Coffee & Viz: Visualizing the “Invisible”: Methods for Trans Digital Spaces

How do marginalized people carve out and stitch together spaces, knowledge, and cultures of their own, while navigating political economies of oppression? Specifically, how do digital environments afford and limit trans people in their production of culture, access to accurate medical knowledge, and their sense of self? How do trans youth act to define the meaning of trans identities for the larger trans community in the US and abroad, and how do concerns around privacy and data ethics structure the possibilities for building on their seemingly private worlds?

In sharing visualizations including text analyses and social network analyses of one million-plus dataset of Tumblr hashtags spanning 2014-2021, Dr. Jen Jack Gieseking will present his latest research exploring these questions. Their next paper dives into issues of data ethics in social media, using the case study of trans Tumblr data and thereby weighing the benefits and detriments of this data as both a site of cultural production and health knowledge within the trans community. Gieseking is an Associate Professor of Geography at University of Kentucky and author of the recent book, A Queer New York: Geographies of Lesbians, Dykes, and Queers (NYU Press, 2020).

This event is part of the NC State University Libraries on-going Coffee & Viz series. Attendees will be entered into a drawing to receive (via mail) their choice of a coffee bag or tea tin and a mug from locally-owned sweet shop Anisette.

Please register here to participate in the event.

NC State University students, staff, and faculty are invited to join Dr. Gieseking for a more in-depth conversation and Q&A directly following the presentation. Please register here for access to the Zoom link and Q&A form.