Lisa Parks
Biographic Data
| ID | 3612434 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lisa Parks |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lisa |
| FAMILY NAME | Parks |
| SIGNATURE | PARKS L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Santa Barbara |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3781-5145 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 68 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1964 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Reimagining Media Historiographies and Satellite Technologies in Bulgaria: From Intersputnik to Nanosats
In 2023, a retrofitted satellite earth station in Bulgaria received international acclaim as the world's fastest-growing satellite interconnection service provider. Originally inaugurated in 1977 as part of the Soviet-led Intersputnik network, the station— now known as Plana Teleport—reported a 24 percent revenue increase between 2020 and 2021.1 This growth reflects the station's strategic diversification into a broad portfolio of services, which…
A Path into Filmmaking, the Cayuga Language, and Fancy Dance
Lisa Parks introduces and interviews director Erica Tremblay on the occasion of the Apple TV+ release of her first feature film, Fancy Dance (2023). A queer and Native American director, writer, and producer from the Seneca-Cayuga Nation, Tremblay has quickly established herself as one of the most exciting new writers and directors working in the media industries today. Her work stems from a personal artistic mandate to craft stories that showcas…
Millennial Messiahs, Female Fixers, and Corporate Boards
This article explores how television dramas function as a cultural forum on the workplace power dynamics of US tech startups. Focusing on the limited series, Super Pumped and WeCrashed, which are about Uber and WeWork, the authors analyze how relations of race, class, and gender/sexuality emerge in these narrativized techworlds via several “figures,” including white male founders/CEOs or “millennial messiahs,” “female fixers” that range from exec…
The nuances of network sovereignty: A collaborative study of the Internet and ICTs in the Blackfeet community in Montana
Building on research on network sovereignty in American Indian communities, this study explores how the Internet and information and communication technologies (ICTs) are imagined and used by members of the Blackfeet community in Montana. Using qualitative mixed methods, including interviews with 38 Blackfeet community members, the study provides a brief overview of the Siyeh Corporation’s Internet services in Blackfeet territory and presents a t…
Digital empowerment for whom? An analysis of ‘Network sovereignty’ in low-income, rural communities in Mexico and Tanzania
When researchers invoke the term ‘last billion’ to refer to emerging ICT users, they often focus on network access as a ‘solution’ while neglecting important considerations such as local ownership or knowledge, both of which are essential to sustainable and empowering uses of these technologies in developing contexts. Research reveals that mere access to networks without active community involvement can fail to empower already marginalized and di…
The Labor of Digital Privacy Advocacy in an Era of Big Tech
This article explores the labor of contemporary digital privacy advocates and their myriad efforts to protect and preserve public interests during the era of Big Tech companies. It is based on qualitative interviews with professional staff, lawyers, and policy analysts at multiple major advocacy organizations in Washington, DC. We have employed a grounded theory approach to address four labor-related themes that consistently emerged across our in…
WhatsApp disruptions in Brazil: A content analysis of user and news media responses, 2015–2018
Brazilians have adopted WhatsApp as a national media and communication infrastructure over the past several years, although it is controlled by its private US-based owner, Facebook. This article explores the diverse, contentious and influential roles the app played in the country during disruptions to its use from 2015 to 2018. Using content analysis, we critically engage with user-generated memes and news media coverage responding to these disru…
Guerre des drones, médiation verticale et la classe ciblée
En partant de recherches féministes, cet article explore comment l’usage de drones militaires par les États-Unis a (re)organisé la vie quotidienne de certaines régions en créant une nouvelle classe. Celle-ci est caractérisée par son statut de cible privilégiée des attaques et le fait qu’elle soit dépossédée de ses droits les plus fondamentaux à travers des pratiques de « médiation verticale ». Dans cette perspective, l’article soutient qu’une étu…
Field Mapping: What Is the “Media” of Media Studies
This short article explores the changing meanings of “media” in media studies in relation to emerging technologies and critical paradigms in the field. After brief discussion of various media studies approaches, including media ecologies and algorighmic cultures, the article discusses the institutional rise of data sciences and compares this field to media studies. The author argues that while the foundational assumptions, methodological framewor…
Connecting the unconnected’: A critical assessment of US satellite Internet services
An estimated 4 billion people worldwide still lack reliable access to the Internet, with the majority concentrated in developing countries. It is within this context that a significant expansion of the satellite Internet industry is taking place, bringing grand visions of social and economic growth through connectivity. Previously dismissed as a limited technology due to high operating costs and latency, as well as the failure of early ventures l…
Global Networking and the Contrapuntal Node: The Project Mercury Earth Station in Zanzibar, 1959-64
