Elisha Lim explains the collision between algorithms and marginalized issues. Ad metrics rank social justice in terms of publicity and promotional opportunity. This is good for politicians, advertisers and influencers, and fatal for communities struggling with degrading personal contests and debilitating reputation anxiety. What can we do? Lim explains the creep of “identity economics,” a term they coined at MIT in 2019, and then outlines the antidote: Radical Algorithmic Literacy.
Elisha Lim (they/them) is an award-winning queer filmmaker and graphic novelist whose high-profile activist career is the subject of their research into social media’s distortion of identity politics. Lim’s concept, “identity economics,” has been published in Social Media + Society, Documenta, Bitch Magazine, C Magazine and a 2020 TEDx talk. Lim’s community-based award winning claymation films, solo and group exhibits, curatorial projects, anti-racist Montreal annual festival “Qouleur,” and graphic novel 100 Crushes (Koyama Press) are part of university curricula internationally and documented in academic monographs including Leslie Bow’s Racist Love (Duke University Press, forthcoming 2022) Eliza Steinbock’s “Vital Art: Transgender Portraiture as Visual Activism” (2018) and Tara Atluri’s Uncommitted Crimes (Inanna Books, 2018). Lim is currently writing a PhD on Digital Media at the University of Toronto where they are Project Manager for the Critical Design Methods Institute.
Watch the TED talk here, read Elisha’s research here, and contact Elisha at e.lim@mail.utoronto.ca