Frances Corry
Biographic Data
| ID | 316658 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Frances Corry |
| GIVEN NAMES | Frances |
| FAMILY NAME | Corry |
| SIGNATURE | CORRY F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern California |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0503-2410 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Social Media's Midlife Crisis? How Public Discourse Imagines Platform Futures
As long-standing social media platforms reinvent themselves and new platforms emerge, recent discourses about social media describe the platform landscape as marked by rising uncertainty and volatility. This article deconstructs popular media narratives of emerging, centralized social media platforms, including TikTok, BeReal, and Threads. Through a qualitative textual analysis of mainstream press discourses, we address the current existential ju…
The production of destruction
This article addresses how platform closure is produced by drawing on interviews with former employees of MySpace, the social media platform popular in the mid-2000s. Focusing on how staff grappled with user-generated content and user data while sunsetting an old version of the MySpace platform in 2011 to make way for a newly configured MySpace platform that debuted in 2013, it chronicles the decisions that platform employees were faced with whil…
Digital Memory, Pandemic Temporalities
Digital memory studies is a field deeply attuned to social transformations, including the often abrupt and destabilizing impact of crisis events. It is also a field attuned to the role of time and temporalities in shaping how digital media propels experiences and interpretations of the past into the present and future. This panel is dedicated to bringing these two significant threads of digital memory studies research into concerted conversation …
Never forget? Memory maintenance on an aging platform
This article addresses the intersection between platforms, their sociotechnical process of aging and memory practice, by focusing on local social platform OakdaleTalk and its use in reflecting on September 11, 2001. Founded in 1997, OakdaleTalk serves the town of Oakdale in New Jersey, a place significantly affected by the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Situated in literature on digital memory work, this analysis draws on interviews wi…
As in Life, So in Death
Despite dominant cultural narratives about platform vitality, whether their immense global penetration or companies’ overwhelming political and economic power, platform history is marked by shutdown and failure. Companies and sites shutter with an understated regularity. As they go, they often delete large swaths of user content, with consequences for the memory practices of both individuals and communities. In turn, this paper examines the ethic…
Screenshot, save, share, shame
This article engages in a qualitative thematic analysis of media discourse about two prominent cases involving screenshots and public shame: the story of Amanda Todd, a Canadian teenager who took her own life after years of cyberbullying facilitated by screenshots; and the story of Anthony Weiner, the New York U.S. Congressman whose political career crumbled after screenshots revealed extramarital flirtations. It shows how screenshots violated th…
Why does a platform die? Diagnosing platform death at Friendster’s end
This study of shuttered social network Friendster draws on interviews with 13 former employees to explore the discursive negotiation of this platform’s death. It chronicles the four central ways that employees related to Friendster’s end: through three diagnoses of the reasons behind its closure, or through claiming its persistence in platforms that thrive today. Arguing for the utility of technological death as a lens–especially within Silicon V…
Lady U Send Me Yr Movie
Joanie 4 Jackie was a U.S.-based women’s video distribution network begun by artist Miranda July that operated from 1995 to 2007. Every woman who submitted to the network would be included on a 10-video compilation VHS that was sent back to each participant, along with a zine listing filmmaker statements and contact information. This article focuses on this distribution model as a site for understanding how media distribution is tied to feminist …
Dot-Com Design
Reviewed by: Dot-Com Design: The Rise of a Usable, Social, Commercial Webby Megan Sapnar Ankerson Frances Corry (bio) Dot-Com Design: The Rise of a Usable, Social, Commercial Web. By Megan Sapnar Ankerson. New York: NYU Press, 2018. Pp. 288. Paperback $28. Dot-Com Design: The Rise of a Usable, Social, Commercial Webis a richly layered cultural history of web design in the United States, tracing its origins in the early 1990s to the burst of the d…
The Grid
The Grid
Social Media's Midlife Crisis? How Public Discourse Imagines Platform Futures
As long-standing social media platforms reinvent themselves and new platforms emerge, recent discourses about social media describe the platform landscape as marked by rising uncertainty and volatility. This article deconstructs popular media narratives of emerging, centralized social media platforms, including TikTok, BeReal, and Threads. Through a qualitative textual analysis of mainstream press discourses, we address the current existential ju…
Why does a platform die? Diagnosing platform death at Friendster’s end
