This research colloquium will take place on 10.05.2023, from 16.15 to 17.45 on site at Linzer Str. 4, room 60.070.

Abstract:

In this presentation I will make a case for addressing humour as an online safety issue so that social media platforms can include it in their risk assessments and harm mitigation strategies. I take the ‘online safety’ regulation debate, especially as it is taking place in the UK and the European Union, as an opportunity to reconsider how and when humour targeted at historically marginalised groups can cause harm. Drawing on sociolegal literature, I argue that in their online safety efforts, platforms should address lawful humour targeted at historically marginalised groups because it can cause individual harm via its cumulative effects and contribute to broader social harms. I will also demonstrate how principles and concepts from critical humour studies and Feminist Standpoint Theory can help platforms assess the differential impacts of humour.

Bio:

Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at the Queensland University of Technology, Chief Investigator at the Digital Media Research Centre and Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. Her research focuses on the interplay between user practices and platform design and governance in (re)producing structural inequality. She is co-author of a forthcoming book on WhatsApp (Polity, with Amelia Johns and Emma Baulch).

You can find the invitation to the event here