Coordinator
Prof. WITTEBORN, Saskia
Professor,
School of Journalism and Communication,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
This panel asks how we can integrate social equity, environmental and human health, ethics, and technologies to create diverse and thriving communities on the urban, regional, and global scale. The papers address the question from the perspective of “cultures of technology” which refers here to the values, norms, expectations, and controls which shape how technologies are imagined, designed, used, and replaced.
This panel will address some of these cultures and practices in contexts of migration, digital labour, the politics of innovation, and sustainable urban spaces. In their presentations, scholars will highlight how cultures of technology engage with, defy, and reproduce sustainable practices and what we can learn from historically underrepresented groups and regions.
Speakers
Prof. BOJADŽIJEV, Manuela
Head of Department Integration,
Social Networks and Cultural Lifestyles,
Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research,
Humboldt University of Berlin
Migration After Technology
My lecture takes up the title of Ruha Benjamin’s book and examines the impact of digital media technologies on the field of migration. In particular, I will focus on the automation of labour, which is inconceivable without migrant work. Starting from the thesis that human mobility is constitutive of labour, understood as both a productive and a reproductive activity, I discuss how not only the practice of human mobility but also our understanding of migration could change, based on research conducted in recent years on the relationship between digitality, labour and migration.
Prof. GEORGIOU, Myria
Professor of Media and Communications,
Head of the Department of Media and Communications,
The London School of Economics and Political Science
Digital Storytelling of the Future: Imagining and Planning for “Climate Migration”
This presentation focusses on the digital storytelling of “climate migration”. “Climate migration” is widely considered as a profound challenge that the accelerating climate crisis presents to global humanity. In light of a forecasted crisis within a crisis – i.e., a feared migration crisis as a result of the climate crisis – a number of actors engage in describing, defining and planning for “climate migration”. The presentation pays attention to two distinct dimensions of how “climate migration” is imagined and defined: first, unlike the case of other kinds of migration, international organizations, governments and the media primarily depend on predicting the future rather than depending on evidence of the past and present; second, and precisely because of the futuristic orientation of relevant debates, storytellers of “climate migration” now expand beyond existing actors engaged in narrating stories of migration (i.e., migrants and institutions) to include AI and big data models. In this presentation, I investigate how “climate migration” is defined, imagined and tackled as a future crisis by a range of actors – human and nonhuman. The main questions that drive the discussion are: Who and how describes, defines and tackles “climate migration” as a crisis-to-be? What stories are actually shared, especially as they haven’t happened yet? And what are the consequences of digitally defining and narrating the future, its risks and challenges?
Prof. ONG, Jonathan Corpus
Professor of Global Digital Media,
Director of the Global Technology for Social Justice Lab,
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The Illusion of Inclusion” in the Tech and Democracy Space: Lessons from South-to-South Knowledge Exchange Project
Abstract: How can tech and democracy programs better serve the needs and challenges of Global Majority countries? What are the divergence points between Global North and Global Majority tech justice advocacies? How are so-called “whole-of-society” tech and democracy coalitions guilty of knowledge and data extractivism? This talk draws from a South-to-South Knowledge Exchange Project led by researchers in/from Brazil and the Philippines engaging with Global South civil society leaders who have implemented anti-disinformation and election integrity projects. Our project found that Global South civil society leaders have experienced an “illusion of inclusion” in their international tech and democracy collaborations. These collaborations have been overdetermined by Big Tech platforms’ corporate PR interests intertwined with Global North governments’ securitization agenda resulting in top-down and tech-first interventions. Global South digital harms and horrors are fed into machine learning tools, and case studies are repurposed to affirm Global North tech justice advocacies. This talk opens a discussion for the kinds of sustainable practices and just spaces of global governance needed to advance an alternative vision for tech justice that serves the Global South.