This talk examines how diabetic use of self-tracking continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) and diabetic data sensibilities that come from CGM use have been increasingly generalized to non-diabetic users and uses of CGM devices since 2021, when CGMs were approved in some international jurisdictions for use without requisite medical necessity. Communities of non-diabetic practice use the CGM to measure their glucose like diabetic users do, but in frameworks that both distance and re-center diabetes in their design and use. Just as diabetics learn to feel their numbers in relation to how CGMs datafy and visualize their glucose numbers over time, non-diabetic CGM users aim to measure, visualize, and develop a feel for their sugars like people with diabetes do: to develop diabetic-like “data gazes,” ways of seeing data about glucose that people with diabetes cultivate around the graphical visualizations of CGM data. CGM use by people without diabetes generalizes diabetic practice, technology, and sensibility, putting people with and without diabetes into newly configured, and often contentious, relations around their shared use of the CGM device. Based in analysis of social media marketing, online promotions, unboxing videos and a corpus of social media comments around CGM use by people without diabetes, this talk demonstrates how centrally chronic illness figures into the practices, routines and feel of quantified selfhood with the CGM, around the one chronic illness that stands in for managed chronic living more generally: diabetes.

Doxing—the unauthorized disclosure of private or personally identifying information online—has become one of the most contentious practices in contemporary digital culture. While often framed as a form of online harassment, doxing is also used as a tactic of accountability by antifascist groups and other online communities seeking to expose oppressive actors. This paper traces the early history of doxing from 1987 to 1999, exploring how the practice emerged across different online communities, including hacker forums, antifascist networks, and online vigilante groups. Drawing on archival materials, this study argues that doxing’s origins lie both in practices of deviance and subversion and in grassroots efforts to develop community safety. By situating doxing within alternative histories of the internet, this paper demonstrates how the weaponization of personal information has been shaped by both technological infrastructures and the social norms and politics of online subcultures. This intervention challenges dominant narratives that portray doxing solely as an act of malice, instead positioning it as one that is far more contested, revealing the internet’s dual capacity to enable both harm and community. Further, excavating the history of doxing offers an opportunity to analyze how the design, governance, and politics of the internet have shaped —and been shaped by— contentious and stigmatized practices.Together, this research highlights the ruptures between anonymity and accountability, spectacle and surveillance, information access and closure, and privacy and publicity that continue to shape the politics of online safety today.

In January 2020, beauty vlogger Nikkie de Jager (better known by her username NikkieTutorials) publicly came out as a trans woman, after more than a decade-long career on YouTube during which she passed as a cisgender, heterosexual woman, and under duress of a blackmailer who threatened to leak her “secret” identity. Far from ending her career, de Jager’s disclosure propelled her to greater success in the cutthroat creator economy, increasing her celebrity status. In this article, I argue that de Jager leveraged her coming-out to bolster her performance of authenticity as a microcelebrity, reaffirming and deepening her intimacy with her audience. This dialogic intimacy is central to the performance of microcelebrity. While previous studies have theorized the strategies that creators use to perform microcelebrity, little attention has been paid to the role of the audience in microcelebrity. I argue that microcelebrity is a strategy of performance that is co-constructed with the audience, making it distinct from parasocial relationships.

This paper analyzes AI-generated depictions of librarians to determine their alignment with stereotypical portrayals. Previous research has highlighted gender biases in large language models (LLMs) and AI-generated images, often depicting professions like secretaries and nurses as women and medical professionals as white males. However, no studies have examined AI-generated images of librarians. This study fills that gap by exploring how these images uphold stereotypes, focusing on portrayals in American English and Brazilian Portuguese. Data was collected from DALL-E, Midjourney, and Adobe Firefly using gender-neutral prompts in both languages. Thematic analysis revealed recurring themes and patterns in the visual representations. Preliminary findings indicate that AI-generated images often depict librarians as white, slender, intellectual women, with stereotypical elements like glasses and cardigans. The study underscores the need for a critical approach to Generative AI, as training data reflects societal biases, perpetuating stereotypes. These portrayals can impact the public perception of librarians, potentially alienating users and reinforcing an outdated, predominantly white, female, and middle-class image of the profession.

