Wednesday, August 1, 2018

[Millennials’ Voices] Issue 1: Kids these days and their Social Media

  Introduction by Rory Clark Social media, the major social networks and platforms as we know them today, were originally conceived with much more humble and basic functionality in mind. The word “social”, in social media, originally referred to socialization, not society. Originally, they were simply intended to digitize connection,... More

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

[Millennials’ Voices] Social Media, Activism, and a Generation of Narcissists

  by Freyja Wilson Advancements in technology have led to remarkable innovations in the ways we interact with information, commerce, and the people around us and around the world. However, a significant problem is that the online interactions we have concerning activism are often insincere and self-serving. Clicktivism/slacktivism and social... More

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

[Millennials’ Voices] Social Media and the Public Sphere Vs. Misinformation and the Public Smear

by Megan Harvey You’ve just made a Facebook account and are trying to add your friends. Except you can’t find one friend’s account when you search her name. The next day she tells you that she has a fake name on Facebook so that when she posts something online it isn’t connected back to... More

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Marvel’s Black Panther revolution: the Super-Power of Racial Representation

©Marvel Studios 2018 Crowds of eager faces gather outside the movie theatre impatiently. Everywhere you can see dashikis -brightly coloured shirts and tunics –and braids and sheer giddiness in the expressions of those waiting. After nearly a year of anticipation, it is finally here. “I have never been in a theatre with so many... More

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

[Millennials’ Voices] Millennials Are Awful

by Anna Hum Obviously, something must have gone wrong to cause an entire generation to become as lazy and unmotivated, but oh so entitled, as we are. Perhaps it was the amount of participation trophies we received when we were growing up, or maybe the root of all our waywardness is caused by our... More

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

A Balanced Debate

... More

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Lim delivers keynote/plenary talks in Southeast Asia

Professor Merlyna Lim spent much of her month of May 2018 in Southeast Asia, delivering keynote/plenary/public lectures, attending research meetings, and conducting field research. Lim began the Southeast Asian tour in an island of Lombok in Indonesia, where she delivered a keynote speech titled “Sociological Research  in a Fast Changing... More

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Roots, Routes, and Routers

The summer 2018 issue of the Journalism & Communication Monographs series is dedicated to Merlyna Lim’s work on media and social movements. In a monograph titled Roots, Routes, and Routers: Communications and Media of Contemporary Social Movements, Lim offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the complexity of communications and media as they... More

Saturday, May 19, 2018

Living in vs living with media – Networks of online harassment

  I’m part of a generation that has done much of our growing up with and in media. Living in media in this context means that our lives are heavily mediated by new media; we can make most of our appointments online, order groceries at the touch of the button that will be delivered... More

Saturday, May 19, 2018

Is clickbait killing science journalism? The answer will shock you!

(A Fowl Language Comic by Brian Gordon) Did you know green tea can cure cancer?   Scientists have found evidence that chimps believe in god!   A group of teenagers have invented a condom that changes colour when it detects STDs!   These three statements have something in common: they’re all a load of... More

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Lim delivers plenary talks at Purdue and UMich

Merlyna Lim, Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society, delivered a keynote talk at the Politicians and Social Media in the Global South seminar held on 14 April 2018 in Ann Arbor, MI. Organized by the ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies and Human Development) group at the University of Michigan’s School of... More

Thursday, April 26, 2018

Stop Damaging The Reputation Of Wolves – and Other Issues with Extreme Right-Wing Groups in Canada

  “Terrorism”, “extremism”, and “radicalization” have an immediate association with groups like Daesh and Al-Shabaab, which promote their perversion of the religion of Islam. However, often overlooked in such discussions is the threat posed by right wing extremism (RWE) groups to Canadians and minority communities. I want to... More

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Lim’s interview with De Standaard: “The underlying problem is not fake news, but fake democracy”

In their April 7th edition, De Standaard, a Flemish daily newspaper in Belgium,  publishes an article titled In Azië heet perscensuur ‘strijd tegen fake news’ (meaning In Asia, press censorship is disguised as 'the battle against fake news) which includes a special interview with ALiGN director Merlyna Lim. The article itself is in Dutch (a... More

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Where are all the Indigenous languages, Duolingo?

Last month, Duolingo - the popular language learning mobile app - released two new languages for their popular language-learning platform: Klingon and High Valeryian. If you have yet heard of these two languages, I won’t hold it against you. After all, Klingon is a fictional language spoken by an alien species in the Star... More

Sunday, April 1, 2018

The Other Side: A Brief Look at the Impact of Globalization on Jamaican Culture

Jamaica’s development and national identity have been influenced by various cultures throughout history. Growing up, I was fascinated by the language, food, and the general attitude and spirit of my Jamaican culture and its people. Pieces of several nationalities are incorporated into the fabric of the Jamaican identity, making it both distinct... More

Sunday, April 1, 2018

Stick and Stones, Click and Phones

ALiGN Media Lab Director and Founder, Merlyna Lim, just publishes "Sticks and Stones, Clicks and Phones: Contextualizing the Role of Digital Media in the Politics of Transformation" [PDF]. This piece is a chapter of edited volume titled Digital Media and the Politics of Transformation in the Arab World and Asia (Springer, 2018) edited... More

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Data Mining & Infographics for Advocacy workshop

On Saturday, 24 March 2018, ALiGN Media Lab hosted its first community workshop at Bronson Centre, Ottawa with Dr. Anna Feigenbaum as the presenter/facilitator. In this "Data Mining & Infographics for Advocacy" workshop, participants learned about basic techniques and tools to utilize and visualize data for social justice. The workshop... More

Friday, March 2, 2018

When social media literally goes ‘viral’: using big data to predict, track, and diagnose contagious diseases

  Never mind stethoscopes and blood tests: could Tweets, hashtags and Google searches become diagnostic tools for influenzas and other contagious diseases? Much research has focused on using data mining and analytics to monitor diseases and predict their progression. For example, HealthMap - a website created by researchers at Boston's... More

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Algorithmic trends – A new digital divide with the knowledge of platforms?

