Professor of Architecture Eric Sauda and School of Architecture alumni Alireza Karduni and Ginette Wessel recently published their book, Social Media and the Contemporary City (Routledge). The book focuses on the interplay between social media, local communities, and urban space in a variety of political and economic settings related to social activism, informal economic activity, public art, and global extremism. According to the publisher’s description, “the book views social media not as a replacement for the local community or urban space but rather as a translation of the uses and meanings of all three realms.”
Ten chapters at the core of Social Media and the Contemporary City take as case studies a wide range of events – local, national, and international. Among those are two Charlotte-centric investigations: One chapter focuses on the protests that followed the Keith Lamont Scott shooting in 2016, while another is a study of mobile food trucks in Charlotte in 2015. Other case studies include the 2016 Pulse Night Club shooting in Orlando; the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C.; the 2019 massacre at the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand; and the Burning Man arts festival, held virtually in 2020.
In addition to his position on the faculty of the School of Architecture, Eric Sauda also teaches in the Charlotte Vis Center and the School of Data Science UNC Charlotte. His research interests include interactive environments, digitally augmented performance, and social media in architecture and urban settings. His work has been published in the Journal of Architecture Education, Journal of American Planning Association, New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, The Routledge Companion to Critical Approaches to Contemporary Architecture, and Planning Support Science for Smarter Urban Futures.
Alireza Karduni completed the design computation program in 2017, earning dual master’s degrees in architecture and information technology. In 2020 he received a PhD from the College of Computing and Informatics and is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University’s Department of Computer Science. His research connects human computer interaction and computational social sciences. He studies how people interact with social media data under uncertainty and his work has been published in venues such as Transactions in Visualizations and Computer Graphics, Journal of American Planning Association, and Social Media + Society.
Ginette Wessel received a Master of Architecture and an MA in Geography from UNC Charlotte in 2008. In 2018 she earned a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. She is an assistant professor of architecture at Roger Williams University, where her primary research interests include contemporary issues of urban development, with an emphasis on social equity, sustainability, and communication technology. Her work has been published in The MIT Press, Journal of American Planning Association, New Media & Society, Journal of Urban Design, and Participatory Urbanisms. She is currently working on the book Mobilizing Food Vending in the American City, slated for publication in 2022. Wessel will lead an SoA Colloquium on February 22. Learn more and register here.