I’m very pleased to announce the confirmed keynote panel for A&SM#4: Notifications from the Technological Nonconscious (University Square Stratford Building, East London, UK, Wednesday, November 7th 2018).

Joining our keynote, Patricia Ticineto Clough, will be Jessica Ringrose (UCL), Amit Rai (Queen Mary), Rebecca Coleman (Goldsmiths), Darren Ellis and Ian Tucker (East London).

For details on cfp and updates see Conference Information Page:

https://viralcontagion.wordpress.com/affect-social-media4/

Affect and Social Media out July 2018

In production now with Rowman & Littlefield

Affect and Social Media

Cover

Emotion, Mediation, Anxiety and Contagion

Edited by Tony D Sampson; Stephen Maddison and Darren Ellis

Affect and Social Media is an edited collection of twenty bite sized articles by leading scholars from across disciplinary boundaries. It is comprised of four distinct but related sections which are interspersed with artistic illustrations, depicting the affectivities that flow through social media. The term ‘affect’ denotes a rather slippery concept that is not as easily caught as for example ‘emotion’ or ‘feeling’. Quite often it denotes a more than or an excess to that which is felt in the human body or indexed through cultural grids of meaning. It can exist in ways which defy expectations, conventions, and representations. It is often understood as that which is vital to the emergence of the new and hence socio-cultural revolution. As life shifts ever more on-line, we find ourselves caught up in the affective flows of computer mediated practices into an ever expanding and indeterminate horizon. This compilation of articles that were initially presented at an international conference in East London, were selected on the basis of their ability to depict and conceptualise these radical movements of sociality.

Contents

Foreword by Gregory Seigworth

Introduction: On Affect and Social Media by Tony D. Sampson, Darren Ellis and Stephen Maddison

Part One: Digital Emotion

Introduction by Helen Powell

Chapter One: Social media, emoticons and process by Darren Ellis

Chapter Two: Anticipating affect: trigger warnings in a mental health social media site by Lewis Goodings

Chapter Three: Digitally mediated emotion: Simondon, affectivity and individuation by Ian Tucker

Chapter Four: Visceral data by Luke Stark

Chapter Five: Psychophysiological measures associated with affective states while using social media by Maurizio Mauri

Part Two: Mediated Connectivities, Immediacies & Intensities

Introduction by Jussi Parikka

Chapter Six: Social media and the materialisation of the affective present by Rebecca Coleman

Chapter Seven: The education of feeling: Wearable technology & triggering pedagogies by Alyssa D. Niccolini

Chapter Eight: Mediated affect & feminist solidarity: Teens’ using Twitter to challenge ‘rape culture’ in and around school by Jessica Ringrose and Kaitlynn Mendes

Part Three: Insecurity and Anxiety

Introduction by Darren Ellis and Stephen Maddison

Chapter Nine: Wupocalypse Now: Supertrolls and other risk Anxieties in social media interactions by Greg Singh

Chapter Ten: Becoming user in popular culture by Zara Dinnen

Chapter Eleven: #YouTuberanxiety: Affect and anxiety performance in UK beauty vlogging by Sophie Bishop

Chapter Twelve: Chemsex: anatomy of a sex panic by Jamie Hakim

Chapter Thirteen: Designing life? Affect and gay porn by Stephen Maddison

Chapter Four: Contagion: Image, Work, Politics and Control

Introduction by Tony D Sampson

Chapter Fourteen: The mask of Ebola: Fear, contagion, and immunity by Yiğit Soncul

Chapter Fifteen: The newsroom is no longer a safe zone: Assessing the affective impact of graphic user-generated images on journalists working with social media by Stephen Jukes

Chapter Sixteen: Emotions, social media communication and TV debates by Morgane Kimmich

Chapter Seventeen: The Failed Utopias of Walden and Walden Two by Robert Wright

Acknowledgements

Index

978-1-78660-438-5 • Hardback • July 2018 • $105.00 • (£70.00)

978-1-78660-439-2 • Paperback • July 2018 • $34.95 • (£23.95)

978-1-78660-440-8 • eBook • July 2018 • $32.95 • (£22.95) (coming soon)

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786604385/Affect-and-Social-Media-Emotion-Mediation-Anxiety-and-Contagion#

Video from “Empathies” Conference, 2017 at the University of Basel

Below is the blurb from SLSAeu (European Society of Literature, Science and the Arts) about their 2017 “Empathies” Conference video on Youtube, but there’s a bit of editorial fun going on that is not mentioned.

