I presented in Media Activism Unit 6, titled “media activism and ethnographic research”. I chose to present on Anonymous and how to research them and similar groups. I included clips from an interview with Anonymous ethnographer Gabriella Coleman that we made for the 5july podcast in March 2017:
Although I didn’t write much about it last week, that was the week when I kick-started my Japanese learning again, in preparation for my preparatory field trip to Tokyo in September 2019. Not least did I try to immerse myself in Japanese podcasts, but most of them were terrible. This week I finally found one I really liked, something on subculture and philosophy – but mainly just a serious and clearly articulated talk. I have only listened to one episode so far.
I also found an app by Nextbook that trains your kanji writing skills. It’s for primary school grades one through six, which is the levels I’m doing at Memrise too. I’ve just started grade five at Memrise, but in the Nextbook app I’m only in grade two, because I realised I can’t even write simple kanji like 家 (house), despite I would recognise them immediately. So I bought the full version for 28 euro and hope it will pay off!
I finished Kurumatani Haruko’s manga “アイドル様の夜のお顔” – the main part last week and the little afterstory “眠れぬ夜は彼のせい” this week. Both stories were as lovely as I have come to expect from Kurumatani, my favourite shoujo mangaka.
I have yet to start contacting people in Japan. It’s a bit of a hurdle to start writing those emails. At least I inquired about accommodation today, by contacting the landlord of the house where I lived during autumn 2013.
On Friday I spontaneously joined the conference AI Traps at Bethanien and listened to two panels with presentations. It was very warm though, one person in the audience even collapsed.
On Saturday I went with S to an art opening for Frau Katzenfisch aka Sushi Girl in Friedrichshain, where we met K & S who joined us for dinner and a stroll around Reuter & Weser-kiez for some 48h Neukölln.
Sunday was spent reading in the sofa – my favourite pastime!
Classes:
- Tuesday: Media Activism. Unit 6, which turned out to be all about my presentation on Anonymous and how to research similar groups.
- Wednesday: Qualitative Methods. We almost missed this as the teacher was one hour late. So that was one lost hour of confusion and worried messages in our Whatsapp group. So unnecessary.
- Thursday: Immersive Tech. Unit 5.
Study
Media Activism
Unit 6: Media Activism & Ethnographic Research
- Jordan, T. 2015. “Hacktivism: Operation Tunisia, Modular Tactics and Information Activism.” In Information Politics: Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital Society, pp. 176-91 (read from p. 185). London: Pluto Press.
- Wong, W.H., & Brown, P.A. 2013. “E-Bandits in Global Activism: WikiLeaks, Anonymous, and the Politics of No One.” In Perspectives on Politics 11 (4), pp. 1015-1033. (Read selectively.)
Unit 7: Digital Activism
- Postill, J. 2018. “Hiding in plain sight”. In J. Postill, The rise of nerd politics: Digital activism and political change, pp. 1–26. London: Pluto Press.
Qualitative Methods
Interviewing – ground skills
- Bernard, H. R. 1995. “Unstructured and Semistructured Interviewing. Research Methods in Anthropology.” In Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. London, Altamira Press. Pp. 208-236. (Just looked it over, as I had already read the text “by mistake” in the first semester due to confusion about the structure of units. It’s a great text.)
Immersive Technologies
Unit 5.
Only videos this time.
- Clouds over Sidra
- Let’s wear pixels
- The Guardian: 6×9: a virtual experience of solitary confinement – 360 video
- Out of Exile: Daniel’s Story
- Immigrant Dungeon Preview
- A History of Cuban Dance
- MICROSOFT HOLOLENS / HEROES
- Virtual Reality: NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism | BK Stories
Japanese
Manga
- 車谷晴子：“眠れぬ夜は彼のせい” (2005). In アイドル様の夜のお顔 (2007), pp. 155–189.
Apps
- Memrise: 45,800
- Nextbook 漢字: 小2 level 1–26
Podcast
- サブカル 002
Other
Articles
- The Economist:
- Briefing: How the pursuit of leisure drives internet use
- Foreign travellers to America face scrutiny of their online activity
- Electric-scooter startups are becoming more cautious
- The technology industry is rife with bottlenecks
- Schumpeter: Blue-collar capitalists
- Latin is dead—yet it also lives on
- BBC: Ethiopia religious anger over US gay tour plan
- DW: Kramp-Karrenbauer gay joke
- The Guardian: High heels necessary
- New York Post: Brooklyn massive park
- Outdoorsy Diva/Lauren G: Camping while black
- Buzzfeed: The Writer Who Lost Her Book Deal After Calling Out A DC Metro Worker For Eating On The Train Is Suing The Publisher For $13 Million
- Resonate: Japanese boy band MeseMoa’s latest MV features all nine members kissing each other (2017)
- Savvy Tokyo: Nakano
- Tripzilla: Otaku’s guide to Akihabara
- CNN. Geek’s guide to Tokyo (they even misspell the places)
AI Traps
Conference in Bethanien on “automating discrimination”, organised by Disruption Network Lab:
- THE TRACKED & THE INVISIBLE: From Biometric Surveillance to Diversity in Data Science (with Adam Harvey, Sophie Searcy and moderator Adriana Groh).
- AI FOR THE PEOPLE: AI Bias, Ethics & The Common Good (with Maya Indira Ganesh, Slava Jankin and moderator Nicole Shephard).
Video
- Future Affairs Berlin 2019: Disruptive Technologies: Chances and Challenges (81 min)
- Rick Falkvinge
Leave a Reply