[-empyre-] Looking for guests for February: SOCIAL MEDIA: algorithms, untruths, and insurrection

[Renate Ferro]

Dear -empyre- subscribers. 
If you are interested in being a guest in February please let me know back channel. The discussion will be moderated by Renate Ferro, Tim Murray and Ben Grosser. 
 Renate
 
IN February on -empyre- we consider -SOCIAL MEDIA: algorithms, untruths, and insurrection- and how an environment of cynicism, distrust, and disdain has allowed communication and network flows to organize, promulgate, and maneuver through the citizenry in real time. How has social media affected the ways we talk about ourselves and our world, from the individual to the collective? How will these events be historicized? How can we as artists, educators, technologists, and media theorists navigate these events and their algorithmic relations critically? Is it possible that through writing, coding, art, and/or performance that we can scrupulously analyze, discern, assess, and theorize the weight of the circumstances we have witnessed? And finally, how might those activities illuminate new paths forward through alternative online media structures that avoid the ills of our present social media monopolies?

Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Art
Tjaden Hall 306
rferro at cornell.edu