Books by Ganaele Langlois
Really Fake, 2021
Really Fake takes up story, poetry, and other human logics of care, intelligence, and dignity to ... more Really Fake takes up story, poetry, and other human logics of care, intelligence, and dignity to explore sociotechnological and politico-aesthetic emergences in a world where information overload has become a new ontology of not-knowing.
Free PDF from meson press; paper version for sale from UMN Press
in: Compromised Data: New paradigms in social media theory and methods, Elmer, G. et al. (ed.), L... more in: Compromised Data: New paradigms in social media theory and methods, Elmer, G. et al. (ed.), London: Bloomsbury, pp. 202–225.
There has been a data rush in the past decade brought about by online communication and, in parti... more There has been a data rush in the past decade brought about by online communication and, in particular, social media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, among others), which promises a new age of digital enlightenment. But social data is compromised: it is being seized by specific economic interests, it leads to a fundamental shift in the relationship between research and the public good, and it fosters new forms of control and surveillance.
Compromised Data: From Social Media to Big Data explores how we perform critical research within a compromised social data framework. The expert, international lineup of contributors explores the limits and challenges of social data research in order to invent and develop new modes of doing public research. At its core, this collection argues that we are witnessing a fundamental reshaping of the social through social data mining.
The search for meaning is an essential human activity. It is not simply about agreeing on some de... more The search for meaning is an essential human activity. It is not simply about agreeing on some definitions about the world, objects, and people, but is also an ethical process of opening up to others and to the world to find new possibilities. Social media corporations commodify our search for meaning by defining the parameters through which we can experience meaningfulness. This new context of meaning requires rethinking the relationships between language, software, and the psyche. Langlois uses case studies of popular social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon, among others) to revisit traditional conceptions of meaning. She develops a new theoretical and methodological framework drawing from post-Fordist theories, software studies, critical theory, and relational psychoanalysis to examine the technical mediation and commodification of the psychic, cultural, and linguistic processes involved in the search for meaning.
Papers by Ganaele Langlois
Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice, Sep 9, 2008
Let me recall a Super Bowl 2010 Google video ad titled “Parisian Love.” In it, we see easily reco... more Let me recall a Super Bowl 2010 Google video ad titled “Parisian Love.” In it, we see easily recognizable Google interfaces—mostly the Google search engine, but also Google Translate and Google Maps— queried by an anonymous user over the span of many years. We start with a search for study abroad programs in Paris, go through queries on how to romance in French and where to take a date, followed by how-to advice on long-distance relationships, then how to find a job in Paris, a church to get married in, and ultimately how to assemble a crib. The message, of course, is that Google has all the answers, both practical and profound. The ad illustrates quite powerfully the crucial importance of Google as a platform that lends meaning to our lives. It marks a significant departure from the previous image of the search engine as a retriever of knowledge and information. Google, the ad shows, now acts as a confidante and figure of empowerment; it takes an active role in enabling a process of becoming, both at the psychic level of desire and satisfaction, and at the social level of fitting in. In other words, Google does not simply provide the right kind of information; it provides safety, certainty, and connections, fulfilling a psychosocial function by bringing in social order and individual satisfaction.
Canadian journal of communication, Jan 10, 2006
This paper calls for a cultural analysis of the World Wide Web through a focus on the technical l... more This paper calls for a cultural analysis of the World Wide Web through a focus on the technical layers that shape the Web as a medium. Web technologies need to be acknowledged as not only shaped by social processes, but also deployed, through standardization and automation, as agents that render representation possible by following specific technocultural logics. Thus, the focus is on the relationship between hardware, software, and culture through an analysis of the layers of encoding that translate data into discourse, and vice versa. Résumé : Cet article appelle au développement d'une analyse culturelle du Web axée sur les couches technologiques qui transforment le Web en média. Les technologies Web ne doivent pas seulement être reconnues comme étant façonnées par des processus sociaux, mais aussi comme étant déployées, au travers de phénomènes de standardisation et d'automatisation, comme agents qui rendent toute représentation possible en suivant des logiques technoculturelles spécifiques. Ainsi, la priorité est donnée aux relations entre le matériel informatique, les logiciels et les processus culturels au travers d'une analyse des couches de codage qui traduisent les données informatiques en discours, et vice-versa.
Television & New Media, Feb 2, 2012
This article develops a critical alternative to the common equation between participatory culture... more This article develops a critical alternative to the common equation between participatory culture and democratic communication and argues that power on online participatory platforms should be understood as the governance of semiotic open-endedness. This article argues that the concept of cultural expression cannot be understood solely by looking at users’ cultural practices, but should be revisited to pay attention to the networked conditions that enable it. This involves tracing the governance of disparate processes such as protocols, software, linguistic processes, and cultural practices that make the production and circulation of meaning possible. Thus, communication on participatory platforms should be understood as the management of flows of meaning, that is, as the processes of codification of the informational, technical, cultural, and semiotic dynamics through which meanings are expressed. This makes it possible to understand the logics through which software platforms transform information into cultural signs and shape users’ perceptions and agencies.