“Coming to grips with the manifold aspects of empathy. Documentary video with experts interviewed during the SLSAeu Conference “Empathies”, 2017 at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Experts (in chaotic order): Jesse Prinz, Fritz Breithaupt, Carolyn Pedwell, Lori Gruen, Seasmus O’Mahony, Manuela Rossini, Margaret Mcallister, Elisabeth Friis, Laura Otis, Ruth Levin Vorster, Edwin Constable, Tyler Volk, Jessica Ullrich, Pola Dwurnik, Dirk Vanderbeke, Jens Hauser, Susanne Schmetkamp, Andrea Ochsner, Christine Davis, Ian Tucker, Tony Sampson, Markus Wild, Jonathan Crane, Joseph Wood, Anna Malinowska, Bruce Clarke…

Digital atmospheres: affective practices of care in Elefriends

Fascinating article on care, affect and social media by Ian M Tucker and Lewis Goodings in Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. xx No. xx 2017 ISSN 0141-9889, pp. 1–14.

“We ﬁnd that the caring relations developed through social media

often need to be cared for themselves.”

Ian will be doing a paper on Simondon at the Affect and Social Media Conference on May 25th at UEL.

Lewis and Ian are also contributing to the forthcoming A&SM edited book.

Abstract

This article develops the concept of digital atmosphere to analyse the affective power

of social media to shape practices of care and support for people living with mental

distress. Using contemporary accounts of affective atm ospheres, the article focuses

on feelings of distress, support and care that unfold through digital atmospheres. The

power of social media intersects with people’s support and care-seeking practices in

multiple ways and not in a straightforward model of ‘accessing or providing

support’. Indeed, we ﬁnd that the caring relations developed through social media

often need to be cared for themselves. The article draws on online and interview data

from a larger project investigating how practices of care and support are

(re)conﬁgured in the mental health-related social media site Elefriends. Users have to

negotiate the disruption of moving support online, as well as the possibility of

becoming subject to a fragility in care, in which caring for oneself becomes bound up

in the ambiguities of caring for others. We argue that understanding how experiences

of distress are shaped by social media is essential for understanding the implications

of the increased digitisati on of mental healthcare.

Keywords: social media, mental distress, digital atmosphere, affect, Elefriends

Mental distress, social media and affect

The experience of mental distress is increasingly shaped by social media (Aboujaoude and Starcevic 2015, Bauman and Rivers 2015). The proliferation of social media in the digital age has led to the development of a range of mental health–focused social media, designed as tools for support for people suffering ongoing mental distress (see Hamm et al. 2013 for a useful review). This article focuses on the use of one social media site as a digital space that facilitates peer support. We aim to explore the affective experience of using the site Elefriends and the dilemmas and challenges that are produced in the act of co-constituting distress (and responses to distress) via an online platform. The concept of digital atmosphere is developed to analyse the individual and collective forms of affective experienc e emerging in and through social media. This builds on the growing literature on

atmospheres that has developed in affect studies (Anderson 2014, Brennan 2004). The use of the concept of atmosphere allows us to address experiences of distress through encounters between bodies and social media as technological objects, as well as digital spaces for interaction. Such encounters involve the transmission of affects that come to inform and produce individual feelings of distress.

The full article is here –

Vital Mobilizations: Care and Surveillance in the Age of Global Connectivity (June 1-2 programme)

If you are by chance in Paris in early June you might be interested in this two day workshop.

