Talks

Conference Presentations

2023

Organizing for the ‘gram: The radical politics of mutual aid activism on Instagram. International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference. Toronto (Canada), May 25-29.

Activism(s) compared: the importance of comparative digital activism research. International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference. Toronto (Canada), May 25-29.

2022

A radical Instagram visual culture? ECREA pre-conference, “Visual politics and protest – Current methodological challenges”. Remote presentation, October 6-7.

Stickers, Stories and solidarity: The making of collective identity among mutual aid activists on Instagram. International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference. Paris (France), May 26-30.

2020

Using the tools of the system to fight the system: How radical activists negotiate their use of social media. Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Annual Conference. Dublin (Ireland), October 28-31. (Remote presentation due to Covid-19).

Visual focus groups: Stimulating reflexive conversations with collective drawing. International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference. Gold Coast, Australia. May 21-25. (Remote presentation due to Covid-19). Best Paper Award, Activism, Communication and Social Justice Interest Group. 

“Everybody is on Facebook now”: social movements, technological uncertainties and the limits of the imagination. International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference. Gold Coast, Australia. May 21-25. (Remote presentation due to Covid-19).

2019

Mirrors, icebergs and puppet masters: making sense of the power of digital infrastructures through visual focus groups. Paper presented at ECREA Communication & Democracy conference “Infrastructures and Inequalities: Media industries, digital cultures and politics”. Helsinki (Finland), October 21-22.

Contesting The Government, Performing Modernity: The Sociotechnical Imaginary Of The Hungarian Internet Tax Protests. Paper presented at the Society for Social Study of Science (4S) Annual Meeting. New Orleans (LA), September 4-7.

Bodies that matter, bodies that don’t: Selective disembodiment in the early Wired magazine (1993-1997). Paper presented at the International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference. Washington, D.C., May 24-28.

Technocracy meets populism: the dominant technological imaginary of Silicon Valley. Paper presented at the Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication – Media and Populism. Lisbon (Portugal), January 15-19.

2018

A short history of fake media: reclaiming fakeness as activist media practice. Paper presented at the ECREA 7^th European Communication Conference. Lugano, Switzerland. October 31-November 3.

Mundane modernity: how the Hungarian internet tax protests imagined “the internet”. Paper presented at the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Annual Conference. Eugene, OR. June 20-24.

Fighting “the Man’s technology”: Visions of technology in the underground press of the American counterculture (1964-1974). Paper presented at the International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference. Prague (Czech Republic), May 24-28.

2017

Fake accounts, real activism: political faking and user-generated satire as activist intervention in the Italian public debate. Paper presented at the Conference of the Italian Association of Political Communication (Compol) “Communication and Politics in the Pop Democracy”. Rome (Italy), December 14-16.

The symbolic power of the internet in the Hungarian internet tax protests.  Paper presented at the ECREA Communication & Democracy conference “Digital democracy: Critical perspectives in the age of big data”. Stockholm (Sweden), November 11-12.

The politics of digital constitutionalism and the discourse of Internet exceptionalism in the Italian Declaration of Internet Rights. Paper presented at the Società Italiana di Scienza Politica (Italian Political Science Association) Annual Conference. Urbino (Italy), September 14-16.

Playful and critical: the participatory satire of political fakes and their publics. Paper presented at the International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference. San Diego (CA), May 26-29

2016

Keeping It Fake: Exploring User-Generated Political Fakes and Their Publics. Paper presented at the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Annual Conference. Berlin (Germany), October 5-8.

Play, individualism, exploitation: towards a comprehensive critique of the web 2.0 and its relationship with contentious politics. Paper presented at the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Annual Conference. Leicester (UK), July 27-31.

What “the Internet requires”: The discourse of internet exceptionalism in the Italian Declaration of Internet Rights. Paper presented at the International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference. Fukuoka (Japan), June 9-13.

Fake accounts, real activism: political faking and user-generated satire as activist intervention. Paper presented at the International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference. Fukuoka (Japan), June 9-13.

The History of il Manifesto and the Evolution of the Italian Left from the Prague Spring to the Arab Spring. Paper presented at the International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference. Fukuoka (Japan), June 9-13.

2015

We protest, therefore we are: event-driven, action-oriented collective identities in contemporary social movements.  Paper presented at the ECREA Communication & Democracy conference “Political Agency in the Digital Age: Media, Participation and Democracy”. Copenhagen (Denmark), October 9-10.

(Social) Media for the 99%? Rethinking alternative media and Social Movements’ Identity in the Corporate Web 2.0. Paper presented at the Union for Democratic Communication (UDC) conference “Circuits of Struggle”. Toronto (Canada), May 1-3.

2014

(with Marina Popescu) Success may not always look the same: A theory-driven comparison of how new tools of democratic participation work across contexts. Paper presented at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions. Salamanca (Spain), April 10-15.

2013

Social) Media for the 99%? Principles, practices and strategies of content production on social networking sites in Occupy Chicago. Paper presented at the ECREA Symposium “(Mis)Understanding Political Participation”. Munich (Germany), October 11-12.

WCIT’12: the Tradeoff Between Secrecy and Legitimacy in the Changing Landscape of Global Internet Governance. Paper presented at the International Conference “Political Communication in times of crisis”, organized by the IPSA, RC-22 Committee. Granada (Spain), September 12-13.

Guest Lectures & Talks

2021

“Online and social research methods”. Qualitative Research Methods (MSc Level), College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow. 25 November. (Recording used again in 2022)

“Seen from the outside: Occupy, the view from Europe and the legacy”. Guest talk for the “We are the 99%: Media and Memory of Occupy” course (undergraduate), University of Pennsylvania. 11 October.

2019

Workshop organizer, “Radical internet futures: let’s draw them together”, Our Networks, Toronto (Canada). September 22.

“Media and Social Movements”. Guest Lecture for the Zhejiang Summer School Program, University of Pennsylvania. July 10.

2019 Presenter, “Appropriation, Negotiation, Challenge: How the Technological Imaginaries of Contemporary Social Movements Respond to Silicon Valley”, Media Activism Research Collective (MARC), University of Pennsylvania. May 2.

Workshop organizer, “Imagined internets: a hands-on discussion on how we want the internet to be”, Internet Freedom Festival, Valencia (Spain). April 1.

2018

2018 Panelist, “The Academy and Activism”, organized by the Media Activism Research Collective (MARC), University of Pennsylvania. September 13.

“The Hungarian internet tax protests: freedom, modernity and the political power of technology”. Invited talk at the Annenberg-Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute, University of Oxford. August 8.

“Media and Social Movements”. Guest Lecture for the Summer School Program “Frontiers in Media and Communication”, University of Pennsylvania. July 28.

“Satire, culture jamming and online humor”. Guest Lecture for the Summer School Program “Frontiers in Media and Communication”, University of Pennsylvania. July 26.

2017

“Media and Social Movements”. Guest Lecture for the Political Communication course (graduate), Central European University (Hungary). November 27.

2016

“Communication Behavior Methods: Qualitative Approaches”. Guest Lecture for the Introduction to Communication Behavior course (undergraduate), University of Pennsylvania. September 16.

“Internet & rights: digital constitutions and “national” internet governance”. Panelist. Center for Global Communication Studies, University of Pennsylvania. April 16.

“Fake, authentic, real”. Guest Lecture for the WARNING! Graphic Content course (undergraduate), University of Pennsylvania. March 31.

2015

“Democratic software? The case of Liquid Feedback”. Guest Lecture for the New Tools of Citizen Participation and Democratic Accountability course (graduate), Central European University. March 10.