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2014
is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throu... more is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2014
Canadian journal of communication, Mar 1, 2019
Background Launched in the early 1800s in Lyon, France, the Jacquard mechanism is often seen as t... more Background Launched in the early 1800s in Lyon, France, the Jacquard mechanism is often seen as the precursor for today's software systems, enabling greater productivity in the automated industrial production of woven fabric. Analysis Based on archival research, this media archaeology article argues that the Jacquard mechanism enabled a new form of textile-based digital imaging. Lyon weavers used the mechanism to augment human imagination and strive for increased complexity in their quest for making textiles compete with the dominant media of the time (etching, printing, painting) and with the new medium of photography. Conclusion and implications Such augmentation of human intelligence and imagination brings to light the possibility for alternative relationships between human bodies and brains and digital systems based on collaboration rather than subsumption. Keywords Weaving; Jacquard mechanism; McLuhan; Digital media RÉSUMÉ Contexte On a souvent envisagé le métier Jacquard, créé à Lyon en France au début du 19ème siècle et permettant un meilleur rendement dans la production industrielle de l'étoffe tissée, comme étant un précurseur des systèmes numériques d'aujourd'hui. Analyse S'inspirant de l'archéologie des médias et recourant à la recherche d'archives, cet article soutient que la mécanique Jacquard a rendu possible une nouvelle forme d'imagerie numérique basée sur les textiles. En effet, les tisseurs lyonnais utilisaient le métier Jacquard pour accroître l'imagination humaine et atteindre une plus grande complexité afin de rendre les textiles compétitifs avec les médias dominants de leur époque (eau-forte, impression, peinture) ainsi qu'avec le nouveau média qu'était la photographie. Conclusions et implications De telles augmentations de l'intelligence et de l'imagination humaines soulèvent la possibilité de rapports alternatifs entre d'une part les corps et cerveaux humains et d'autre part des systèmes numériques fondés sur la collaboration plutôt que sur l'inégalité.
Culture Machine, Feb 18, 2011
What is the critical purpose of studying meaning in a digital environment which is characterized ... more What is the critical purpose of studying meaning in a digital environment which is characterized by the proliferation of meanings? In particular, online participatory media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter offer a constant stream of user-produced meanings. In this new context of seemingly infinite 'semiotic democracy' (Fiske, 1987), where anybody can say anything and have a chance to be heard, it seems that the main task is to find ways to deal with and analyze an ever-expanding field of signification.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Mar 10, 2022
Duke University Press eBooks, Mar 23, 2022
This dissertation project argues that the study of meaning-making practices on the Web, and parti... more This dissertation project argues that the study of meaning-making practices on the Web, and particularly the analysis of the power relations that organize communicational practices, needs to involve an acknowledgement of the importance of communication technologies. This project assesses the technocultural impact of software that automatically produces and dynamically adapts content to user input through a case study analysis of amazon.com and of the MediaWiki software package. It offers an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that borrows from communication studies (discourse analysis, medium theory, cultural studies of technology), from new media studies (software criticism) and from Actor-network theory and Felix Guattari’s mixed semiotics. In so doing, the research defines a new methodological framework through which the question of semiotics and discourse can be analyzed thanks to an exploration of the technocultural conditions that create communicative possibilities. The analysis of amazon.com examines how the deployment of tools to track, shape and predict the cultural desires of users raises questions related to the imposition of specific modes of interpretation. In particular, I highlight the process through which user-produced meanings are incorporated within software-produced semiotic systems so as to embed cultural processes within a commercial imperative. While amazon.com is an instance of the commercial use of dynamic content production techniques on the Web, Wikipedia stands as a symbol of non-commercial knowledge production. The Wikipedia model is not only cultural, but also technical as mass collaborative knowledge production depends on a suite of software tools - the MediaWiki architecture - that enables new discursive practices. The Wikipedia model is the result of a set of articulations between technical and cultural processes, and the case study examines how this model is captured, modified and challenged by other websites using the same wiki architecture as Wikipedia. In particular, I examine how legal and technical processes on the Web appropriate discursive practices by capitalizing on user-produced content as a source of revenue.
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Books by Ganaele Langlois
Free PDF from meson press; paper version for sale from UMN Press
Compromised Data: From Social Media to Big Data explores how we perform critical research within a compromised social data framework. The expert, international lineup of contributors explores the limits and challenges of social data research in order to invent and develop new modes of doing public research. At its core, this collection argues that we are witnessing a fundamental reshaping of the social through social data mining.
Papers by Ganaele Langlois
Free PDF from meson press; paper version for sale from UMN Press
Compromised Data: From Social Media to Big Data explores how we perform critical research within a compromised social data framework. The expert, international lineup of contributors explores the limits and challenges of social data research in order to invent and develop new modes of doing public research. At its core, this collection argues that we are witnessing a fundamental reshaping of the social through social data mining.