What role do social media platforms play in forming and negotiating digital labour? How do platforms frame online selves and lives as intelligible or otherwise? What are the cultural and communicative practices Creators and users rely on to mediate their identities in digital spaces?

At this virtual panel, Sherman Centre Graduate Residents will share their in-progress research and address these timely questions. Drawing from exciting interdisciplinary fields such as Cultural Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Automedia, and Human-Computer Interaction, the papers in this session consider the on and offline impacts of affective labour and attention economies, self-branding practices, and the mediation of identity.

Adrianna Michell analyzes the Twitter hashtag #PaidSickDaysSaveLives, where workers in Ontario, Canada, expressed concerns over government sick leave policies amidst the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Emma Croll-Baehre examines how twin content creators across diverse platforms articulate and mediate their digital selves and lives. Jess Rauchberg explores the communicative strategies that censored or "shadowbanned" disabled TikTok and Instagram Creators rely upon for platform engagement. Special guest Professor Jessalynn Keller (Communication, Media, and Film, University of Calgary) then joins the session for a formal response to the Graduate Residents' presentations.

All are welcome at this session, which will be recorded and released publicly.