Janna Frenzel | Concordia University (Canada) (original) (raw)
Papers by Janna Frenzel
Selected papers of internet research, Dec 31, 2023
Building on already existing work that critically examines the material implications of digital i... more Building on already existing work that critically examines the material implications of digital infrastructures, this panel asks what environmental justice means in relation to digital technologies. Turning against the language of revolution that too often gets leveraged by Big Tech to describe the latest "disruptive" technology that is allegedly going to solve the world's problems (Geiger, 2020; Tabel, 2022), we foreground subversive practices, regulatory interventions, and grassroots organizing and vision building as emancipatory alternatives to a for-profit, monopolized internet. From a theory of change that seeks to understand and challenge the extractive nature of digital technology production from all angles, we shed light on reform, repair, refusal, and resistance as paths for transformation. Zooming in on Southeast Louisiana where hundreds of petrochemical processing and manufacturing facilities are located, the first paper examines how Internet access can be reimagined in landscapes shaped by extractive economies. The paper analyzes the challenges that activist and research groups face when using Internet of things (IoT) devices for real-time environmental sensing of air quality due to underdeveloped Internet infrastructures in a region that is becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate change. The second paper engages with the material footprint and environmental implications of computing hardware production. It looks at the "Right to Repair" as one approach that challenges corporate control over design and obsolescence of electronic devices. By comparing examples of recent legislation in the EU, India, and the US, and analyzing them through the lens of design justice and discard studies frameworks, it argues that Right to Repair needs to be complemented by a substantial change in industry norms and practices rather than simply attempting to delay the disposal through repair by consumers. The third paper examines community resistance to data centers in the United States. In the past years, activists have framed their resistance to data centers along three critiques, namely noise pollution, resource consumption, and lack of public input to permitting processes. The paper investigates how environmental justice activists use formal legal and regulatory processes such as public meetings, petitions, lawsuits, public records requests to organise against new data center developments, and the challenges they meet as part of their organising. The fourth paper presents a "feminist principle of the internet on the environment" that was developed over several years in transnational collaborative work by practitioners. It addresses the interconnections between gendered online violence against land and environmental defenders on large social media platforms and on-the-ground resistance to extractive industries and outlines a new emancipatory vision for a different internet that centers planetary care and justice for communities and ecosystems.
New Media & Society, 2021
Our article analyses partisan, user-generated Facebook pages and groups to understand the articul... more Our article analyses partisan, user-generated Facebook pages and groups to understand the articulation of political identity and party identification. Adapting the concept of scenes usually found in music studies, these Facebook pages and groups act as partisan scenes that maintain identities and sentiments through participatory practices, principally by making and sharing memes. Using a mixed methods approach that combines social media data and interviews during the 2019 Canadian federal election, we find that these partisan scenes are an active part of elections and the overall political information cycle in Canada but endure beyond election cycles. Rather than trying to sway voters of different political affiliation and influence the election outcome, Facebook users employ memes to hang-out and build community, thereby reinforcing partisanship.
sub\urban. zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung, 2016
Bei riots handelt es sich um unscharfe Phänomene, die von urbanen Jugendaufständen bis zu gewaltv... more Bei riots handelt es sich um unscharfe Phänomene, die von urbanen Jugendaufständen bis zu gewaltvoll eskalierenden Demonstrationen reichen. Auch der Begriff riot ist trotz seiner teils regen Verwendung in Medien und Wissenschaft nach wie vor diffus und unscharf. Neben diesen konzeptionellen Leerstellen gibt es in den Sozialwissenschaften bisher kein klar umrissenes Forschungsfeld zu riots. Auch der Sozialen Bewegungsforschung gelingt es nicht, riots als Protestphänomene zu fassen. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Lücken im Forschungsstand versucht sich der vorliegende Text an einer wissenschaftlichen Verortung von riot als Phänomen und als Begriff. Dabei werden zwei zentrale Aspekte der bisherigen sozialwissenschaftlichen Debatte zu riots untersucht: das Verhältnis zwischen riots und Gewalt sowie das Verhältnis zwischen riots und dem Politischen.Bei riots handelt es sich um unscharfe Phänomene, die von urbanen Jugendaufständen bis zu gewaltvoll eskalierenden Demonstrationen reichen. Auch ...
transcript Verlag eBooks, Mar 3, 2023
Bei riots handelt es sich um unscharfe Phänomene, die von urbanen Jugendaufständen bis zu gewaltv... more Bei riots handelt es sich um unscharfe Phänomene, die von urbanen Jugendaufständen bis zu gewaltvoll eskalierenden Demonstrationen reichen. Auch der Begriff riot ist trotz seiner teils regen Verwendung in Medien und Wissenschaft nach wie vor diffus und unscharf. Neben diesen konzeptionellen Leerstellen gibt es in den Sozialwissenschaften bisher kein klar umrissenes Forschungsfeld zu riots. Auch der Sozialen Bewegungsforschung gelingt es nicht, riots als Protestphänomene zu fassen. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Lücken im Forschungsstand versucht sich der vorliegende Text an einer wissenschaftlichen Verortung von riot als Phänomen und als Begriff. Dabei werden zwei zentrale Aspekte der bisherigen sozialwissenschaftlichen Debatte zu riots untersucht: das Verhältnis zwischen riots und Gewalt sowie das Verhältnis zwischen riots und dem Politischen.
