In recent years, increasing proportions of our social lives—from social media to education to gaming platforms—have been conducted online. The Covid-19 pandemic has only accelerated this shift, as remote work and remote learning became the new normal for many. As we are thrust into ever more digitally mediated social milieux, the nature and design of the platforms and infrastructures that facilitate or constrain these experiences take on increasingly salient social and political importance.
ABSTRACT The study of digital games is necessarily a study of software and computers and their politics, histories, and imbrications in systems of power. Critical game studies as a field […]
ABSTRACT Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter on October 31, 2022 has left Black Twitter reeling in the wake of over a year of turbulence, with constantly changing affordances rendering the […]
ABSTRACT This field review explores the phenomenon of crypto-games (digital games built on blockchain technologies) and new racialized forms of play-based labor. Through examining Axie Infinity, a crypto-game made in […]
ABSTRACT This field review provides a critical history and overview of the two most popular for-profit meditation apps, Calm and Headspace, which have seen a dramatic uptick in downloads in […]
Amelia Gibson and Rua Williams explore academic scholarship and public discussion around disability access and accessibility and problematize the idea that disabled people truly have access to technology in contexts where they do not control technology.
Hector Beltran presents the phenomena of hacking and the hackathon. It also addresses issues of access and equity in how racialized, gendered, classed, or other marginalized social groups can undertake hacking or how they are treated within hacking spaces.
In this review of research on “the digital divide,” Roderic Crooks argues that access to computing in education or in any other domain can only meaningfully contribute to equality when minoritized and racialized communities are allowed to pursue their own collective technological goals.