Vital Mobilizations: Care and Surveillance in the Age of Global Connectivity

Workshop | Paris, 1 & 2 June 2015

Please ignore formatting below and access this link

Full workshop information https://vitalmobilizations.wordpress.com/programme/

Workshop Vital Mobilizations Care and Surveillance in the Age of Global Connectivity 1-2 June 2015

Venue: Maison Suger, 16-18 rue Suger, Paris Collège d’études mondiales (FMSH), Paris

On every front, life is being put into motion: fostered and defended, accelerated and contained, augmented and flattened, contested and debated. It is being measured, predicted, connected and communicated by the most variegated actors with the most varied aims. Life has become the object of continuous care and surveillance. Life, then, is being mobilized. This workshop aims to explore how global connectivity contributes to mobilize life, namely to its generalized availableness as well as to the spontaneity and ubiquity of its contestations. It intends to examine how life is being generated and accounted for, put in danger and saved, disseminated and ordered in a world marked by increased interconnectivity and precariousness. Specifically, the workshop will pay attention to the concrete infrastructures, technologies, and rationalities contributing to the design of spaces of care and surveillance. Hence, in contrast with the widespread conception of a seamless worldwide circulation of knowledge, data and expertise, our aim would be to detail the embeddedness, plasticity and sheer materiality inherent to vital mobilizations.
Vital Warfare. Mobilization is a category of a world of wars (Sloterdijk, 1988). It refers to states of unrestricted, unbounded, warfare (Liang and Xiangsui, 2002). Warfare comes with its territories, its enemies, its heroes, its victims and its excesses. Warfare delineates friends and foes and comes with heightened vigilance, but also with guerilla tactics, and armed resistance. In this workshop we are interested in what figurations of warfare are mobilizing life in an age of global connectivity, while providing insight into contemporary movements of insurgency and counter-insurgency. The following questions could be addressed:
– How is warfare generating new friends and foes in times of circulating diseases, infected travelers, ‘detached’ experts and transnational corporations controlling knowledge and markets?
– What new militants/combatants are mobilized, for instance, in health movements waging war against big pharma, or in the work of biohackers, online patient communities and other forms of ‘open and citizen science’?
– What ‘boundary tracing’, mechanisms of exclusion, and ‘labors of division’ are implied in contemporary practices of care and surveillance?
Digital Mobilizations. The digitalization of life transforms the way we inhabit our world(s). Communication flows, numerical models, and computational algorithms generate new forms of presence, new ways to project ourselves into time and space. In other words, emergent forms of life. Implications are both ethical and political. On the one hand, they have to do with everyday experiences of connectivity, for instance with our relation to ourselves, to our bodies and to our health and illness. On the other hand, the digitalization of life participates in movements of openness and enclosure, of inclusion and exclusion, of mediation and protest. It contributes to shaping the government of threat and care (Feldman and Ticktin 2010). The following questions could be addressed: – How is digital connectivity reordering biological substance and the materiality of life?
– How are processes of regulation, stabilization and securitization taking shape out of endless, chaotic flows of data and information?
– How does digitalization challenge traditional forms of power over life and what new forms of governance and resistance might emerge as a consequence?
Sensing Danger. Digital connectivity has become highly correlated with a form of protection against health-related risk, uncertainty, and danger. From seasonal flu to Ebola virus outbreak, from global warming monitoring to earthquakes and tsunamis, the last few years have for instance witnessed a significant rise in the use of ‘sentinel devices.’ That is, detection devices whose vigilant watchfulness and sensing of danger ‘can aid in preparation for an uncertain, but potentially catastrophic future’ (Keck and Lakoff 2013: 2). However, these devices do not merely predict potential catastrophic events. In fact, they actively mobilize this potentiality to shape the present, for instance structuring what qualifies as possible/valuable data and as protective behaviors. The following questions could be addressed:
– How do information systems contribute in reorienting the priorities in global health?
– How do contemporary modes of danger sensing relate to concurrent forms of relation to the future (anticipation, divination, prediction, prophecy, etc.)?
– What kinds of responses are being devised in the light of these constructions of danger and how they might be contributing to producing particular forms of life instead of others?
Please circulate widely #vitalmobilizations

