Media Whatever

Are museums media? In this episode your hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli are joined by heritage scholar Melanie Stavrou to discuss how museums shape national identities and cultures, especially when they ‘acquire’ objects through colonisation and conquest. We also look at museums as spaces for participation and empowerment (as well as contemplation), at decolonising the national museum,...

What is Incel culture and where does it come from? In this episode your hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli join Francesco Barchiesi for a journey into the manosphere, where young men ’take the red pill’ to discover a world of female privilege and male victimhood. The truly committed go further, taking ‘the black pill’ to dive still deeper into self-loathing, despair and collective loneline...

How does screen-time change the way we connect to each other romantically? Does digital love trigger a desire for human connection, a ‘nostalgia for the body’? In this episode your host Chris Bilton (missing Carolina Bandinelli) talks with Professor Mary Harrod about screen portrayals of relationships, love and gender. We discuss hetero-pessimism, #MeToo, rom-coms, yoghurt and why Mary can no long...

You’ve heard about the manosphere - In this episode hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli talk to Akane Kanai about the emerging world of online feminism. Drawing on Akane’s recent book  The New Politics of Online Feminism  we discover an online culture where young women must measure up to proprietary standards of what it means to be a feminist. We discuss generational differences, fear of be...

In the final episode of this academic year, hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli talk to Sebastián Lehuedé about the environmental costs of AI. AI’s data centres generate carbon emissions and burn through rare minerals, but these hidden environmental costs are often ignored, offshored to remote locations. At the same time, hubristic claims that AI can solve environmental problems from Google...

In a wide-ranging discussion of digital culture and the future of work, your hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli talk with sociologist Alessandro Gandini about how digital media have transformed our experience of work and our sense of self, especially in the years since the Covid-19 pandemic. Whilst this has led to some nostalgia for pre-digital communities of place, for most of us platform...

n this episode your hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli talk with curator and author Valentina Tanni about how artists and creative technologists are subverting the tech logic of digital media by creating weird memes, vapour trails and remixes of online culture. Valentina guides us through the backrooms and counter-cultures of web culture and AI art, suggesting that the online world might n...

In this episode your hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli talk to AI policy expert Tommy Shaffer Shane about the descriptive affordances and architecture of AI – how does AI reinforce biases and norms, and how far do humans create or challenge those biases? And how does ‘Artificial Intelligence’ reproduce certain assumptions about the meaning and value of ‘intelligence’? Can the ‘object’ of...

Our hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli are joined by Adam Arvidsson who talks to us about ‘industriousness’ in the new digital economy from ‘bullshit jobs’ to entrepreneurial content creators on TikTok and Instagram. Who belongs in this ‘neo-plebeian’ class of precarious, entrepreneurial creative workers? What drives them, where are they from and what will they do next?   Adam Arvidsson is...

Our hosts Chris Bilton and guest host Cecilia Ghidotti  are joined by  Ellen Charlesworth  from Durham University to discuss how museums, often with very limited resources, attempt to use social media and online collections to engage audiences – and how these efforts can sometimes misfire or distract. Ellen’s current research looks at the invisible absences in museums’ digital collections – and sh...

Our hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli are joined by graphic designer, artist and activist  Marco Ugolini . How can designers do ‘good work’ outside the commercial logic of advertising and branding? What are the politics of visual communication? How can designers apply ethical decisions to everyday tasks and projects? And how are creative workers connected to a longer history of material l...

Our hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli are joined by guest Emiliano Treré (Cardiff University) to talk about everyday forms of resistance against platform power. Emiliano will draw on his new book  Algorithms of Resistance  (MIT, 2024) co-authored with  Tiziano Bonini. You can watch our CMPS Seminar Series on our YouTube Channel - Link

Our hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli are joined by guest Elif Buse Doyuran (University of Edinburgh) to discuss how online platforms use ‘nudge theory’ to challenge and channel our habitual behaviour.  You can watch our CMPS Seminar Series on our YouTube Channel - ⁠Link⁠

Our hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli are joined by guest Ludmila Lupinacci (University of Leeds) to talk about how platforms are not anymore concerned with thoughts and opinion but rather with the (re)production of moods and vibes.  You can watch our CMPS Seminar Series on our YouTube Channel - ⁠Link⁠

Our hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli are joined by guest Rachel O'Neill (London Shool of Economics) to talk about the rise of medical influencers and the wellness culture on social media. You can watch our CMPS Seminar Series on our YouTube Channel - ⁠Link⁠

Our hosts Chris Bilton and Carolina Bandinelli are joined by guest Cecilia Ghidotti (University fo Warwick) to talk about how and why creative workers may well quit their jobs.  You can watch our CMPS Seminar Series on our YouTube Channel - ⁠Link⁠

Welcome to Media Whatever, the new podcast from the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies at the University of Warwick. The podcast is about research from the Media and Creative Industries, and each episode will feature guests from CCMPS and the wider research community. You can watch our CMPS Seminar Series on our YouTube Channel - ⁠Link⁠