Dear colleagues, The schedule for our AoIR preconference on October 13 is now live! Please join us at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Mexico City for a day of conversation on the COVID-19 Lockdown and its many (digital) afterlives, from a media studies perspective. To RSVP, use this link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/aoir-2026-pre-conference-lockdown-and-its-digit... The schedule is copy-pasted below. Looking forward to seeing many of you in Mexico City next month! Best wishes, Eszter Zimanyi and Juan Llamas-Rodriguez Lockdown and its (Digital) Afterlives: Media, Infrastructure, and Everyday Life in Regenerative Perspective Date: October 13, 2026 Location: Hyatt Regency Mexico City, Regency Room F Program 8:30 – 9:00 AM | Coffee, Check-in, Opening Remarks * Juan Llamas-Rodriguez, University of Pennsylvania 9:00 – 10:30 AM | Panel 1 - Mobilities and Social Architectures of Control * Youngrim Kim, Rutgers University: "The Platformization of Emergency" * Tupur Chatterjee, Tulane University: "Cinema, Streaming, and the Datafied Subject of Indian Middle-Class Leisure" * Silei Zhu, Rutgers University: "The Contested Afterlife of Campus Turnstiles: Logistical Governance in Chinese Universities After COVID" * Ressa Uli Patrissia, Muhammadiyah Palangkaraya University: "When the Emergency Moved to the Wrist: Biometric Governance and Lockdown’s Wearable Afterlife in Indonesia" Discussant: Nelanthi Hewa, University of Pennsylvania 10:30 – 10:40 AM | Break 10:40 AM – 12:00 PM | Panel 2 - Platformization and Infrastructural Expansion * Brooke Erin Duffy, Cornell University: "The Pandemic Pipeline to the Creator Economy" * Elia Cornelio Marí, Universidad Juarez Autonoma de Tabasco: "Platformized piracy: the lockdown as the starting point for disaggregation in the Mexican streaming market" * Rahul Mukherjee, University of Pennsylvania: "Predatory Loan Apps amid (and beyond) the Pandemic: Platformed Convenience vis-à-vis Data as Collateral" Discussant: Kathryn C. Higgins, University of Leeds 12:00 – 1:30 PM | Lunch 1:30 – 2:50 PM | Panel 3 - Domestic Media Ecologies and the Reconfiguration of "Home" * Maximilian Brichta, University of Virginia: "Digital Nomads and the Uneven Afterlives of Lockdown in Mexico City" * Joel Neville Anderson, Binghamton University: "Climate, COVID, GRWM" * Lauren Berliner, University of Washington, Bothell: "From Home Archive to AI Training Data: Children's Media-making and the Digital Afterlives of Lockdown" Discussant: Facundo Suenzo, Universidad de San Andres 2:50 – 3:00 PM | Break 3:00 – 4:30 PM | Panel 4 - Temporalities of Lockdown * Isha Bhallamudi and Noopur Raval, University of California, Los Angeles: "Holding Space: Digital Platforms as Immigrant Infrastructures During the Administrative Pandemic" * Yizhou Xu, Old Dominion University: "Delay, Disrupt and Deflect: Chrono-Affective Resistance in Times of Quiet Quitting" * Jiaxin Yang and Dechun Zhang, University of Technology Sydney and University of Copenhagen: "Remembering Without Remembering: The Digital Afterlives of Lockdown Memes on Xiaohongshu" * Riley Yuan Xu and Guobin Yang, University of Pennsylvania: "Locked Down to Open up:Wuhan Diaries and the Regeneration of Social Rhythms and Digital Publicness" Discussant: Chelsea Butkowski, American University 4:30 – 4:45 PM | Closing Remarks ------------------------------------------------------------ Eszter Zimanyi, Ph.D. Research Director Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania Pronouns: she/her http://www.eszterzimanyi.com