The event is free, although registration is needed. For information and registration, please contact:
Vincent Duclos, vduclos@msh-paris.fr

Monday, 1 June
9:30 Welcome
Session 1 10:00 – 12:00
Susanne Bauer (IFK Wien/Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main) The Mobilization of Life Exposed in Regulatory Practice: Revisiting the Complex Genealogies of Global Health
Ann Kelly (University of Exeter) & Javier Lezaun (University of Oxford) The Wild-Indoors: The Room Spaces of Scientific Inquiry

Vincent Duclos (Collège d’études mondiales, FMSH) At Home in the Outer World: Digital Spaces of Care and Immunity
Chair: Frédéric Keck (Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale, CNRS)

12:00 Lunch
Session 2 13:30 – 15:30
Tony D. Sampson (University of East London) From the Horror of Digital Autotoxicus to the Auto-Toxicity of the Social
Ian Tucker (University of East London) Digitally mediated distress: Bodies, care and mental health
Antoinette Rouvroy (U Namur) TBD Chair: Tomás Sánchez-Criado (Open University of Catalonia)

15:30 – 16:00 Pause
Session 3 16:00 – 18:30
Theresa MacPhail (Stevens Institute of Technology) Big Data Divination: Google, surveillance, and the production of algorithmic meaning in healthcare
Frédéric Keck (Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale, CNRS) Sentinels for the environment : birdwatchers in Taiwan and Hong Kong
Ian Harper (University of Edinburgh) Transforming data generation for TB control: new metrics, technologies and uncertain futures Vinh-Kim Nguyen (Université de Montréal/Collège d’études mondiales) Care, surveillance and affect in Guinea’s time of Ebola
Discussant: Andrew Lakoff (University of Southern California)
Tuesday, 2 June
9:00 Coffee
Session 4 9:30 – 11:30
Janina Kehr (University of Zurich) The Materiality of Maintenance
Mauro Turrini (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) Socializing genes: Personal genomics services and the digitalization and mobilization of DNA Maggie Mort (Lancaster University) Technocare: tales from the evidence factory Chair: Vinh-Kim Nguyen (Université de Montréal/Collège d’études mondiales)

Session 5 11:30 – 13:30
Tomás Sánchez-Criado (Open University of Catalonia) Mobilizing against ‘the catalogue’: The experimental biopolitics of independent-living’s open design activism
Pierre Minn (Université de Montréal) Mobilizing Leaders: Charismatic Heroism and Managerial Logics in Global Health Education
Vololona Rabeharisoa (Centre de sociologie de l’innovation, PSL Mines ParisTech) How do European Patient Organizations construct a Europe of and for patients? Reflecting on the Europeanization and globalization of health issues
Chair : Vincent Duclos (Collège d’études mondiales, FMSH)
End Programme

Monday, 1 June
9:30	Welcome
10:00 – 12:00	Susanne Bauer (IFK Wien/Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main), The Mobilization of Life Exposed in Regulatory Practice: Revisiting the Complex Genealogies of Global HealthAnn Kelly (University of Exeter) & Javier Lezaun (University of Oxford), The Wild-Indoors: The Room Spaces of Scientific Inquiry Vincent Duclos (Collège d’études mondiales, FMSH), At Home in the Outer World: Digital Spaces of Care and Immunity Chair: Frédéric Keck (Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale, CNRS)
12:00	Lunch
13:30 – 15:30	Tony D. Sampson (University of East London), From the Horror of Digital Autotoxicus to the Auto-Toxicity of the SocialIan Tucker (University of East London), Digitally mediated distress: Bodies, care and mental health Antoinette Rouvroy (U Namur), TBD Chair: Tomás Sánchez-Criado (Open University of Catalonia)
15:30 – 16:00	Break
16:00 – 18:30	Theresa MacPhail (Stevens Institute of Technology), Big Data Divination: Google, surveillance, and the production of algorithmic meaning in healthcareFrédéric Keck (Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale, CNRS), Sentinels for the environment: Birdwatchers in Taiwan and Hong Kong Ian Harper (University of Edinburgh), Transforming data generation for TB control: new metrics, technologies and uncertain futures Vinh-Kim Nguyen (Université de Montréal/Collège d’études mondiales), Care, surveillance and affect in Guinea’s time of Ebola Discussant: Andrew Lakoff (University of Southern California)

