Extended Profiles and Podcasts

-- Special Issues Out recently: “Scams, Fakes, and Frauds” for New Media & Society, and “Digitizing Borders, Cities, and Landscapes” for Information & Culture


-- Labor Tech Research Network.  I’m so thrilled that our decade-long reading group has transitioned into a public-facing non-profit which can engage with the community!  Labor Tech is a network of scholars, activists, and workers exploring intersections labor, technology, feminism, anti-racism, and transnationalism.  Our goal is to create a unique environment that is interdisciplinary, justice-oriented, and forging of solidarities across global north and south.


As founder and director, I’m joined by an amazing executive board and set of working group coordinators.  We’ve been starting with a variety of activities including a Speaker Series, a peer support group, and social justice advocacy.  Learn more about us at http://labortechresearchnework.org.  If you’d like to become a member, please see this membership form.  Help support our efforts by going to our Zeffy app or Paypal Giving Fund page.

-- Book Series.  One of our first activities from the network is a new book series with MIT Press on Labor and Technology.  Have a glance at our first three books Worn Out, Green Card Soldier, and Media Ruins at the press’s public launch of our series.  Tell us about your project!  Send inquires to me and our new editor at the press, Justin Kehoe, jkehoe@mit.edu.

-- Book Award.  Received by contributors of digitalSTS: A Field Guide, Princeton University Press. The Amsterdamska Award, from the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, is given for a significant creative collaboration in an edited book or special issue in the broad field of science and technology studies.  My chapter is: “Sound Bites, Sentiments, and Accents: Digitizing Communicative Labor in the Era of Global Outsourcing.”

Teaching

In Memoriam

Article:  “Striking by Telegraph, Avatar, and Geotag: Changing ICT Landscapes of Virtual Protest,” International Journal of Communication, 15(2021): 4360–4382.

Article:  “Data Battles, Platform Shutdowns, and Digital Rights of Surveillance:  Labor Politics in the Online Sex Industry,” Saint Louis University Law Journal, 65(1), 2021

Spanish Translation:  “Enactments of Nation in Transnational Call Centers,” by myself and Kiran Mirchandani, in El Call Center Global:  Cultura, Trabajo y Poder en Capitalismo Digital (The Global Call Center:  Culture, Labor, and Power in Digital Capitalism), edited by Rafael Alarcón Medina, 2021.  Tijuana:  El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
(See the English version in our book Borders in Service)

Correspondence (Letter to the Editor) in Nature:  “Tech Firms Need Black AI Scholars and Labour Rights” (by Ifeoma Ajunwa, Sareeta Amrute, Lilly Irani, Meg Stalcup and myself, on behalf of Labor Tech Research Network), 2021

Book Monograph: Multi-surveillances:  Transnational Digital Agency in the Outsourced Services of Indian Call Centers, MIT Press, Forthcoming

See My Work Discussed and Quoted In:

What I'm Working on at the Moment

“Vulnerabilities of Information,” Conceptualizing Vulnerability - A Roundtable, UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies, University of Hyderabad, 2023


Berkeley Food Institute, “Roundtable on Appropriate & Equitable Tech in Agriculture,” Berkeley, California, February and September 2023


“Scams, Bots, and Digital Workers:  Deception in Online Platform Economies,”  Technologies of Deception, Information Society Project, Yale Law School, 2022


“International Outsourcing,” California Dreaming: Regulating the Gig Economy Symposium, University of the Pacific School of Law, 2022 

Presentations

Winifred Poster, PhD



For the International Affairs Program at Washington University St. Louis, I’ve been teaching several courses: Virtual Money Makes the World Go Round:  Paypal, Bitcoin, and The Politics of Demonetization; Drones, Biometrics, and Surveillance; Inequality, Development, and Transnational Social Justice; International Law and Human Rights; and Indian Barbie, Asian Tigers, and IT Dreams: The Politics of Globalization and Development in South Asia


See David Gerard answer questions for my Virtual Money class, about his book “Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain”

Publications

KQED Public Radio for Northern California, Forum (Audio).  “A Tech Startup Removes Accents from Call Center Workers’ Speech. Does that Mask Bigger Problems?”  (Sept 19, 2022)


BBC World News (Video), “Call Centre Accents:  Tech Company Develops Software to Change Accents” (August 27, 2022)

Times of London (Print):  “App Changes Call Centre Workers’ Accents to Sound More American,” by Keiran Southern (August 26, 2022)

SFGate (Print):  “Sanas, The Buzzy Bay Area Startup that Wants to Make the World Sound Whiter,” by Joshua Bote (August 23, 2022)

The Verge (Print):  “Reselling Gig Work Is Tiktok’s Newest Side Hustle,” by Mia Sato (Feb 9, 2022)

Labor Tech Research Network, Director and Founder

Washington University, St. Louis, ​International Affairs Program

wposter@wustl.edu

wrposter@gmail.com


The Latest 

Page Last Updated:  December 2023

Rest in peace to my father, Mark Poster, 1941-2012, a pioneer of media, internet, and information studies, and a great dad.  See his obituary in the LA Times.

-- Just finished a project for the International Labour Organisation with Miriam Cherry on "Regulating Platform Labor in the US, ” which we presented at the 8th Conference of the Regulating for Decent Work Network in Geneva, Switzerland, 10–12 July 2023.

 -- Writing a monograph, Data Labor on the Margins:  Prisons, Villages, and Scammers in Indian ICT Outsourcing, funded by National Science Foundation grant, The Hidden Back Office of Info-Tech: Rural and Prison Sourcing of Information and Communication Technology Labor.  Initial thoughts were presented as:

Podcast:  “Miriam Cherry and Winifred Poster: Invisible Labor.”  Inside Source:  A Podcast for Professional Women.  (January 3, 2023)


Podcast:  “Political Economies of Transnational Labour, #3.04.” Technology, Together, International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore, India (March 28, 2022)

​Print Interview:  “Invisible Work and Workers’ Struggles in Digital Contexts: An Interview with Winifred Poster” DigiLabour Blog, Brazil (Aug 23, 2020)