This talk explores how polarization is a goal—not an error—within current algorithmic recommendation systems.  It focuses on how “authenticity”—the drive to make users and systems “real”—perpetuate angry clusters of comforting rage by creating network neighborhoods, in which users share an open secret or hatred.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Simon Fraser University’s Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media, Professor in the School of Communication, and Director of the Digital Democracies Institute. She has studied both Engineering and English Literature, which she combines and mutates in her research on digital media. She is author many books, including Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT, 2006), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT 2011), Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (MIT 2016), and Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition (2021, MIT Press). 


Speaker : Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Date : March 20 (Fri) 19:00 (PST), 22:00(EST)
Format : This event will be held via Zoom, and the Zoom link will be sent to registered participants via email the day before the lecture.