Alberto Lusoli

I am Deputy Director and postdoctoral fellow at the Digital Democracies Institute.   I sometimes work as a sessional instructor at the Simon Fraser School of Communication. 

During my PhD I worked as Research Assistant at SFU’s GenaLab, where I researched the social impact of emerging technologies.

From 2018 to 2021 I was the editor in chief of Stream, the SFU School of Communication graduate journal. In 2022 I became the journal’s Faculty Advisor.

Prior to starting my PhD, I was a Research Fellow at the European Centre for Living Technology at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice.

Books:

Lusoli, A. (Forthcoming). Make, Measure, Fail, Learn, Repeat. Creative labor in the age of start-up. Under contract with Palgrave Macmillan, Creative Working Lives series. Release date: October 2023.

Peer-reviewed papers:

  • Lusoli, A. (2022). Live, Work, Play: Exploring the Rhetorical Dimension of Remote Work Attraction Incentives Programs. International Journal Of Communication, 16, 23. 
  • Lesage, F., & Lusoli, A. (2021). Weaving Mediation and Embodiment: The Media Ethnographer as Figurations of Mediation. International Journal Of Communication, 15, 18.
  • Lusoli, A., & Turner, F. (2021). “It’s an Ongoing Bromance”: Counterculture and Cyberculture in Silicon Valley—An Interview with Fred Turner. Journal of Management Inquiry, 30(2), 235–242. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492620941075.
  • Chow-White, P., Al-Rawi, A., Lusoli, A., & Phan, V. T. A. (2021). Social Construction of Blockchain on Social Media: Framing Public Discourses on Twitter. Journal of Communication Technology, 4(2), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.51548/joctec-2021-008
    • Full open access paper available here.
  • Lusoli, A. (2020). Teaching business as business: The role of the case method in the constitution of management as a science-based profession. Journal of Management History, 26(2), 277–290. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-06-2019-0042
  • Chow-White, P., Lusoli, A., Phan, V. T. A., & Green, S. E. (2020). ‘Blockchain Good, Bitcoin Bad’: The Social Construction of Blockchain in Mainstream and Specialized Media. Journal of Digital Social Research, 2(2), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.33621/jdsr.v2i2.34
  • Chow-White, P., Struve, S., Lusoli, A., Lesage, F., Saraf, N., & Oldring, A. (2018). ‘Warren Buffet is my cousin’: shaping public understanding of big data biotechnology, direct-to-consumer genomics, and 23andMe on Twitter. Information, Communication & Society, 21(3), 448–464. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1285951
  • Lusoli, A., & Sardo, S. (2017). Build it and They will Come: Analysis of an Online Deliberation Initiative. PlaNext – next Generation Planning, 4, 41–57. https://doi.org/10.24306/plnxt.2017.04.004

Public scholarship:

  • Lusoli, A., (2022). A response to Seán Cubitt – The Vancouver Abstraction. Digital Democracies Institute Speaker Series. Available at: https://digitaldemocracies.org/sean-cubitt-the-vancouver-abstraction/ 
  • Canute, M., Holtzclaw, H., Lusoli, A., Chun W. (2022), Hate and the COVID-19 pandemic – An analysis of B.C. Twitter discourse. British Columbia’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner.

Book reviews:

  • Lusoli, A. (2020). The platform economy. How Japan transformed the consumer internet. Information, Communication & Society, 23(1), 155–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1668041

Free & open source software:

Conference presentations:

