Assistant Professor

T: 778-782-4468
E: sun_ha@sfu.ca
Room: K9652

Personal Website

My research focuses on how the way we think and talk about technologies shape their human and social implications. My research asks questions like:

• What kind of beliefs and feelings about objectivity, neutrality, and technological progress underlie our approaches to algorithms and AI? What does it mean, for example, to think that automated scoring systems for job interviews or risk assessment can actually measure human beings - and how do those assumptions often lead us to amplify existing inequalities and harms?
• What does it mean to believe that privacy is 'dead', or to valorise the surveillance of 'bad people' as an exciting technological adventure? How do technologies like predictive policing and facial recognition rely on & perpetuate longstanding beliefs about crime or terrorism?
• Where did our popular notions about Facebook as a platform, Twitter as a quasi-public space, or the internet as a medium for 'free' speech, come from? How do our prevailing fantasies about communication and reason shape - and limit - the possibilities of what the internet can and should look like?

I usually draw from research in and around communication and media studies; critical data / algorithm studies; science and technology studies (STS); history of technology; critical theory.

My first book, Technologies of Speculation: The limits of knowledge in a data-driven society (NYU Press, 2020), asks: what counts as knowledge in the age of big data and smart machines? Drawing on mixed methods research into the Snowden affair and self-tracking technology, I argue that in the pursuit of better knowledge, technology is reshaping what counts as knowledge in its own image. The push for algorithmic certainty sets loose an expansive array of incomplete archives, speculative judgments and simulated futures. All too often, data generates speculation as much as it does information.

I am currently working on a SSHRC-funded project entitled Personal Truthmaking. It traces the cultural and historical resonances between two different ways in which the idea of 'truth' and 'facts' are being weaponised today: (1) in the politically polarised, platform-amplified practice of 'fact signalling' that demonises the other side as irrational and antimodern; (2) constantly recycled technological futures that encourage us to dream of fully automated luxury objectivity through the power of algorithms and AI.

More info & open access PDFs of my publications are available on my personal website.

FOR STUDENTS:

I teach undergraduate and graduate courses on topics including Digital Surveillance; Technological Futures; AI ? Algorithms and Society; and Mis/Disinformation.

I am currently accepting MA and PhD students. I'm happy to consider any project that takes some humanistic, cultural, social, and/or historical approach to new media and technology, including but not limited to algorithms and AI.

I welcome students from interdisciplinary or non-Communications/Media Studies backgrounds. I should note that if your work is primarily focused on solving technical problems around AI and algorithms, or you are above all looking for expertise in quantitative social sciences methods, I am probably not best equipped to advise you!

My recent students and their areas include:

• Shirong Ding (MA): COVID & platform disinformation
• Catherine Dubé (MA): Beauty apps, health/wellness tech and biopolitics
  
• Rowan Melling (PhD): Romanticism & Silicon Valley tech culture

FOR COLLEAGUES & MEDIA:

I regularly speak to media outlets, student newspapers, podcasts, and I'm also happy to do guest lectures or academic talks / symposia. For any inquiries, please get in touch by email.

• 2016 Ph.D. Communication, University of Pennsylvania
• 2010 M.A. Media Studies, Victoria University of Wellington
  
• 2008 B.A. Hons. Media Studies & B.A. Classical Studies, Victoria University of Wellington

Keywords: New media, critical theory, continental philosophy, big data, AI, digital culture, surveillance, affect, science and technology studies