Rena Bivens

Biography

I am an Associate Professor in Communication and Media Studies. I received my PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2008 where I worked with the Glasgow Media Group. Before coming to Carleton, I was a Lecturer in Digital Media and Mass Communication at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow.

My current research interests focus on the intersection of lesbian media history, queer theory, and trans studies. I am currently working on a book project about how we use media to make our identities. For a small taste of this, take a look at a piece I wrote for The Conversation: Why queer-themed shows evoke a bitter-sweet nostalgia for missed childhood moments.

My past work has explored normative design practices that become embedded within media technologies, including social media software, mobile phone apps, and technologies associated with television news production. A set of articles explores how social media companies program gender in different locations within their platforms and the implications of these practices. Sexual violence and speculative design have also been a focus of some of this work. Dr. Amy Hasinoff (UC Denver) and I developed Feature Analysis as a method for researchers to identify and analyze ideology within a set of mobile apps.

Selected Publications

Hasinoff, A. and Bivens, R. (2026) How to use feature analysis to reveal dominant norms and assumptions in a set of apps, in B. Marent (ed.) De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Health & Society, Berlin: De Gruyter, 345-361.

Hasinoff, A. and Bivens, R. (2021) Feature Analysis: A Method for Analyzing the Role of Ideology in App Design. Journal of Digital Social Research, 3(2): 89-113. doi: 10.33621/jdsr.v3i2.56.

Bannerman, S., Baade, C., Bivens, R., Regan Shade, L., Shepherd, T., Zeffiro, A. (2020) Platforms and Power: A Panel Discussion. Canadian Journal of Communication, 45(3) doi: 10.22230/cjc.2020v45n3a3901.

Pasek, A., Bivens, R. and Hogan, M. (2019) Data Segregation and Algorithmic Amplification: A Conversation with Wendy Hui Kyong Chun. Canadian Journal of Communication, 44(3): 455-469.

Bivens, R. and Khan, U. (2019) Torn: A Social Media Drama over the Aziz Ansari Scandal. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 15. video available here

Bivens, R. (2019) Programming the Rules of Engagement: Social Media Design and the Nonprofit System, in M. X. Delli Carpini (ed.) Digital Media and Democratic Futures, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Bivens, R. and Hoque, A. S. (2018) Programming Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: Infrastructural Failures in ‘Feminist’ Dating App Bumble. Canadian Journal of Communication, 43(3): 441-459.

Bivens, R. (2018) Exploiting a Dystopic Future to Unsettle our Present-Day Thinking about Sexual Violence Prevention. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 13. doi: 10.5399/uo/ada.2018.13.5

Bivens, R. (2018) Coding Sexual Violence, or Realizing your ‘Survivor’ Identity is Part of the Problem. No More Potlucks, 49.

Bivens, R. and Hasinoff, A. A. (2017) “Rape: is there an app for that? An empirical analysis of the features of anti-rape apps” Information, Communication & Society. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2017.1309444

Bivens, R. and Haimson, O. L. (2016) “Baking gender into social media design: How platforms shape categories for users and advertisers” Social Media + Society. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/2056305116672486

Bivens, R. (2016) “Programming Violence: Under a Progressive Surface, Facebook’s Software Misgenders Users”, Cyborgology, 27 January. *cross-posted on Culture Digitally

Bivens, R. (2015) “The gender binary will not be deprogrammed: Ten years of coding gender on Facebook” New Media & Society. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/1461444815621527

Bivens, R. (2015) “Under the Hood: The Software in your Feminist Approach” Feminist Media Studies. doi: 10.1080/14680777.2015.1053717

Bivens, R. and Fairbairn, J. (2015) “Quit Facebook, Don’t Sext and Other Futile Attempts to Protect Youth” in S. Tarrant (ed.) Gender, Sex, and Politics: In the Streets and Between the Sheets in the 21st Century, New York: Routledge.

Handel, M. J., Bivens, R., Brubaker, J. R., Haimson, O. L., Lingel, J., & Yarosh, S. (2015) “Facebooking in ‘Face’: Complex Identities Meet Simple Databases”, in Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference Companion on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (pp. 122–125). New York, NY, USA: ACM. doi:10.1145/2685553.2699337

Bivens, R. (2015) “Interrogating Crystal’s Design Flaws Highlights Options for Technical Advocacy”, Culture Digitally, June 9.

Bivens, R. (2015) “Affording Immediacy in Television News Production: Comparing Adoption Trajectories of Social Media and Satellite Technologies” International Journal of Communication 9: 191-209.

Bivens, R. (2014) Digital Currents: How Technology and the Public Are Shaping TV News, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. (ISBN: 9781442615861)

Bivens, R. and Li, C. (2009) “Web-Oriented Public Participation in Contemporary China” in G. Monaghan and S. Tunney (eds.) Web Journalism: A New Form of Citizenship?, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.

Bivens, R. (2008) “The Internet, Mobile Phones and Blogging: How New Media is Transforming Traditional Journalism” Journalism Practice 2(1): 113-129. doi: 10.1080/17512780701768568