Guest Lecture for MA Digital Media at WSA

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I delivered a lecture introducing environmental issues relating to digital media infrastructures, titled ‘Computing Infrastructures: Climate Justice Through Digital Media’. The students were on the MA Digital Media, in the Department of Art and Media Technology, at Winchester School of Art.

The lecture was arranged in three parts: 1) an introduction to climate justice, 2) digital media and carbon and 3) what a just future for technology in light of climate change could look like.

My lecture description is as follows:

“As the tech sector narrates solutions to climate change through continued modes of extraction on people and the planet, a combined justice movement that connects climate and technological impacts is necessary.

In this session, we will explore insights into how some digital media practices extend our understandings of the environment around us as climate change continues to exacerbate social injustices. In particular, we will look to how practitioners uncover the history of technology’s role in extractivism, how multispecies and speculative fiction approaches are applied to digital media practices, and how to go beyond only the metrics of carbon emissions of digital media.”

My assigned readings for the lecture were:

Marks, Laura U., Joseph Clark, Jason Livingston, Denise Oleksijczuk, and Lucas Hilderbrand. 2020. “Streaming Media’s Environmental Impact.” Media+Environment 2 (1). https://doi.org/10.1525/001c.17242. Chinese Translation: https://mediaenviron.org/article/89898-calculating-and-mitigating-our-streaming-carbon-footprint-chinese-translation

Pasek, A., Vaughan, H., & Starosielski, N. (2023). The world wide web of carbon: Toward a relational footprinting of information and communications technology’s climate impacts. Big Data & Society, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231158994 (Original work published 2023)

With an example of digital media artists’ intentions for carbon conscious practices - Digital Decarbonisation Consensus & Conjectures (2022)

Jansen, F. (2025). Sustainable and Equitable Infrastructures: Moving from Extraction to Regeneration - Branch. [online] Branch. Available at: https://branch.climateaction.tech/issues/issue-9/sustainable-and-equitable-infrastructures-moving-from-extraction-to-regeneration/

Find out more about MA Digital Media at WSA.