Feministing at SXSW!

UPDATE: Jessica will not be attending SXSW due to health reasons. Apologies!
It is that time of year again for SXSW! For those of you that have been reading the blog for a while know that Feministing is part of the SXSW community and has been since my first very exciting (some may say mind-blowing) experience there my first year and then again last year, and has helped me in thinking about the line between identity and the internet. This year they have kindly asked me to do a solo presentation as part of their diversity series on “Asians and the Internet.” Since I don’t do anything text-book I decided to switch it up calling my session, “Redefining Asians and the Internet: I am not your fetish.”

“Chances are if you google “Asians on the Internet,” you are not going to get a list of the unique and cutting edge ways that different Asian communities interact with online environments. The Asian community in all its diverse and diasporic formations has a long trajectory of interacting with online environments, both in how they interact and how they are interacted with.
Amongst the questions covered in this Future15 will be: How are Asians perceived with regard to the internet? How are they represented online? What are critical ways that Asian communities are interacting with online communities that either exemplifies their lived reality or exists in opposition to it? What would a redefinition of how we understand Asians and the Internet be? What can we expect in the next few years?”

Also, I am very excited to announce that Jessica will be at SXSW this year as well and is currently one of the featured speakers on the conference site. She is on a panel about commenting culture called, “From Trolls to Stars: The Commenter Ecosystem.”

This panel will explore the fascinating and often bizarre world of
commenter culture. From trolls on 4chan to Star Commenters on Gawker Media blogs, panelists will discuss:
– The nuances of commenter/blog symbiosis (including the
benefit/detriment to the business side of ad-supported blogs)
– The nature of commenter hierarchies
– The sociology of self-policing/group determination of community
standards of behavior
– The implications of the shift from handle-based identities to
real-world identities (Facebook Connect)

You can get all our panel information from the links provided and stop by and say hi if you are at the conference.