In 1960, the US government and British protectorate of Zanzibar signed an agreement that allowed US contractors working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to build an earth station that would support Project Mercury, the first manned US satellite mission. This article focuses on the development of the Project Mercury earth station in Zanzibar during 1959-1964. To historicize the earth station’s establishment, the focus l…
Televisual epistemologies and beyond
In this interview, Lisa Parks shares her reflections on a range of questions that remain central to her research, including what television is at the present moment and might become in the future; how satellites could be treated as part of an integrated history of media; the compartmentalizations of academia; research on surveillance, and the relationship between surveillance and capitalism; the invisibility and materiality of infrastructure, and…
Rethinking Media Coverage: Vertical Mediation and the War on Terror
In the post-9/11 era, media technologies have become increasingly intertwined with vertical power as airwaves, airports, air space, and orbit have been commandeered to support national security and defense. In this book, Lisa Parks develops the concept of vertical mediation to explore how audiovisual cultures enact and infer power relations far beyond the screen. Focusing on TV news, airport checkpoints, satellite imagery, and drone media, Parks …
Life in the Age of Drone Warfare
Life in the Age of Drone Warfare
From platform jumping to self-censorship: Internet freedom, social media, and circumvention practices in Zambia
This article describes the complex media environment of urban Zambia based on qualitative interviews with 42 active ICT and social media users in Lusaka. After a contextual discussion of media censorship and Internet freedom, the article draws upon interview data to delineate four circumvention practices: (1) platform jumping; (2) anonymity; (3) self-censorship; and (4) negotiation of legal challenges. Rather than approach circumvention as a set …
Drones, Vertical Mediation, and the Targeted Class
This article explores how US military drone use has (re)organized everyday life in some parts of the world by producing a new disenfranchised targeted class through practices of vertical mediation. The author argues that the critical analysis of drone technology and warfare needs to extend beyond Paul Virilio’s important recognition of the technological fusion of the airplane, the camera, and the gun to include more careful consideration of the v…
Vertical Mediation: Geospatial Imagery and the US Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
"Stuff You Can Kick": Toward a Theory of Media Infrastructures
This chapter contains sections titled: Mail Sorters, Power Poles, Satellite Dishes, Conclusion, Notes
Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures
Earth Observation and Signal Territories: Studying U.S. Broadcast Infrastructure through Historical Network Maps, Google Earth, and Fieldwork
This article engages with three different modes of Earth observation—historical network maps, Google Earth interfaces, and fieldwork—to develop the concept of “signal territories” and elucidate a critical approach for studying U.S. broadcast infrastructure. This approach: 1) highlights physical infrastructures—technological hardware and processes in dispersed geographic locations—as important sites for historical and critical analysis in media an…
Infrastructural Changeover: The US Digital TV Transition and Media Futures
Media and communication studies scholars have been tracking the US digital terrestrial television (DTV) transition for over a decade, conducting research crucial for understanding the future of media systems. The existing research tends to focus on two areas. First, some scholars have used diffusion theory to consider issues of technological adoption, exploring the relative willingness of consumers to adapt to DTV. Second, others have examined ho…
Points of Departure: The Culture of US Airport Screening
For the past several months I have been conducting an experiment at airport security gates, shooting photographs of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) facilities and screeners to determine how long I can go on before I will be asked to stop. After shooting photos in 12 airports I have received only one warning at the US-Canada border while taking a picture of a twenty-something woman of colour being interrogated by TSA workers after…
Signals and oil: Satellite footprints and post-communist territories in Central Asia
This article examines the strategies of two satellite operators working across post-communist territories of Central Asia: Eutelsat and Kazsat. To do so it develops a critical approach called footprint analysis, which involves investigating the variety of practices that occur within range of a given satellite's service. Satellites have been used in post-communist territories to circulate broadcast and telecommunication signals, facilitate flows o…
Digging into Google Earth: An analysis of “Crisis in Darfur”
Digging into Google Earth: An analysis of “Crisis in Darfur”
From platform jumping to self-censorship: Internet freedom, social media, and circumvention practices in Zambia
This article describes the complex media environment of urban Zambia based on qualitative interviews with 42 active ICT and social media users in Lusaka. After a contextual discussion of media censorship and Internet freedom, the article draws upon interview data to delineate four circumvention practices: (1) platform jumping; (2) anonymity; (3) self-censorship; and (4) negotiation of legal challenges. Rather than approach circumvention as a set …
Satellite Views of Srebrenica: Tele-visuality and the Politics of Witnessing
(2001). Satellite Views of Srebrenica: Tele-visuality and the Politics of Witnessing. Social Identities: Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 585-611
