Linguists first used the term backchannel to refer to the spontaneous responses and signals that provide interactivity to what is only apparently a one-way communication. Social media users have adopted the term to refer to the unofficial, multi-directional online conversation that parallels formal academic exchange at a lecture or conference. The Backchannels blog is intended to have a similar relationship to scholarly discourse in STS. It provides an outlet for alternative-format scholarly communications, publishing shorter, timelier, media-rich communiques of interest to the global STS community. The editors welcome proposed contributions.



Zines as communication tools to engage the public in debates about technology

Nov 25 2024

Engaging the public in critical conversations about technology presents a key challenge for researchers in STS and related fields. Jussara Rowland and Ana Delicado argue that zines are a valuable, yet under-utilized, tool for achieving this goal.

Bee smellscapes: olfactory relations in urban everyday ecologies

Nov 11 2024

In this post, Ceall Quinn describes multispecies smellwalking, a method for attuning to olfactory pollinator relations in urban ecologies.

Excremental Hauntings, or the Waste of Modern Bodies

Nov 4 2024

What does our growing obsession with shit and bodily leakage tell us about being modern, enlightened, and objective? Can we think without the dialectic of the sphincter, that alternation between containment and discharge, sovereignty and submission?

Border leakages: counting deaths in the Mediterranean

Oct 28 2024

In this post, Bruno Magalhães elaborates the concept of "leakage" as a lens through which to examine the hidden costs of externalized border controls. The concept allows us to address that which both escapes and reshapes containment.

‘Voicing Places’ at EASST/4S

Oct 14 2024

This report generates new insights to the concept of 'voicing' through a summary of panel discussions held during the EASST/4S meeting in Amsterdam to ask: What politics becomes possible through diverse and distributed practices of voicing attuned to soundings, and how do these politics translate into STS knowledge work?

Can science ensure “100% Halal”?

Oct 7 2024

As part of her PhD project on the transformation of the concept halal in Indonesia, Arum Budiastuti offers a reflection on how technology-based halal certification introduces a new meaning of halal and what implications this has.

Congress report/Relatório de evento/Reporte de congreso: XV ESOCITE 2024

Aug 14 2024

In this trilingual post, Jorge Alexander Daza Cardona reflects on his experiences at the XV Latin American Conference on Social Studies of Science and Technology (ESOCITE 2024), organized by the Latin American Association for the Social Studies of Science and Technology (ESOCITE)

Major Internet Outages are Getting Bigger and Occurring More Often: A Reflection on the CrowdStrike IT Outage

Aug 12 2024

In this timely post, A.R.E. Taylor, an anthropologist of technology and Senior Lecturer in Communications at the University of Exeter reflects on the wider socioeconomic issues underpinning the CrowdStrike IT outage that occurred on Friday 19th July 2024.

Are 4S conferences becoming more transnational?

Jul 29 2024

The globalization of the academic work prompted an increased flux of scholars in international conferences in all fields. In this piece, Noela Invernizzi and Sofía Foladori-Invernizzi explore how transnational 4S meetings have become, as a response to their own field’s critique of its Euro-American-centrism.

Spiders, Sex, and Slippages

Mar 25 2024

Jumping spider "song and dance" can serve as a generative entry point for staging broader disruptions in the misogyny and cisheterosexism that have long underwritten scientific studies of animal behavior.

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