Digital Feminism
Algorithms and Internet Inequality
Algorithms are more than "sorting"
Value Coding
Ted Striphas, “Keyword: Algorithm”
Cathy O’ Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction, Ch. 10 The Targeted Citizen
“Our livelihoods increasingly depend on our ability to make our case to machines” (O’neil).
Alex Rosenblat, Uberland: How Algorithms are Rewriting the Rules of Work, Ch.5
Cathy O’ Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction, Ch. 6 Ineligible to Serve
Cathy O’ Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction, Ch. 3 Arms Race
Tavi Gevinson, “Who Would I Be Without Instagram?”
Pratistha Bhattarai, “Algorithmic Value: Cultural Encoding, Textuality, and the Myth of ‘Source Code’”
Predicted Policing
Cathy O’ Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction, Ch. 5 Civilian Casualties
Jackie Wang, Carceral Capitalism, Ch. 4
Internet Culture
Social Hierarchy
• Ellen K. Pao, Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change Ch. 12, 69-79
• Film: Startup.com (Noujaim & Hegedus, 2001)
• Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley, selections: Prologue, Epilogue, No Girls on the Internet
Silicon Valley. Where the Future Was Born (PBS, 2013)
Lisa Nakamura “The Internet is a Trash Fire. Here is how to fix it.” 2019 TED Talk
Artificial Intelligence Technology & Reality
- In the Age of AI (PBS Frontline, 2019)
- Kate Crawford and Vladen Joler, Anatomy of an AI System
Overuse of Material Resources
Syed Faraz Ahmed “The Global Cost of Electronic Waste”, The Atlantic
Stephan Schmidt, “The Dark Side of Cloud Computing”, The Guardian
Jennifer Gabrys, “Digital Rubbish”, 107-109
Video: Toxic City
Video: The Circuit
Donna Haraway, “Making Kin”, in Staying with the Trouble
- optimistic, we can collaborate and coevolve with the environment
Felix Guattari, The Three Ecologies, selection, 27-35 and 42-53
- pessimistic, human-centric view of overconsumption & political grouping
Human Labor
Data and Surveillance Capitalism
Aaron Benanav, “The Automation Discourse”, in Automation and the Future of Work, 11-17
Invisibility
Film: "The Cleaners." (dir Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck 2018)
Silvia Federici, “Wages Against Housework”, 1-8
D’Ignazio & Lauren Klein, “Show Your Work”, Data Feminism, 173-201
Natasha Dow Schüll, “Datafication of Health”
Julia Schneider and Lena Ziyal, We need to talk, AI.
Amazon Alexa
Nassim Parvin, “Look Up and Smile! Seeing through Alexa’s Algorithmic Gaze”, 1-8
Video: Echo Look
Xuenan Cao, Bullet Screens (Danmu): Texting, Online Streaming, and the Spectacle of Social Inequality on Chinese Social Networks
Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, Ch. 2
Evolution of the Cyborg
Cyborg: Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto”, 1-8
Cognisphere: Katherine Hayles, “Unfinished Work. From Cyborg to Cognisphere”, 159-165
Zombie:Celine Keller, “Why the Zombie Haunts the Cyborg – Unveiling the Inherent Racism of Transhumanism”
Olia Lialina, Turing Complete User
coevolution in hayles extended to…
- coevolution between users and developers, division necessary for users to maintain rights
- coevolution between humans and the environment is important, mirrors necessary coevolution of Hayles and Lialina
Movements
Identity Online
Black, Radical, Transnational Feminism
Catherine Knight Steele, “When the Black lives that matter are not our own: digital Black feminism and a dialectic of self and community”
Black Trans Lives Matter
Tarana Burke, “#MeToo is a Movement not a Moment”
Las Tesis, “Un violador en tu camino”
Digestible Activism
Jessica Gokhberg, “’Anyone can be Pussy Riot’: Exploring the Possibilities of Transnational Digital Feminism”
Pussy Riot, “I Can’t Breathe”
critiques of 2nd wave liberal feminism
Digital feminism draws on these strains of feminism from the past
Neoliberal Feminism
Sheryl Sandberg “Why we Have too Few Women Leaders”
Nicole Aschoff, “Sheryl Sandberg and the Business of Feminism” The New Prophets of Capital
Catherine Rottenberg, “Reclaiming Feminism” from The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism
Cyberfeminism
Judy Wajcman, Technofeminism pp. 64-85
Mindy Seu, cyberfeminism catalog
Laboria Cuboniks, “Xenofeminism. A Politics for Alienation
Gaming
Genderless tech experience
Anne-Marie Schleiner, “Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games”
"Play" with gender boundaries
Shira Chess, Play Like a Feminist, Ch. 1 and 3
Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism, selection (intro)
Bonnie Ruberg, The Queer Games Avant-Garde, 73-80 and 192-201
Gender and Racial Identity remains
Lisa Nakamura, “Gender and Race in the Gaming World”, in Digital Rights, Human Rights, 128-143
Gamergate
Shira Chess & Adrienne Shaw, “A Conspiracy of Fishes, or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying About #Gamergate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity”
Torill Elvira Mortensen, “Anger, Fear, and Games: The Long Event of #Gamergate”
Legacy Russel, Black Meme
Cyberfeminism as Glitch & Archive: A Conversation with Legacy Russel & Mindy Seu
Orange = Power
Teal = Invisibility
KEYWORDS
- An evolving, dynamic movement
- constantly self-critiquing
Catherine D’Ignazio & Lauren F. Klein, “Seven Intersectional Feminist Principles for Equitable & Actionable COVID-19 data”, 1-5
Value coding: places more value to certain socioeconomic/cultural groups
- Cultural code bleeds into algorithms, affecting real life
- COVID-19 exposed injustices in health care, how minorities treated tells what rights they have under institutions
unpaid, undervalued labor and resources which sustain capitalism
- cyborg: the combination of organism with machine
- challenges assumptions about objectivity and science
- challenges assumptions about category of human, who must coevolve with machines
- challenges cynicism about the future
- humans can't be machines, as it would take away our purpose
Catherine Rottenberg, “The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism”
- critiques of liberal 2nd wave feminism with western capitalist notions of individualism
Rea McNamara, On Feminist Indexes: An Interview with Cait McKinney and Mindy Seu
exploitation of minorities by elite
- work feminist theory does when studying the internet/cyberspace
- adds sexual politics to cyberfeminism