Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is the Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media at Simon Fraser University, and leads the Digital Democracies Group which was launched in 2019. The Group aims to integrate research in the humanities and data sciences to address questions of equality and social justice in order to combat the proliferation of online “echo chambers,” abusive language, discriminatory algorithms and mis/disinformation by fostering critical and creative user practices and alternative paradigms for connection. It has four distinct research streams all led by Dr. Chun: Beyond Verification which looks at authenticity and the spread of disinformation; From Hate to Agonism, focusing on fostering democratic exchange online; Desegregating Network Neighbourhoods, combatting homophily across platforms; and Discriminating Data: Neighbourhoods, Individuals and Proxies, investigating the centrality of race, gender, class and sexuality to big data and network analytics.
Dr. Chun is also the author of Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (2016), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (2011), and Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (2006), as well as numerous articles and edited collections. She has received fellowships from various foundations and institutes, including the Guggenheim Foundation, ACLS, American Academy of Berlin, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. She was Professor and Chair of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she worked for almost two decades. Currently, Dr. Chun works with the Digital Democracies Group to undertake the proliferation of misinformation, abusive language and discriminatory algorithms. Through the investigation of natural language processing (NLP), political theory and critical data studies, the group aims to develop methods for creating effective online counterspeech and alternative models for connection. (2020)
Publications[edit]
- Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics, MIT Press, 2006, 352 pp.
- editor, with Thomas Keenan, New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader, Routledge, 2006; 2nd ed., eds. Wendy Chun and Anna Fisher, with Thomas Keenan, Routledge, 2015.
- Camera Obscura 24: "Race as Technology", eds. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Lynne Joyrich, 2009.
- Programmed Visions: Software and Memory, MIT Press, 2011, 239 pp.
- American Literature 85(4): "New Media and American Literature", eds. Tara McPherson, Patrick Jagoda and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, 2013.
- Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media, MIT Press, 2016.
- trans., China Renmin University Press, 2017. (Chinese)
- co-author, Pattern Discrimination, University of Minnesota, and Lüneburg: Meson Press, 2019, xii+123 pp.
- Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods and the New Politics of Recognition, ills. Alex Barnett, MIT Press, 2021, 344 pp. [1]
Links[edit]
- Profile on Simon Fraser U
- Profile on Brown U (archived)