  The digital divide typically refers to the gap between the “have and have-not’s” when it comes to a basic internet connection and access to a personal computer. Eszter Hargittai explains a second-level digital divide as a difference between the internet skill and know-how of the internet user. This second-level digital divide is... More

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Viral activism: memes, hashtags, and social change

Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many artists and activists have tried to mobilize against Donald Trump by sharing images online. The #TrumpArtworks hashtag, for instance, involves photoshopping Trump into famous paintings, mocking his (easily disproven) claims of record inauguration crowds, the size of his hands, and so on. "This... More

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

What’s Law got to do with it?

Privacy is a huge concern for many users of social networking sites (SNSs). As danah boyd points out in her article, “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications”, the private and public realms of the online world are blurred and constantly in flux. For instance, the public we may think of... More

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

How Private is the Amazon Echo? Uh, Does Anyone Care?

  When I first learned about the Amazon Echo I admit I immediately secretly wanted one. I mean, who wouldn’t, right? A 9-inch tubular robot sitting on the counter or shelf in any room of your home, just waiting for you to ask it a question or command it to order something online from... More

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Reproductive coercion, stealthing, and social media

This blog post is part of our participation and support of the 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women. The role of social media and reproductive coercion has made major news headlines this past year and I was recently asked to provide some comments about this topic for Planned Parenthood Ottawa. I... More

Friday, December 1, 2017

Lim is awarded SSHRC Insight Grant

Merlyna Lim is just awarded Insight Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council for her research project“Cyber-urban Space, Social Media, and Contemporary Social Movements in Southeast Asia”. Please find below an excerpt on this news from the Carleton University's Faculty of Public Affairs announcement: From the call for... More

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Meet Prof. Merlyna Lim: Carleton Professor and Artist

In November 2017, Lucy Juneau from Carleton Newsroom interviewed Professor Merlyna Lim, ALiGN Director/Founder who is, apparently, also an artist. Below is the interview, which was published in the Carleton Intranet... More

Monday, November 20, 2017

Hate, Harassment, and Communities of Bigots: The Ugly Side of Reddit

  Reddit has an ugly side, and I’m not talking about its pro-Donald Trump subreddit or a community that appears to be organized around sharing pictures of dragons mating with cars (I think it’s best to not provide a link to either of those). It’s difficult to compare reddit to other websites, since it’s... More

Sunday, November 19, 2017

What’s the big deal with Open Source Software?

  In 2011, Marc Andreessen declared, "Software is eating the world". Fast forward to 2016 and it has definitely eaten up mine. As a young researcher and writer, I’ve no doubt enabled the insatiable beast that is software through an increasing reliance on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). My relationship with software could... More

Saturday, November 18, 2017

When Big Brother Lives at Home: New Digital Technologies Make it Easier For Parents to Spy on their Kids…and everyone else, too.

  Have you ever wondered how fast your teen is driving when not under your watchful eye? Or wish you could block them from online dating and chat sites? Maybe turn their phone off - even lock it down - after a pre-set time limit? Or even track their GPS location? Well, the good... More

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Merlyna Lim’s Interview with the Jackson’s Art

In July 2017, Merlyna Lim, won the International Urban Sketching Competition held by the Jackson's Art.  As a winner, Merlyna was interviewed by Lisa Takahashi from the Jackson’s Art in October 2017. Here, she was interviewed not as a scholar, researcher, or professor, but as an artist. Below is an opening paragraph from the interview.... More

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Cat pictures, Billy Mays song remixes, and challenging the mainstream media: Reddit and the Syrian Crisis

Depending on how familiar you are with reddit, you might think of it as a place where people post memes and cat pictures. Or maybe your perception of the site is shaped by some of its stranger communities – for every subforum (or ‘subreddit’ as they’re called on the site) that’s dedicated to sharing... More

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone: Surveillance and detection of ‘illegal immigrants’ in the U.K. through schoolchildren

  A secret program in the UK has been using the school system’s data collection to uncover illegal migrants by identifying those children attending public school. In a recent interview with the Guardian, Martha Spurrier, the director of Liberty in the UK, accused the program of turning the Department of Education “into a border... More

Sunday, October 15, 2017

‘Slacktivism’? Or just different forms of activism?

Seven years ago author Malcolm Gladwell – in a piece penned for The New Yorker – declared that the “revolution will not be tweeted”. In making a case against what he characterizes as the “so-called Twitter revolution”, Gladwell muses on how social media platforms simultaneously make it easier for activists to express themselves and... More

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

The Poverty Report: “It’s not something I really wanted to tell people”

What happens if you suddenly become disabled and unable to work and earn a living? That’s what recently happened to 19-year-old ‘Jess’ after he was seriously injured in a cycling accident. With a concussion and broken collar bone, Jess, who was formerly healthy and fit, was suddenly forced to do something he never expected... More

Saturday, September 30, 2017

Reclaiming Alternative History: Indonesian’s massacre of 1965-1966

Thirty three years ago today, September 30th 1965, marked the beginning of the anticommunist massacre in Indonesia — a bloodbath considered to be one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. In a singular official version of the event propagated by the Indonesian government, the day marked the "day of betrayal" by the... More

Monday, September 25, 2017

Metronews: New media lab realigns activism at Carleton

Our newly launched lab has gotten a media coverage. In today's MetroNews... More

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