This study examines the networking and monetization strategies employed by Spanish-speaking financial influencers (finfluencers) on YouTube. Given the precarious labor market conditions facing young people, finfluencers promise easy and fast ways to “get rich”. These alternative pathways to financial success include cryptocurrencies, trading, online gambling, and internet-based business, like microtasking, dropshipping or online mentoring. Through a co-link analysis of video descriptions obtained through YouTube API v3 (n=68,455), this research identifies key monetization methods, including course sales, affiliate marketing, crowdfunding, and direct product sales. Additionally, BERTopic modeling reveal dominant thematic trends within finfluencer content. Preliminary findings indicate a strong commercial orientation, with content often framed as “financial education” that includes links to affiliate marketing or course sales, a deliberate strategy to diversity their online presence in other platforms like TikTok, Instagram or Spotify, and topics related to trading, gaining money from home, Paypal and cryptocurrencies. This study contributes to the underlying business models of finfluencers in order to assess their potential impact on audiences and their role in shaping consumer behavior.

Imagine a scenario in which players engage in conversations with non-playable characters (NPCs) in video games using a microphone, free from scripted responses or predefined constraints. With the advancement of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI), this possibility has become more feasible than ever. This article examines the Mantella mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda, 2011), which facilitates natural language interactions with NPCs, transforming player engagement within the game’s fictional universe. Skyrim is an action role-playing game (RPG) developed by Bethesda Game Studios. With over 60 million copies sold and releases spanning three generations of gaming consoles, Skyrim has cemented its place in gaming history. A significant factor contributing to its enduring relevance is its vibrant modding community, which has enabled players to modify and expand the game in myriad ways – ranging from graphical enhancements to the introduction of new areas and survival mechanics. This extensive capacity for customization has sustained the game’s popularity for over a decade since its initial release. The primary objective of this article is to investigate the creative appropriation of GAI by Skyrim's PC modding community. Specifically, it addresses the following question: What AI imaginaries emerge from Skyrim gameplay influenced by the Mantella mod? To explore this question, 13 YouTube videos were collected using ethnographic techniques, complemented by a formal gameplay analysis.

This study explores the legitimacy of AI-generated images in photojournalism and their potential role in documentary practices. While much of the discourse surrounding AI-generated images focuses on their involvement in disinformation and misinformation, less attention has been given to their possible documentary and informational applications. This research investigates how news media professionals assess the use of AI-generated images for documenting events and the ethical and procedural challenges they pose. Through a qualitative study involving 15 semi-structured interviews with photo-editors, photojournalists and documentary photographers in Italy, the study examines their perspectives on AI-generated images in news media contexts. Findings suggest that AI-generated images could be perceived not as a radical disruption but rather as a continuation of pre-existing illustrative trends. While AI-generated images may find a place in journalism, they should not be considered an extension of traditional photography but rather a distinct visual medium requiring its own ethical framework and editorial verification processes.

Datafication can be defined as the process of capturing, appropriating and processing user information for different capitalist purposes (Cukier and Mayer-Schoenberger, 2013; Van Dijck, 2017). In our ongoing research “Datafication of the work activity of media workers in their productive arrangements” we seek to understand the datafication of work activities. Specifically, we put a magnifying glass on the digital machinery to understand the place of value production of the media workers, as well as their specific place in the production chain of platform companies, to ascertain whether and how the work process of these professionals is datafied in its different specificities.

The global digitalization process sweeping the world in the last few decades is often approached through the prism of some disruptive or innovative tech products, the big tech companies that “built” them or the relentless public efforts to regulate them. Still, the practical picture actually looks much more mundane: taking the form of products as seemingly as simple as an e-commerce banner, a check-in app or a simple sale receipt, developed in global teams bringing together developers, designers, researchers, quality analysts or products and projects managers often based in the Majority World – in major tech subcontracting or outsourcing hubs such as India or Brazil – and working directly for clients or subsidiaries based in Europe or the US. But who are these workers? And how are the international division of labour, coloniality of power and overall political economy of the tech industry shaping their work experiences and the products they build? Based on an ongoing global research and extensive ethnographic interviews with Brazilian and Indian tech workers regarding their trajectories, worldviews and experience in global teams, this paper aims at uncovering their perspectives on the inner workings of the companies they are working for, the challenges of consultancy work for clients based in the Minority World and the very social, cultural and political implications of this global organization of labour that then become visible.

Latin American cities have been actively integrating micromobility services as part of people’s urban mobility habits. However, this integration lacked other sustainable mobility changes, such as access to bike paths, proper smartphones, and mobile internet. Much of the scholarship on shared transportation in the Global South does not analyze how they are integrated with sustainable and “just” ways of moving through the city. Often emerging technologies are appropriated into existing patterns of mobility injustice, perpetuating existing inequalities. This paper analyzes the development of electric scooters in Rio de Janeiro as a case of how micromobility is embedded into existing and systemic issues of mobility injustice. Drawing from news articles, we describe the diverse uses of scooters in Rio de Janeiro, and their integration with smartphones. Our findings help to contextualize micromobility in developing world mega-cities.