Selected papers of internet research, Dec 31, 2023
Building on already existing work that critically examines the material implications of digital i... more Building on already existing work that critically examines the material implications of digital infrastructures, this panel asks what environmental justice means in relation to digital technologies. Turning against the language of revolution that too often gets leveraged by Big Tech to describe the latest "disruptive" technology that is allegedly going to solve the world's problems (Geiger, 2020; Tabel, 2022), we foreground subversive practices, regulatory interventions, and grassroots organizing and vision building as emancipatory alternatives to a for-profit, monopolized internet. From a theory of change that seeks to understand and challenge the extractive nature of digital technology production from all angles, we shed light on reform, repair, refusal, and resistance as paths for transformation. Zooming in on Southeast Louisiana where hundreds of petrochemical processing and manufacturing facilities are located, the first paper examines how Internet access can be reimagined in landscapes shaped by extractive economies. The paper analyzes the challenges that activist and research groups face when using Internet of things (IoT) devices for real-time environmental sensing of air quality due to underdeveloped Internet infrastructures in a region that is becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate change. The second paper engages with the material footprint and environmental implications of computing hardware production. It looks at the "Right to Repair" as one approach that challenges corporate control over design and obsolescence of electronic devices. By comparing examples of recent legislation in the EU, India, and the US, and analyzing them through the lens of design justice and discard studies frameworks, it argues that Right to Repair needs to be complemented by a substantial change in industry norms and practices rather than simply attempting to delay the disposal through repair by consumers. The third paper examines community resistance to data centers in the United States. In the past years, activists have framed their resistance to data centers along three critiques, namely noise pollution, resource consumption, and lack of public input to permitting processes. The paper investigates how environmental justice activists use formal legal and regulatory processes such as public meetings, petitions, lawsuits, public records requests to organise against new data center developments, and the challenges they meet as part of their organising. The fourth paper presents a "feminist principle of the internet on the environment" that was developed over several years in transnational collaborative work by practitioners. It addresses the interconnections between gendered online violence against land and environmental defenders on large social media platforms and on-the-ground resistance to extractive industries and outlines a new emancipatory vision for a different internet that centers planetary care and justice for communities and ecosystems.
New Media & Society, 2021
Our article analyses partisan, user-generated Facebook pages and groups to understand the articul... more Our article analyses partisan, user-generated Facebook pages and groups to understand the articulation of political identity and party identification. Adapting the concept of scenes usually found in music studies, these Facebook pages and groups act as partisan scenes that maintain identities and sentiments through participatory practices, principally by making and sharing memes. Using a mixed methods approach that combines social media data and interviews during the 2019 Canadian federal election, we find that these partisan scenes are an active part of elections and the overall political information cycle in Canada but endure beyond election cycles. Rather than trying to sway voters of different political affiliation and influence the election outcome, Facebook users employ memes to hang-out and build community, thereby reinforcing partisanship.
sub\urban. zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung, 2016
Bei riots handelt es sich um unscharfe Phänomene, die von urbanen Jugendaufständen bis zu gewaltv... more Bei riots handelt es sich um unscharfe Phänomene, die von urbanen Jugendaufständen bis zu gewaltvoll eskalierenden Demonstrationen reichen. Auch der Begriff riot ist trotz seiner teils regen Verwendung in Medien und Wissenschaft nach wie vor diffus und unscharf. Neben diesen konzeptionellen Leerstellen gibt es in den Sozialwissenschaften bisher kein klar umrissenes Forschungsfeld zu riots. Auch der Sozialen Bewegungsforschung gelingt es nicht, riots als Protestphänomene zu fassen. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Lücken im Forschungsstand versucht sich der vorliegende Text an einer wissenschaftlichen Verortung von riot als Phänomen und als Begriff. Dabei werden zwei zentrale Aspekte der bisherigen sozialwissenschaftlichen Debatte zu riots untersucht: das Verhältnis zwischen riots und Gewalt sowie das Verhältnis zwischen riots und dem Politischen.Bei riots handelt es sich um unscharfe Phänomene, die von urbanen Jugendaufständen bis zu gewaltvoll eskalierenden Demonstrationen reichen. Auch ...
transcript Verlag eBooks, Mar 3, 2023
Bei riots handelt es sich um unscharfe Phänomene, die von urbanen Jugendaufständen bis zu gewaltv... more Bei riots handelt es sich um unscharfe Phänomene, die von urbanen Jugendaufständen bis zu gewaltvoll eskalierenden Demonstrationen reichen. Auch der Begriff riot ist trotz seiner teils regen Verwendung in Medien und Wissenschaft nach wie vor diffus und unscharf. Neben diesen konzeptionellen Leerstellen gibt es in den Sozialwissenschaften bisher kein klar umrissenes Forschungsfeld zu riots. Auch der Sozialen Bewegungsforschung gelingt es nicht, riots als Protestphänomene zu fassen. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Lücken im Forschungsstand versucht sich der vorliegende Text an einer wissenschaftlichen Verortung von riot als Phänomen und als Begriff. Dabei werden zwei zentrale Aspekte der bisherigen sozialwissenschaftlichen Debatte zu riots untersucht: das Verhältnis zwischen riots und Gewalt sowie das Verhältnis zwischen riots und dem Politischen.