Studies Speaker Series presents Allissa V. Richardson

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When: Monday, November 23, 2020
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM CT

Where: Online

Contact: Madeleine Agaton   (847) 467-3551

Group: SOC - Department of Communication Studies

Category: Lectures & Meetings

Description:

BEARING WITNESS WHILE BLACK: AFRICAN AMERICANS, SMARTPHONES, AND THE NEW PROTEST #JOURNALISM

BEARING WITNESS WHILE BLACK: AFRICAN AMERICANS, SMARTPHONES AND THE NEW PROTEST #JOURNALISM (Oxford University Press, 2020) tells the story of this century’s most powerful Black social movement through the eyes of 15 activists who documented it. At the height of the Black Lives Matter uprisings, African Americans filmed and tweeted evidence of fatal police encounters in dozens of US cities—using little more than the device in their pockets. Their urgent dispatches from the frontlines spurred a global debate on excessive police force, which claimed the lives of African American men, women, and children at disproportionate rates.

ALLISSA V. RICHARDSON is assistant professor of journalism at USC Annenberg. She researches how African Americans use mobile and social media to produce innovative forms of journalism—especially in times of crisis. Richardson’s research is informed by her award-winning work as a journalism innovator. She is considered a pioneer in mobile journalism (MOJO), having launched the world’s first smartphone-only college newsrooms in 2010, in the U.S., Morocco and South Africa. Richardson won the National Association of Black Journalists’ prestigious Journalism Educator of the Year (‘12) award for her international work. Richardson is an inductee into Apple’s elite Distinguished Educator program. She is the recipient of two esteemed Harvard University posts: the Nieman Foundation Visiting Journalism Fellowship (‘14) and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society Fellowship (‘20). Lastly, she is a fellow in Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism (‘20). Richardson’s research has been published in Convergence, Journal of Communication, Digital Journalism, Journalism Studies and The Black Scholar. Richardson serves on the editorial boards of Digital Journalism and the International Journal of Communication. She is an affiliated researcher with New York University’s Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies (CR + DS) as well. Richardson holds a PhD in journalism studies from the University of Maryland College Park; a master’s degree in magazine publishing from Northwestern University’s Medill School; and a bachelor of science in biology from Xavier University of Louisiana, where she was named a “Top 40 Under 40” alumna.

Nov
30
2020

Communication Studies Speaker Series presents Paula Chakravartty

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When: Monday, November 30, 2020
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM CT

Where: Online

Contact: Madeleine Agaton   (847) 467-3551

Group: SOC - Department of Communication Studies

Category: Lectures & Meetings

Description:

#COMMUNICATIONSOWHITE AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY

Chakravartty’s latest book, Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism (Oxford University Press, 2020), tells the story of this century’s most powerful Black social movement through the eyes of 15 activists who documented it. At the height of the Black Lives Matter uprisings, African Americans filmed and tweeted evidence of fatal police encounters in dozens of US cities—using little more than the device in their pockets. Their urgent dispatches from the frontlines spurred a global debate on excessive police force, which claimed the lives of African American men, women, and children at disproportionate rates.

PAULA CHAKRAVARTTY is associate professor at the Gallatin School and the Department of Media, Culture and Communication. Her research and teaching interests span comparative political economy, migration, labor and social movements , and decolonial and critical race theory. Her books include Race, Empire and the Crisis of the Subprime (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), Media Policy and Globalization (Edinburgh University Press, 2006), and Global Communications: Towards a Transcultural Political Economy (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008). Recent publications include #CommunicationSoWhite (2018) in the Journal of Communication, and two special issues on “Mediatized Populisms: Inter-Asian Lineages” for the International Journal of Communication (December 2017) and “Infrastructures of Empire: Towards a Critical Geopolitics of Media and Information Studies” for Media, Culture and Society (2016). Her current research focuses on racial capitalism and global media infrastructures, and migrant labor mobility and justice. Chakravartty is a member of the NYU Sanctuary Coalition. She serves on the executive board of the NYU Association for University Professors (AAUP), and is affiliated faculty at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, South Asia @ NYU, and the NYU Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies.