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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Digital Refuse: Canadian Garbage, Commercial Content Moderation And The Global Circulation Of Social Media’S Waste, Sarah T. Roberts
Digital Refuse: Canadian Garbage, Commercial Content Moderation And The Global Circulation Of Social Media’S Waste, Sarah T. Roberts
Media Studies Publications
The story of a rogue Canadian garbage barge attempting to offload illegal garbage in the Philippines opens this article on techno-trash, in order to underline both the relationships between countries of the Global North with countries of the Global South in matters of waste, as well as to reframe discussions of techno-trash as one fundamentally tied to material things. The definition of techno-trash is then expanded, to cover digital detritus created through an entirely digital set of practices I term “Commercial Content Moderation.” The attempt to offload mounds of e-waste and the similar ways in which a great deal of …