New media and internet studies are uniquely positioned to examine the cultural mediation of design, discourses, and meaning of digital technologies but are sometimes under equipped for analyses of the technical and organizational properties of digital interfaces, services, and their associated user practices.

This two part methodology workshop describes a possible methodological intervention: critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA). CTDA employs critical cultural frameworks (e.g. critical race or feminist theory) with philosophy of technology and science and technology studies to interrogate digital artifacts, their practices, and the beliefs of the users employing them.

CTDA integrates semiotic interface analysis with critical discourse analysis of the interface’s users. This workshop series will outline this technique, providing examples of how its methodological flexibility applies to examining varied ICT artifacts while maintaining a hermeneutic perspective on design and use, and provide examples of how practitioners employ this methodology in various research settings. CDTA is designed for researchers interested in minority groups and digital practice as it foregrounds critical cultural theories while examining digital technology, grounded in user perspectives and real-world practices.

André Brock is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at Georgia Tech. He writes on Western technoculture, Black technoculture, and digital media. His scholarship examines Black and white representations in social media, video games, weblogs, and other digital media. He has also published influential research on digital research methods. His first book, titled Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures, was published with NYU Press in 2020 and theorizes Black everyday lives mediated by networked technologies. As a Co-Principal Investigator of the DISCO Network, Brock facilitates the Project on Rhetorics of Equity, Access, Computation, and Humanities (PREACH) Lab.

Registration for this event is currently closed.

Accessibility:
We want to make our events accessible to all participants. If you anticipate needing accommodations to participate, please contact our administrative assistant Eric (ericcman@umich.edu) or fill out our anonymous access form. Please note that some accommodations must be arranged in advance and we encourage you to contact us as soon as possible.