Graduate Speaker Series

Join Dr. Fabienne Darling-Wolf, professor and associate dean for research and graduate studies, on Friday, September 27, for a discussion of her book In the city they go ‘pit pit pit’: Digital media experiences in two rural communities on different sides of the world.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Common to the varied, and at times diverging, academic accounts of the impact of the digital revolution on social organization is their inclination to deploy technology as their main point of entry. Conceptualizing humans as ‘users,’ they tend to ignore how individuals’ experiences are shaped not (only) by their digital media use, but also by the mere presence of digital tools in daily life. Drawing from theories of mediation that encourage scholars to consider meaning-making ‘in’ rather than ‘through’ media, this book offers a different perspective on digital media’s transformative nature. Starting with the people whose lives technology necessarily shapes regardless of how they feel about its conditions of engagement, it tells the stories of how residents of two small communities on opposite sides of the world (France and Japan) negotiate the increased omnipresence of digital media in their everyday lives. Through this translocal, comparative approach, it considers residents’ lived experiences ‘in’ digital media within each ‘local’ contexts, but also in relationship to other contexts, each other, and to globalized virtual spaces.