  • 73rd ICA Conference. May 2023, Toronto, Canada.
    • Last in, first out: The creative-class diaspora during the COVID-19 pandemic
      (awarded Top Paper in the Media Industry Studies Interest Group);
    • Playing against the grain: Toxicity and counterspeech in gaming (panel organizer and chair).
  • 73rd ICA Pre-conference. May 24, 2023. York University, Toronto, Canada.
    • Mis/disinformation and the artifices of authenticity and authentication (organizer).
  • XX ISA World Congress of Sociology. June 2023, Melbourne, Australia.
    • The Impact of Remote Work on U.S. Rural Regions and Second-Tier Cities during the COVID-19 Pandemic;
    • Between Hope and Despair: The Bootstrap Worker As a New Professional Figure.
  • Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS) 2023 Toronto, Ontario.
    • Design thinking as an epistemic practice in media production;
    • From counterspeech to counterplay: opposing toxicity and hate in gaming (panel organizer and chair);
    • Performances of authenticity and the spread of mis/disinformation online (panel organizer and chair).
  • Communicative Cities Research Network Symposium 2022, London School of Economics, London, UK.
    • Remote work and the redrawing of the US rural imaginary during the COVID-19 Pandemic. (Slides).
  • Global Perspectives on Platforms and Cultural Production, University of Amsterdam+ Virtual.
    • From creative tools to platforms: the softwarization of creative working lives.
  • Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS) 2022 Congress, Virtual.
    • The creative class exodus. The impact of remote work on the rural imaginary.
  • 72nd ICA Conference, Paris and Virtual.
    • Hustle harder? Reforming Independent Labor Through Occupational Communities;
    • Blue Sky Workshop: Digital Ethnography: Methods for Networked Worlds.
  • IAMCR Nairobi 2021, July, Virtual Conference.
    • Design Thinking and Digital Media Production
  • IV ISA Forum of Sociology, Feb. 25 2021, Porto Alegre + Virtual.
    • Occupational Communities and the Democratization of Startup Labor. (Slides).
    • Figurations of Mediation: Social Movements, Collective Actions and Social Change in the Media Manifold. (Slides).
  • 70th Annual International Communication Association Conference, May 20-26 2020, Gold Coast, Australia, Virtual Conference.
    • ‘Blockchain Is Out of Beta’: The Social Construction of Blockchain in Mainstream and Specialized Media. (Video Presentation).
    • From Praxis to Knowledge: A Retrospective on the Diffusion of the Case Method Pedagogy in Business Education. (Video presentation).
  • Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Annual Meeting, September 2019, New Orleans, LA, USA.
    • “Talking about business: The role of occupational communities in the democratization of labour in startup companies”. (Video presentation).
  • Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS) 2019 Congress, June 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. 
    • “The role of occupational communities in Vancouver’s digital media industry”. (Slides).
  • 69th Annual International Communication Association (ICA) Conference, May 2019, Washington, DC, USA.
    • Poster presentation: “Ethnography of/in/through digital platforms: opportunities and challenges”.
  • XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology, July 2018, Toronto, ON, Canada.
    • “Teaching Business as Business: the role of Harvard’s Case Method in the Construction of the Modern Manager” 
    • “The Role of Occupational Communities in the Democratization of Labour in Startup Companies. a Data-Driven Ethnographic Approach”
  • Work in the 21st Century: Innovations in Research, Feb 26th 2018, Vancouver, BC. Canada.
    • “Understanding labor in startup ventures: a data-driven ethnographic approach”. (Slides).
  • International Communication Association. 67th Annual Conference, May 27th 2017, San Diego, USA. 
    • “The social shaping of DTC genetic testing. Sentiment analysis of 23andMe on Twitter” (Slides).
  • Connectados por la Paz, Aug. 5th 2015, Bogota, Colombia.
    • “Innovation in Civic Engagement: Analysis of and e-deliberation project” (Slides).
  • Mediacity 5, May 5th 2015, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK.
    • “Contextualizing Technology: a Study on Emerging Functionalities in Digital Artifacts”.
  • Conference of the Italian Society of Science and Technology Studies, June 2014, 5th, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy. 
    • “ICT and emerging functionalities: analysis of an e-deliberation experiment”. (Slides).
  • Narrations and communities: building communities for making citizenship, April 2014, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy. 
    • “E-deliberation in Cesena: a very serious game”. (Slides).
  • Games, Science & Society, October 2013, International Institute Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.
    • “Fostering sustainability through civic engagement”. (Slides).
  • Visions in Global Systems Science: Narratives as a Communication Tool for Scientists, March 2013, DG CONNECT, European Commission, Brussels, Belgium.
  • Envisioning a Socially Sustainable Future: Models, Narratives, Art, October 2012, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy.
    • “Videogames, a new kind of narrative”. (Slides).

Service:

Organizations:

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4s logo white
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You can also find me on:

Orcid ID Alberto Lusoli
Research Gate profile
Github profile
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