Tarleton Gillespie

Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, Cornell University
Fellow, Center for Internet and Society, Stanford Law School

Thursday, November 12, 2009

STS BROWNBAG
"A Conversation with Tarleton Gillespie"
12:00pm – 1:30pm in 8108 Social Science Building

LECTURE
"The Politics of Internet Platforms: How Sites Like YouTube are Shaping Information Policy and Public Discourse" – Flyer
4:00pm – 5:00pm in 8417 Social Science Building
(Reception at 3:45pm)


Lecture Abstract:
Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning themselves to users, clients, advertisers, and policymakers, making strategic claims as to what they do and do not do, and how their place in the information landscape should be understood. One term in particular, ‘platform,’ reveals the contours of this discursive work. ‘Platform’ has been deployed in both their populist appeals and their marketing pitches – sometimes as technical platforms, sometimes as platforms from which to speak, sometimes as platforms of opportunity. Whatever tensions exist in serving all of these constituencies are carefully elided. Yet despite the promise of openness, those who manage such sites are making decisions about where the edges of those platforms should be -- what should and should not appear, how it should be organized, what should be featured or squirreled away, and how it should be patrolled. And they are experimenting with both traditional and novel techniques for managing this discourse: not just removal and rating, but also technical mechanisms for marking content or making it inaccessible. Understanding both the promise made by these platforms and their actual intervention as both provider and chaperone helps reveal the contemporary contours of online cultural discourse and the curious place technology plays in its regulation.

Tarlteton Gillespie is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University and also a Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. He is the author of Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture (2007, The MIT Press), which was awarded the Outstanding Book Award for 2009 by the International Communication Association and the CITASA Book Award for 2009 by the Communication and Information Technologies division of the American Sociological Association. He is also a blogger about law, technology, media, and culture. See his blog Scrutiny here.