Tuesday, 2 June
9:00	Coffee
9:30 – 11:30	Janina Kehr (University of Zurich), The Materiality of MaintenanceMauro Turrini (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Socializing genes: Personal genomics services and the digitalization and mobilization of DNA Maggie Mort (Lancaster University), Technocare: tales from the evidence factory Chair: Vinh-Kim Nguyen (Université de Montréal/Collège d’études mondiales)

11:30 – 13:30	Tomás Sánchez-Criado (Open University of Catalonia), Mobilizing against ‘the catalogue’: The experimental biopolitics of independent-living’s open design activismPierre Minn (Université de Montréal), Mobilizing Leaders: Charismatic Heroism and Managerial Logics in Global Health Education Vololona Rabeharisoa (Centre de sociologie de l’innovation, Mines ParisTech), How do European Patient Organizations construct a Europe of and for patients? Reflecting on the Europeanization and globalization of health issues Chair: Vincent Duclos (Collège d’études mondiales, FMSH)

Call for Papers: Leaking affects and mediated spaces

Call for Papers: Leaking affects and mediated spaces for the Fourth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies
1-3 July 2013 at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Session: Leaking affects and mediated spaces.

Session organisers: Darren Ellis, John Cromby, Lewis Goodings, Tony Sampson and Ian Tucker

We seem to possess the ability to move and to be greatly moved by our daily interactions with increasingly complex forms of electronic media. We are soaked in the seepage of affective information about others (other humans, other beings, other spaces) and continually leak similar stuff about ourselves, both intentionally and unintentionally, and often somewhere in-between the two. For example, signified affective states are issued through the often mundane emoticons ():), kisses (x), and curses (f**k); and our pleasures and pursuits can be captured by sophisticated algorithms that track internet activity. Perhaps digitised space has opened the way to new realms of affective contagions, transactions, communications and doings. To what extent then do we get a sense of the affect-trails that we leave behind and those that we pick up? What kinds of senses are involved and how might we experience them on a day to day basis? Indeed what are the possibilities and limitations of sharing, imparting and capturing affects across this electronic ether? Is there a flattening of affect or is something qualitatively different occurring? Central to these questions are notions of distribution and spatial expression, and the need to understand the affective nature (or not) of the relations and connections between bodies and technologies that form our everyday territories. The sessions that make up this proposal seek to explore these issues in a number of theoretical and empirical ways, with interest in (although not limited to) areas such as surveillance, social media and embodiment.

Key Questions: How do we understand the multiple and fluid ways that affect becomes distributed across and through bodies, technologies and spaces? How is affect marked out and made visible in mediated online spaces? Is affect still a useful way for configuring the expression of intensive processes spatially?

Paper proposals are invited focusing on (although are not limited to):

Surveillance

Social Media

Embodiment

Digital and non-digital topology

Body-technology relations

Novel empirical approaches to studies of affect

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words to Darren Ellis (D.Ellis@uel.ac.uk) before the 20th of January 2013

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Call for Papers and Artworks Deadline 21st Feb 2020

Affect & Social Media#5/Sensorium

>MORE-THAN>

Stratford, East London: 25-26/06/20

Confirmed Keynotes

Carolyn Pedwell (Kent)

Tero Karppi (Toronto)

Keynote Panel: Amit S Rai (Queen Mary), Rebecca Coleman (Goldsmiths), Ian Tucker and Darren Ellis (UEL). Chaired by Tony Sampson.

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Affect and Social Media

Emotion, Mediation, Anxiety and Contagion

Edited by Tony D Sampson; Stephen Maddison and Darren Ellis

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If you are by chance in Paris in early June you might be interested in this two day workshop.

Workshop | Paris, 1 & 2 June 2015

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Call for Papers and Artworks Deadline 21^st Feb 2020