Abstract
The following white paper details the University of Calgary’s 2021 graduate student conference titled, ‘Opportunities in a Crisis.’ This white paper works to describe how graduate students explore the terms ‘opportunities’ and ‘crisis’ within their research interests. These research interests were interdisciplinary to various fields such as telecommunications policy, algorithmic studies, critical race theory, and video game studies to list a few. Through this conference, we observed an acute awareness of the ways in which the COVID-19 crisis has impacted research in media activism, feminist media studies, internet infrastructure, and teaching and learning, to mention a handful. This white paper is divided by panel sections, thereby allowing readers to connect with this graduate student conference and help inform future research on topics in communication and media studies, as they are framed in working through these crisis moments in our global history. Our white paper set out to achieve two goals: first, document the presentations and emerging scholarly work of graduate students; and second, reflect on how research can, and very well does, pivot in times of crises, specifically using our current global COVID-19 pandemic as an ongoing, lived experience. This white paper achieves these goals which we believe helps in the preservation of this unique moment in time to be a graduate student.
Highlights
The following white paper details the University of Calgary’s 2021 graduate student conference titled, ‘Opportunities in a Crisis.’ This white paper works to describe how graduate students explored the terms ‘opportunities’ and ‘crisis’ within their research interests
Through the crisis of a virtual conference setting in missed networking opportunities, we hope this white paper serves as documentation of the impact graduate students made in the conversation of their research conducted during the COVID-19 crisis
It was a welcome addition to conversations that were so often focused on problems that presented a solutions-focused response to current and historical pressures in teaching as a junior scholar. As this white paper has demonstrated, crisis is understood in varying forms. As it relates to activism, memory capture, internet connections, teaching, this term is felt in various research trajectories by graduate students in the pandemic’s 20202021 timeframe
Summary
Amidst a complex social moment with the increased visibility of Black, queer, and feminist activist movements facilitated by digital media platforms, the CMF Graduate Student Conference panel “Mediated Activisms” offered insight into the various ways users engage in social activism using digital media. In considering how the intersecting identities of media users shape their activist practices, the panellists explored three seemingly disparate case studies – Taylor Swift’s fandom (Swifties), Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Netflix’s Patriot Act by Hasan Minhaj. The provocations from this panel are foregrounded by a broader scholarly conversation across disciplines about the meaning of activism in our current media moment, seeking to answer questions such as: What does activism look like? The affordances of Animal Crossing’s game design and Nintendo’s corporate prerogatives shape the kinds of activism made possible through the platform It is the subverting of the intended use of the game in which media studies scholars should be interested, as users respond to media and negotiate digital platforms in novel ways. We can imagine alternatives digital spaces whose designs rethink the mechanics of empire extending opportunities to marginalized voices
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