Front Page Stories
Prorogation Online: Partisans Carve up Canadian Social Media
Submitted by admin on 17 January, 2010 - 21:10.
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Key findings from our study of social media and the Canadian political blogosphere since Harper’s prorogation (December 30-January 12):
- Unlike last year’s coalition crisis, Conservative bloggers have largely abandoned promoting Facebook groups. 83% of all links to Facebook in the blogosphere came from Liberal (49%) or NDP (34%) bloggers.
- Tories meanwhile spent considerably more time referencing Wikipedia entries on a diverse range of issues, though curiously very few relating to Canadian politics or the parliament. (see chart below)
- Non-partisan bloggers dominated Twitter to highlight anti-prorogation organizing. (see chart below)
Download a PDF copy of the report
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Prorogue_PressRelease-final.pdf | 203.68 KB |
Guest Talk - Repurposing research: from pirate television to connective ethnography
Submitted by admin on 29 December, 2009 - 13:29.
15 Jan 2010 - 2:30pm
15 Jan 2010 - 4:00pm
Etc/GMT-5
Location:
Infoscape Research Lab, Room 351, Rogers Communications Centre, Ryerson University
On Friday, January 15, 2:30pm, Alessandra Renzi (PhD Candidate, OISE, University of Toronto) will be speaking on "Repurposing Research: From Pirate Television to Connective Ethnography".
Abstract:
I heard it in the squatted television studios, and in the hospital room where one of the insulini works. I was reminded of it in the graphic design coop where we sometimes met: “we are not a collective, we are a connective.” How does Insu^tv compose, pose together, ‘conposition’? How do they/we connect, disconnect and reconnect? What are the ways to engender the new, once representation, filiation and hierarchies are no longer useful modes of organization? In a country gripped by the stronghold of a media monopoly and rising fascism, we also discover the creative momentum of the Italian pirate tv Insu^tv: repurposing. The development of this work and its conceptual articulation help materialize new connections between social research and activism. Our goal in repurposing is to enable the production of radical knowledge while playing an active part in social struggles.
Repurposing is not confined to the re-use of material resources for logistical purposes, for ecological reasons and for cutting down costs––or for the displacement of power dynamics. Repurposing functions on multiple levels (from the individual to the social) because it consciously facilitates encounters and exchange.
This talk will map out some key issues raised in my doctoral dissertation Pedagogies of Resistance: Telestreet and Other Rebel Practices. Specifically, the concept of repurposing will guide our discussion regarding: research methods; the social potential of DIY technology; activists’ struggles to open up (or maintain) spaces for experimentation; and, questions of social agency. These issues are not simply the elements that capture Insu^tv’s essence; instead, they are part of a broader experiment that sees the production of new connections as a fundamentally ethical mode of existing in the social field in general, and in academia in particular.
Alessandra Renzi to Join Infoscape as Ryerson Post-Doctoral Fellow
Submitted by admin on 16 December, 2009 - 11:04.
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We are extremely happy to announce that Alessandra Renzi will be joining the Infoscape Lab as a Ryerson Post-Doctoral Fellow in the spring of 2010.
Alessandra is completing a PhD on Telestreet, an Italian network of pirate television producers at OISE, University of Toronto, in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies. Her work focuses on the development of radical research methodologies and collaborative creative practices that overcome the boundaries of representation to strengthen and relay the links between academia and activist communities.
She is involved in various media and migrant rights projects like Precarity Toronto, An Interference Project: Wait!, and the pirate television channel Insutv in Naples, Italy. She currently teaches in the department of Culture, Communication and Information Technologies of the University of Toronto Mississauga. You can find some of Alessandra’s writings in Boler, M. (ed) Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times (MIT Press, 2008), Shuler, D. (ed) Liberating Voices A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution, (MIT Press, 2008), Eckardt, F. et al. (eds.) MEDIACITY Situations, Practices and Encounters, (Franke & Timme, 2008), as well as in Fuse Magazine, Inchiesta and Inflexions.
