COMM As You Are

In this episode of COMM As You Are, we sit down with Lizhen Zhao, a PhD candidate in Communication at UMass Amherst, to talk about her ethnographic research on e-commerce and platform economies in rural China. Drawing on fieldwork in her hometown in Gansu Province, including working inside a distribution center, Lizhen explores how digital platforms reshape labor, land, and everyday life. We discuss rural livestreaming and the commodification of agricultural labor, the material infrastructures that make platform convenience possible, and the environmental and human costs hidden behind logistics, surveillance, and “green” platform initiatives like Ant Forest.

A PhD candidate and novelist Shanaz Bashir sits down with COMM As You Are to unpack how a single cinema in Kashmir becomes a visual archive of power. Through two photographs taken seventy-six years apart, Shanaz Bashir traces a striking transformation: from 1947 crowds openly gathering to hear a political leader speak, to 2023 scenes where military bunkers are concealed behind propaganda billboards during a tightly managed state spectacle. Bashir reflects on how the Palladium Cinema’s shifting roles—from cultural venue to political office to surveilled, shuttered site—reveal the ways buildings, images, and media infrastructures become battlegrounds for democracy, memory, and control.

What happens to art when the gallery moves online - and when artists can no longer afford to live near it? Dr Brendan McCauley joins us to explore how digital platforms, economic pressures, and the pandemic have reshaped creative practice. From regional artists in Western Mass to global changes in film editing software, Brendan's work examines how production communities adapt—and what gets lost in translation. This episode unpacks how space, labor, and technology intersect in the art world today.

Larri Miller is helping define a new subfield: critical computational social science. In this episode, we talk about their research on right-wing digital communities, their commitment to mixed methods, and the epistemological roots of conspiracy belief. Along the way, we unpack the limits of data, the politics of platforms, and why understanding the “why” matters as much as measuring the “what.”

How does political language change when it moves from newspapers to social media? PhD candidate Alina Ali Durrani joins us to trace how meaning, ambiguity, and power shift across media ecosystems in Pakistan. Her dissertation analyzes Urdu-language op-eds and viral Twitter posts, unpacking how discourse travels - and distorts - between platforms. From TikTok virality to the algorithmic amplification of ideology, this episode maps the messy, multilingual terrain of political communication in the Global South.

Is a rom-com just a rom-com? In this episode, PhD candidate Kate Burrell reflects on her journey from theater and film studies to a deeply interdisciplinary project on cinematic genre. Drawing from documentary studies, critical media theory, and cultural studies, Kate shares how streaming platforms like Disney+ and Netflix are reshaping narrative conventions - and why genre is never as stable as it seems. From the French New Wave to Marvel’s media empire, we explore the messiness of genre, the politics of storytelling, and the labor behind the spectacle.

Cecilia Zhou joins COMM As You Are to discuss her mixed-methods research on children and media, examining how gender norms, digital advertising, and parental mediation shape adolescent experiences online. Drawing on fieldwork in both China and the U.S., Cecilia offers a critical look at media literacy, datification, and the ethics of growing up in a platformed world.