"Beyond the Attention Economy: The Ambivalence of Pets, Memes, and TikTok"

Pockrass Memorial Lecture, Fall 2022: Cute pet and animal images are staples of contemporary digital cultures, but the cultural tenets that inform their creation and circulation can often be wielded for more insidious means. The same social media that give us Grumpy Cat can also give us political hate symbols. By specifically interrogating the role of attention in relation to pet and animal social media, communication scholar Jessica Maddox, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama, will discuss the slippages between the cute and ugly of the contemporary internet. The session is free and open to the public.

• If you cannot attend in person, there is a Zoom option but you must register in advance to watch via Zoom. DETAILS