Media Platforms
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Media Platforms (COMU3110) explores how media platforms are comprised of data-processing infrastructure, algorithms, interfaces and mobile devices. It critically examines the engineering projects of media platforms in simulation, surveillance, sensing, machine learning, artificial intelligence and augmented reality. The course explores how media organisations engineer and experiment with our social lives, bodies and lived experience.
These podcasts are from Media Platforms students.
Eye (Don’t) See You
by Elizabeth Aisi
Capture, caption, comment: the three basic steps of Instagram – or are they? In this episode of The Eyes Have It, we explore myriad steps many young women employ on Instagram to convey positive images of themselves onto others. Exploring how this is done and the reasons why, together, we’ll go under the facade and discover what it truly means to be, or not to be, yourself on Instagram.
Collapsing Worlds: Being Aware of Social Media
by Aila Otake-Hunt
Are you aware of the problematic effects that come with the excessive and compulsive use of social media? This podcast episode highlights the addiction to social media, outlining how this addiction is powered by the excessive use of social media and encouraged through platform design and how we interact with them.
Gamification in China
by Betty Wu
This episode talks about the positive and negative influence of the ongoing Social Credit System in China. Long overlooked, the episode discusses how this system can pose threat to real-life interpersonal relationships on the individual level and affect the cultural and societal development of the society on the bigger level.
Anatomy of Digital Discord – series
The Anatomy of Digital Discord series features three episodes:
‘Redefining Terrorism: Homegrown, Organic, Online’
by Elior Rinon
‘Anatomy of Digital Discord’ is a podcast that seeks to examine the history and characters of conflict in a digital age. This episode of ‘Anatomy of Digital Discord’ looks at terrorism, and the ways in which terrorism and radicalisation manifest in an era of ubiquitous digital media.
The Price of a Name
by Dante Aloni
What is the cost of identifying yourself online? The Price of a Name analyses the ramifications of real-name policies and anonymous or pseudonymous authorship on platform media from a historically revolutionary perspective. While there are malicious actors online who operate behind a veil of secrecy, this episode of Anatomy of Digital Discord exposes the hidden historical motives behind making sure people, corporations, and governments know who you are online.
An Automated Society: Data-Driven Inequality
by Miguel Moya
The episode focuses on the issue of human reliance on algorithmic decision-making within US judicial and law enforcement agencies. By drawing on a contemporary case study, listeners are guided through the notion of pre-established racial prejudice, and how algorithmic culture negatively affects African American citizenry. In further illustrating this position, the episode recounts the historical and barbaric past of racial prejudice which has led to this habit of thought.
Truth Isn’t Truth: Fake News and Trust in the Digital Age
by Sara Roetman
“Fake news” – and the associated decline of trust in politics, science, and news – is often positioned as one of the greatest threats to democracy today. This episode explores the broader social and technical shifts that contextualise and are conducive to the rise of disinformation, propaganda, polarisation, and conspiracy. In doing so, we argue that fake news is more than simply a technical problem for social media platforms to crack down on, but is a symptom of a much bigger social crises facing us in the digital age.
See attributions for all materials used in these podcasts, including audio, sound effects, scholarly work, and other materials.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]