[Commlist] "Digital Methods for Critical Consumer Studies" Summer School, 2nd edition - Call for applications

We are pleased to announce the second edition of the “Digital Methods 
for Critical Consumer Studies” Summer School, which will take place on 
24-28 July 2023 at Villa del Grumello, Como, Italy.

The DMCCS school

The overarching scope of the Summer School is to introduce students to 
the basic Digital Methods’ concepts, strategies, techniques, and tools, 
as well as to stimulate them to apply such methodological arrays to 
consumer-related topics. In doing so, the School aims at fostering 
students' ‘activist’ attitude towards digital data by encouraging them 
to take seriously the ethics of digital research as well as the 
redistribution of the social value of digital data to the public.

The main topic of the DMCCS23 will be:
“Exploring the nexus among surveillance capitalism, consumer culture, 
and social media”

This year the School will be dedicated to the theme of surveillance 
capitalismand its nexus with consumer culture. Digital platforms such as 
Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. configure as ad hoc ‘surveillance 
devices’ for systematic data extraction from the mass of users they host 
– data that are used for explicit business purposes (e.g., targeted 
advertising, development of AI products and services, etc.). To meet 
their business purposes, platforms not only need an enclosed space where 
to monitor, track and predict user behaviour; they need to design spaces 
where to constrain users’ activities into standardised patterns of 
action in order to make their behaviours predictable. Social media like 
Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok seem particularly suited for this purpose, 
since they provide users with free tools to produce creative content, 
create communities and express their identities. All these tools are, 
yet, purposely designed to capture such social-cultural processes, 
transform them into data points, and convert them into marketing and 
business products – for a global and emerging socio-economic model that 
Shoshana Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism.

Specifically, this year, we will address surveillance capitalism 
empirically through three main lines of research:

 1.

    Mapping imaginaries and practices of surveillance capitalism within
    social media environments

 2.

    Detecting and mapping the standardization of cultural production on
    social media (e.g., memetic behaviours)

 3.

    Repurposing surveillance methods for social research purposes as
    well as exposing mechanisms of surveillance itself.

Programme

The school will be articulated across 5 days. Mornings will be dedicated 
to teaching activities, which will be managed by the teaching team and 
teaching assistants. The afternoons will be dedicated to student 
activities (overseen by teaching assistants). During the last day of the 
school students will present their work and receive feedback from 
directors, teaching assistants, keynote speakers, and fellow colleagues. 
A final discussion will conclude the School activities. Keynote speakers 
will be Prof Janice De Negri-Knott (University of Bournemouth) and Dr 
Sophie Bishop (University of Sheffield). Find the detailed programmehere 
<https://dmcs2023.lakecomoschool.org/programme/>.

Call for participation

Applications should be sent to (alessandro.caliandro /at/ unipv.it) 
<mailto:(alessandro.caliandro /at/ unipv.it)>by 15 March 2023. Applications 
must entail a CVand presentation letter, containing: a) brief bio; b) 
interests of research; c) motivation to participate in the Summer School.

Further information on the programme, fees and accommodation are 
available at https://dmcs2023.lakecomoschool.org 
<https://dmcs2023.lakecomoschool.org>.

The School Directors

Alessandro Caliandro (Università degli Studi di Pavia; 
(alessandro.caliandro /at/ unipv.it) <mailto:(alessandro.caliandro /at/ unipv.it)>)
Alessandro Gandini (Università degli Studi di Milano; 
(alessandro.gandini /at/ unimi.it) <mailto:(alessandro.gandini /at/ unimi.it)>)
Guido Anselmi (Università degli Studi di Catania; (guido.anselmi /at/ unict.it) 
<mailto:(guido.anselmi /at/ unict.it)>)


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