Our Research Team
Greg Elmer, Director
Greg Elmer (PhD, University of Massachusetts Amherst) is Bell Media Research Chair and Professor of Professional Communication at Ryerson University. Greg’s research and teaching focus on new media and politics, surveillance studies, software studies, collaborative media making, and media globalization.Greg has participated in a number of international projects, including most recently a research study of internet politics in S. Korea. For a number of years he provided internet research support with the Soros, Ford and Govcomorg Foundations to NGOs in eastern Europe, including Ukraine, Hungary and Poland. Greg was previously visiting Faculty Fellow at the Virtual Knowledge Studio (Amsterdam), the National Center for E-Social Science at the University of Manchester, and a Digital Cultural Institutions fellow at the Social Science Research Council in New York City. More recently Greg served as Cultures of the Digital Economy research fellow at Anglia Ruskin University, senior faculty fellow at the London School of Economics, and visiting research professor at Yeungnam University, South Korea. For 2013-2014 Greg was visiting faculty fellow in the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmith’s College, University of London.
Greg provides analysis and commentary for the media and expert witness testimony on the role of new media in Canadian politics. In the fall 2008 Greg worked with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on its internet coverage of the Canadian federal election. The CBC-Infoscape partnership resulted in a Gemini award for best cross platform project (2009). Greg has also contributed to election coverage for Global TV News and The Hill Times. Greg’s scholarly publications have appeared in a range of peer reviewed journals.
Greg has published a number of books: Compromised Data: From Social Media to Big Data (co-edited with Ganaele Langlois and Joanna Redden, Bloomsbury, 2015), the Permanent Campaign: New Media, New Politics (with Ganaele Langlois & Fenwick McKelvey, Peter Lang, 2012), Preempting Dissent: The Politics of an Inevitable Future, Andy Opel co-author (2008, ARP Press), Profiling Machines: Mapping the Personal Information Economy(2005: MIT Press),Critical Perspectives on the Internet (2002: Rowman and Littlefield), Contracting Out Hollywood: Runaway Productions and Foreign Location Shooting, Mike Gasher co-editor (2005: Rowman and Littlefield), and Locating Migrating Media (2010: Lexington Press). He serves on the editorial board of The Information Society, Internet Histories, Critical/Cultural Studies, Space and Culture, Television and New Media, Topia, the Canadian Journal of Communication, and the American Communication Journal.
Ganaele Langlois, Associate Director
Ganaele Langlois is Assistant Professor in Communication studies at York University, Canada, and Associate Director of the Infoscape Centre for the Study of Social Media. Her research interests lie in media theory and critical theory, particularly with regards to the shaping of subjectivity and agency through and with media technologies. She published a book entitled Meaning in the Age of Social Media (Palgrave, 2014). Professor Langlois is currently co-principal investigator on a SSHRC standard research grant to study the politics of social media platforms. She has co-edited a book on the topic entitled Compromised Data? From Social Media to Big Data (Bloomsbury, 2015). She is currently working on a research project about textile as communication. Her research has been published in New Media and Society, Culture Machine, Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies, Television and New Media, and Fibreculture.
Anthony Burton, Research Associate
Anthony Glyn Burton is a Research Associate with the Infoscape Lab. He is a Ph.D. student and member of the Digital Democracies Lab at the University of Simon Fraser on a SSHRC Joseph Bombardier Scholarship. He graduated from Ryerson and York University’s Master of Arts in Communication & Culture, where he wrote his thesis on involuntary celibacy and masculinity under neoliberalism. His research interests include critical theory, platform infrastructures, deep web cultures, and media archaeology.
Stephen Neville, Research Associate
Stephen J. Neville is a SSHRC-funded PhD student of Communication and Culture at York University. His master’s research on privacy and surveillance issues of consumer technology was awarded the 2019 Beaverbrook Prize by the Canadian Communication Association and will be published in upcoming editions of Surveillance & Society and Convergence. He uses qualitative and digital methods to examine how social imaginaries intersect with online platforms and new media.
Melody Devries, Research Associate
Melody Devries is a PhD candidate in the Communication & Culture department at Ryerson University, and is a recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier (CGS) Doctoral Scholarship. Her doctoral work uses ethnographic methods and theories of relationality and performativity to examine how contemporary far/right wing online communities exist in tandem with mainstream politics. Apart from working with Ryerson’s Infoscape Research Lab, she is currently co-editing a volume concerning the role of technologies in processes of far-right recruitment and mobilization.
Samuel Shaftoe, Research Associate
Sam Shaftoe is a second year MA Student in Communication & Culture with a background in Computer Science and Cognitive Science. Broad interests include digital labour, philosophy of technology, post-anthropocenic ecology, and genealogies of cybernetic thought. His Master’s research will investigate the temporal distortions of ecological disaster, financialization, and media platforms.
Sabrina Ward-Kimola, Research Associate
Sabrina is an MA student in the Communication and Culture program, and Ryerson Graduate Student scholarship recipient for 2020-2021. With a critical focus on embodiment and subjectivity, she researches subcultures as articulated within the digital, the enclosure of big tech on the commons and digital archiving practices.