Dear Colleagues, [1]DigiLabour, [2]Critical Digital Methods Institute and [3]Tierra Comun announce two online book talks at the end of April hosted by [4]DigiLabour Youtube Channel . Please spread the word! April 25, 7PM EST Book talk with Ignacio Siles (Universidad de Costa Rica) on Living with Algorithms: Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica (MIT Press). The book analyzes user dynamics in the global south across three algorithmic platforms: Netflix, Spotify, and TikTok. Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence that privileges the user over the corporate, Siles examines the personal relationships that have formed between users and algorithms as Latin Americans have integrated these systems into the structures of everyday life, enacted them ritually, participated in public with and through them, and thwarted them. Sometimes users follow algorithms, Siles finds, and sometimes users resist them. At times, users do both. Agency lies in the navigation of the spaces in-between. By analyzing what we do with algorithms rather than what algorithms do to us, Living with Algorithms clarifies the debate over the future of datafication and whether we have a say in its development. Link: [5]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwyS2TPFB9o More details: [6]https://criticaldigitalmethods.ca/gatherings/living-with-al gorithms-book-talk/ April 28, 12PM EST Book talk with Sahana Udupa (University of Munich) and Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan (New York University) on Digital Unsettling: Decoloniality and Dispossession in the Age of Social Media (NYU Press) The book is a critical exploration of digitalization that puts contemporary “decolonizing” movements into conversation with theorizations of digital communication. The authors interrogate the forms, forces, and processes that have reinforced neocolonial relations within contemporary digital environments, at a time when digital networks—and the agendas and actions they proffer—have unsettled entrenched hierarchies in unforeseen ways. Digital Unsettling examines events—the toppling of statues in the UK, the proliferation of #BLM activism globally, the rise of Hindu nationalists in North America, the trolling of academics, among others—and how they circulated online and across national boundaries. In doing so, Udupa and Dattatreyan demonstrate how the internet has become the key site for an invigorated anticolonial internationalism, but has simultaneously augmented conditions of racial hierarchy within nations, in the international order, and in the liminal spaces that shape human migration and the lives of those that are on the move. Digital Unsettling establishes a critical framework for placing digitalization within the longue durée of coloniality, while also revealing the complex ways in which the internet is entwined with persistent global calls for decolonization. Link: [7]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R17oeWkSeQ More details: [8]https://criticaldigitalmethods.ca/gatherings/digital-unsett ling-book-talk/ thanks! -- Dr. Rafael Grohmann Assistant Professor of Media Studies / Critical Data and Platform Studies Department of Arts, Culture and Media Faculty of Information University of Toronto [9]https://ischool.utoronto.ca/profile/rafael-grohmann/ References 1. https://digilabour.com.br/en 2. https://criticaldigitalmethods.ca/ 3. https://www.tierracomun.net/ 4. https://youtube.com/digilabour 5. https://can01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwyS2TPFB9o&data=05|01|jas.rault@utoronto.ca|8bb16d99656e41534eb308db2faeeaeb|78aac2262f034b4d9037b46d56c55210|0|0|638156200569796289|Unknown|TWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0=|3000|||&sdata=S7Kr5pZGm3wrcwajnkBq+nd2o+vMNy1ZW+6EdjU0uUo=&reserved=0 6. https://criticaldigitalmethods.ca/gatherings/living-with-algorithms-book-tal... 7. https://can01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R17oeWkSeQ&data=05|01|jas.rault@utoronto.ca|8bb16d99656e41534eb308db2faeeaeb|78aac2262f034b4d9037b46d56c55210|0|0|638156200569796289|Unknown|TWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0=|3000|||&sdata=Cae+s41s/SM6BGbgx39crCnQMl/c0lBz64HwqFGDc1Q=&reserved=0 8. https://criticaldigitalmethods.ca/gatherings/digital-unsettling-book-talk/ 9. https://ischool.utoronto.ca/profile/rafael-grohmann/