Session Chair: Limor Shifman
Presentation 1
PLACE-MAKING AND THE DIGITAL MEDIATION OF QUEER SPACES: INSIGHTS FROM TOPIC AND WORD EMBEDDING MODELS
Randy Jay Canillo Solis, Jonalou San Juan Labor, Jon Benedik A. Bunquin, Maria Jeriesa P. Osorio
University of the Philippines Diliman, Philippines
The complex nature of LGBTQ+ place-making is intertwined with societal norms and technological advancements, which inform the construction of queer spaces. Extant studies show that the evolution of queer safe spaces is marked by the interplay of material and digital environments, leading to the hybridization of traditional notions of queer spaces. Collaborative mapping and geotagging offer tools for empowerment and change, but the role of online media in shaping perceptions of safe spaces still needs to be explored. Thus, this research asks: how do online media construct and mediate urban queer safe spaces in the Philippines? This paper employs topic modeling and word embedding techniques to surface the online discourses of “safe spaces'' and to investigate its contextual uses within the subreddits specifically dedicated to topics related to the Philippine LGBTQ+ community. Findings reveal that urban queer safe spaces in the Philippines are “place-made” through online discourses centering on two distinct physical spaces, bath and fitting rooms, and the experiences and fears of harassment and discrimination in these spaces. Further, semantic associations shed light on the characteristics of ‘safe spaces,’ the groups advocating for their need, and the conditions motivating these groups to call for safe spaces. Safe spaces’ are constructed online as inclusive, private, and secure environments where the LGBT community, especially trans people, can freely express their identities. This constitution stands in response to their experiences of trauma and violence, which appear to be attributed to cis male members of the population.
Presentation 2
REPRODUCING PLACE THROUGH STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN HAWAIIAN RADIO PROGRAMMING
Katie Marie Moylan
University of Leicester, United Kingdom
This paper explores how ‘place’ is reproduced and reconstituted across broadcast and streamed radio, drawing on place-based radio production on public service and college radio in O’ahu, Hawai’i. In this exploration this paper suggests that place, when articulated on radio, is imbued with a significance and 'a discursive/symbolic meaning well beyond that of mere location' (Harvey 1996: 293). The significance of a place and its accompanying particularities of culture, land and language, can permeate a radio show in layers of localized sounds, in turn reproducing ‘place’ from these constituent parts.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson identifies what she terms processes of grounded normativity, ‘strongly rooted in place’ (Betasamosake Simpson 2017: 56) and embodied in everyday practices shaped by the land itself and its constituent communities. I suggest the Hawaiian programming under discussion here both springs from and facilitates such practices, reinforcing in turn particularities of a Hawaiian everyday transmitted through the familiarity of scheduled radio and disseminated independently via Mixcloud. Production practices of selected radio shows are considered here within the local industrial context, in which the National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate for Hawai’i de-emphasises dedicated Hawaiian programming, stating that ‘we are of Hawai’i but we are not Hawaiian’ (HPR research discussion, June 2023).
Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2017)._ As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance_. University of Minnesota Press.
Harvey, D. (1996). _Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference_. Wiley Blackwell.
Presentation 3
VISUALISING 10 THOUSAND CITIES? UBER'S DATA STORIES ON KNOWING URBAN SPACE
Abel Guerra
London School of Economics and Political Sciences, United Kingdom
In 2020, Uber celebrated its presence in over 10.000 cities around the world. Such global scaling and granular infiltration of algorithmic-powered management of labour and urban dynamics are achieved through efforts to datafy and visualise cities, making them intelligible under a unified vision. While workers on the ground precariously move across territories, Uber’s engineering teams invest in abstract and disembodied views of the city. Taking Uber’s knowledge production about cities as an object of inquiry, this paper explores the epistemic dimensions of platformisation, delving into platforms' technical and narrative reliance on datafication. Through the analysis of 41 publications on Uber Engineering Blog (UEB), it delves into Uber's textual and visual data stories on knowing cities, highlighting the contrast between a lively community of practitioners and industry, and the neglect in acknowledging platform workers' labour and needs.
Presentation 4
The Digital Remediation of Synth-Pop's Spaces
Holly Kruse
Rogers State University, United States of America
For a current research project on synth-pop music, I've been using autobiography to examine how three physical spaces from my teens and early twenties, and three acts associated with them, shaped and were shaped by synth-pop music and practices. The first space is the urban automobile, the second is the club, and the third is the bedroom. All of these physical spaces and the social relations that structured and were structured by them were crucial in making synth-pop music meaningful to me, and yet now, decades later, they (and my experiences of them) must be understood through the lens of digital technologies and spaces, including music and video streaming services, audio files, and online print archives.
This paper uses the Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin's (1996) concept of "remediation" as a starting point for considering how an old medium and its content, like synth-pop music delivered through an analogue medium (broadcast, vinyl, cassette)and remediated via digital media (streaming, for instance), is both structuring of and structured by space, time, memory, and experience. And relatedly, it examines whether André Jansson's (2021) notion of "dwelling" within "zones of entanglement" that enmesh subjects in myriad tangled technologies is useful for examining one's relationships to spaces, places, content, memories, and materialities.
