Please consider submitting a short proposal on ideas, works in progress, or completed work for this semester’s Locus talks series on December 7, 3-5pm! We are looking for presentations from anyone – faculty, students, staff – on topics relating to the theme of social media.
Proposals to submit are due November 27
Social media comprise an important set of platforms for understanding the spread of information (along with mis/disinformation) on some of the most urgent social and political issues of the moment. Whether it is information sharing, the homogeneity or heterogeneity of social networks, issues of personal privacy, or concerns about election hacking, social media analysis provides a means of reckoning with public opinion on a global scale. Social media platforms provide data for social research, and also, crucially, provide venues for organizing and activism. They allow various grassroots organizations to support one another and arrange meetings and protests, even amid critiques about the role social media has played in fostering harassment and hate speech.
We are seeking proposals of up to 250 words for 7 minute presentations to facilitate an interdisciplinary conversation on these topics. We are particularly interested in presentations that engage with one or more of the following issues:
- What forms of social media analyses are particularly interesting or successful?
- What does a “successful” analysis look like? How do we know?
- What are we missing when we analyze social media? Whose voices are missing?
- What are some of the critical gaps in social media analysis, and how might we ameliorate them?
- What might ethics of social media analysis look like? What lessons have we learned from previous and current failures?
- What about non-English language platforms and analysis? What are the areas of opportunity? What analyses or methodologies have been particularly useful, and what might others emulate?
We are especially interested in works in progress relating to research, teaching, or any other type of work that wrestles with the challenges of access in the digital environment. Proposals from students (undergraduate and graduate), faculty, and staff are all encouraged equally.
Submit a proposal by Monday, November 27 to go.cal.msu.edu/locus