This study of shuttered social network Friendster draws on interviews with 13 former employees to explore the discursive negotiation of this platform’s death. It chronicles the four central ways that employees related to Friendster’s end: through three diagnoses of the reasons behind its closure, or through claiming its persistence in platforms that thrive today. Arguing for the utility of technological death as a lens–especially within Silicon V…
The production of destruction
This article addresses how platform closure is produced by drawing on interviews with former employees of MySpace, the social media platform popular in the mid-2000s. Focusing on how staff grappled with user-generated content and user data while sunsetting an old version of the MySpace platform in 2011 to make way for a newly configured MySpace platform that debuted in 2013, it chronicles the decisions that platform employees were faced with whil…
The Grid
Dot-Com Design
Reviewed by: Dot-Com Design: The Rise of a Usable, Social, Commercial Webby Megan Sapnar Ankerson Frances Corry (bio) Dot-Com Design: The Rise of a Usable, Social, Commercial Web. By Megan Sapnar Ankerson. New York: NYU Press, 2018. Pp. 288. Paperback $28. Dot-Com Design: The Rise of a Usable, Social, Commercial Webis a richly layered cultural history of web design in the United States, tracing its origins in the early 1990s to the burst of the d…
Lady U Send Me Yr Movie
Joanie 4 Jackie was a U.S.-based women’s video distribution network begun by artist Miranda July that operated from 1995 to 2007. Every woman who submitted to the network would be included on a 10-video compilation VHS that was sent back to each participant, along with a zine listing filmmaker statements and contact information. This article focuses on this distribution model as a site for understanding how media distribution is tied to feminist …
As in Life, So in Death
Despite dominant cultural narratives about platform vitality, whether their immense global penetration or companies’ overwhelming political and economic power, platform history is marked by shutdown and failure. Companies and sites shutter with an understated regularity. As they go, they often delete large swaths of user content, with consequences for the memory practices of both individuals and communities. In turn, this paper examines the ethic…
Screenshot, save, share, shame
This article engages in a qualitative thematic analysis of media discourse about two prominent cases involving screenshots and public shame: the story of Amanda Todd, a Canadian teenager who took her own life after years of cyberbullying facilitated by screenshots; and the story of Anthony Weiner, the New York U.S. Congressman whose political career crumbled after screenshots revealed extramarital flirtations. It shows how screenshots violated th…
Why does a platform die? Diagnosing platform death at Friendster’s end
This study of shuttered social network Friendster draws on interviews with 13 former employees to explore the discursive negotiation of this platform’s death. It chronicles the four central ways that employees related to Friendster’s end: through three diagnoses of the reasons behind its closure, or through claiming its persistence in platforms that thrive today. Arguing for the utility of technological death as a lens–especially within Silicon V…
Digital Memory, Pandemic Temporalities
Digital memory studies is a field deeply attuned to social transformations, including the often abrupt and destabilizing impact of crisis events. It is also a field attuned to the role of time and temporalities in shaping how digital media propels experiences and interpretations of the past into the present and future. This panel is dedicated to bringing these two significant threads of digital memory studies research into concerted conversation …
Never forget? Memory maintenance on an aging platform
This article addresses the intersection between platforms, their sociotechnical process of aging and memory practice, by focusing on local social platform OakdaleTalk and its use in reflecting on September 11, 2001. Founded in 1997, OakdaleTalk serves the town of Oakdale in New Jersey, a place significantly affected by the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Situated in literature on digital memory work, this analysis draws on interviews wi…
The production of destruction
This article addresses how platform closure is produced by drawing on interviews with former employees of MySpace, the social media platform popular in the mid-2000s. Focusing on how staff grappled with user-generated content and user data while sunsetting an old version of the MySpace platform in 2011 to make way for a newly configured MySpace platform that debuted in 2013, it chronicles the decisions that platform employees were faced with whil…
Social Media's Midlife Crisis? How Public Discourse Imagines Platform Futures
As long-standing social media platforms reinvent themselves and new platforms emerge, recent discourses about social media describe the platform landscape as marked by rising uncertainty and volatility. This article deconstructs popular media narratives of emerging, centralized social media platforms, including TikTok, BeReal, and Threads. Through a qualitative textual analysis of mainstream press discourses, we address the current existential ju…
Sociology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Media studies (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Digital Economy and Work Transformation (3 works) · Literature (3 works) · Narrative (3 works) · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection (3 works)