Assistant Professor, Communication, Media & Film, University of Calgary
tamara.shepherd@gmail.com
It’s perhaps not surprising that the manifesto published by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg yesterday promotes “global community.” The idea that a social media platform like Facebook primarily serves as a community space is consistent with the site’s branding according to techno-utopian versions of a networked society. It also supports the way that Facebook’s […]
This post offers an introduction to a new comparative research project being conducted by Aphra Kerr and Tamara Shepherd, which started with discussions at Culture Digitally workshops and continued through a Dobbin Scholarship funded research visit by Tamara to Dublin in February 2014. Aphra and Tamara are investigating how policy measures and incubators have impacted […]
While the official theme of the Association of Internet Researchers 14th annual conference was “resistance + appropriation,” it was striking that a number of panels, papers, and plenary talks touched on a kind of “resistant” digital practice that is less utopian. Hate and hating in its various incarnations — contrary to likes and hearts, or […]
Facebook began trading publicly on NASDAQ nearly six months ago, on May 18, 2012, at the initial offering price of $38 a share. Despite unprecedented anticipation and early trading volume, the company’s share price soon declined, and it currently hovers around the $19 mark. One of the reasons for this decline stems from an issue […]
Now that Bill C-11, Canada’s Act to Amend the Copyright Act, has undergone its second reading in the House of Commons, it will be subject to two more votes before it likely heads to the Senate and finally to royal assent. Given our current majority Conservative government, this long-impending introduction of a “Canadian DMCA” will […]