Africa on Camera: Television News Coverage and Aerial Imaging of Rwandan Refugees
Africa Today - Volume 48, Number 2, Summer 2001
Connecting the unconnected’: A critical assessment of US satellite Internet services
An estimated 4 billion people worldwide still lack reliable access to the Internet, with the majority concentrated in developing countries. It is within this context that a significant expansion of the satellite Internet industry is taking place, bringing grand visions of social and economic growth through connectivity. Previously dismissed as a limited technology due to high operating costs and latency, as well as the failure of early ventures l…
Cultural Geographies in Practice: Plotting the personal: Global Positioning Satellites and interactive media
Field Mapping: What Is the “Media” of Media Studies
This short article explores the changing meanings of “media” in media studies in relation to emerging technologies and critical paradigms in the field. After brief discussion of various media studies approaches, including media ecologies and algorighmic cultures, the article discusses the institutional rise of data sciences and compares this field to media studies. The author argues that while the foundational assumptions, methodological framewor…
Insecure Airwaves: US Bombings of Aljazeera
Cracking Open the Set: Television Repair and Tinkering with Gender 1949-1955
WhatsApp disruptions in Brazil: A content analysis of user and news media responses, 2015–2018
Brazilians have adopted WhatsApp as a national media and communication infrastructure over the past several years, although it is controlled by its private US-based owner, Facebook. This article explores the diverse, contentious and influential roles the app played in the country during disruptions to its use from 2015 to 2018. Using content analysis, we critically engage with user-generated memes and news media coverage responding to these disru…
My Media Studies: Thoughts from Lisa Parks
Childbearing Aspirations of Public Health Maternity Patients
Childbearing Aspirations of Public Health Maternity Patients Robert H. Browning, Program ConsultantM.P.H., and L. L. Parks, DirectorM.D.M.P.H.F.A.P.H.A. CopyRight https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.54.11.1831 Published Online: August 29, 2011
Florida's family planning program
Florida's family planning program. L L Parks, and D L CraneCopyRight https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.56.1_Suppl.17 Published Online: October 03, 2011
Cracking Open the Set: Television Repair and Tinkering with Gender 1949-1955
Cultural Geographies in Practice: Plotting the personal: Global Positioning Satellites and interactive media
Africa on Camera: Television News Coverage and Aerial Imaging of Rwandan Refugees
Africa Today - Volume 48, Number 2, Summer 2001
Satellite Views of Srebrenica: Tele-visuality and the Politics of Witnessing
(2001). Satellite Views of Srebrenica: Tele-visuality and the Politics of Witnessing. Social Identities: Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 585-611
Planetenpatrouille: Satellitenbilder, Wissensproduktionen und globale Sicherheit
Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual
In 1957 Sputnik, the world’s first man-made satellite, dazzled people as it zipped around the planet. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, more than eight thousand satellites orbited the Earth, and satellite practices such as live transmission, direct broadcasting, remote sensing, and astronomical observation had altered how we imagined ourselves in relation to others and our planet within the cosmos. In Cultures in Orbit, Lisa Parks ana…
Journal of Visual Culture: Points of Departure: The Culture of US Airport Screening
Treating the airport checkpoint as part of the new security regime, this article concentrates on three issues. First, it considers the working conditions of Transportation Security Agency (TSA) employees whom the US government pays to screen passengers, and emphasizes the enduring physicality of their labor despite the technologization of the checkpoint. Second, it explores new techniques of inspection implemented at TSA checkpoints and delineate…
Insecure Airwaves: US Bombings of Aljazeera
My Media Studies: Thoughts from Lisa Parks
Points of Departure: The Culture of US Airport Screening
For the past several months I have been conducting an experiment at airport security gates, shooting photographs of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) facilities and screeners to determine how long I can go on before I will be asked to stop. After shooting photos in 12 airports I have received only one warning at the US-Canada border while taking a picture of a twenty-something woman of colour being interrogated by TSA workers after…
Signals and oil: Satellite footprints and post-communist territories in Central Asia
This article examines the strategies of two satellite operators working across post-communist territories of Central Asia: Eutelsat and Kazsat. To do so it develops a critical approach called footprint analysis, which involves investigating the variety of practices that occur within range of a given satellite's service. Satellites have been used in post-communist territories to circulate broadcast and telecommunication signals, facilitate flows o…
Digging into Google Earth: An analysis of “Crisis in Darfur”
Infrastructural Changeover: The US Digital TV Transition and Media Futures
Media and communication studies scholars have been tracking the US digital terrestrial television (DTV) transition for over a decade, conducting research crucial for understanding the future of media systems. The existing research tends to focus on two areas. First, some scholars have used diffusion theory to consider issues of technological adoption, exploring the relative willingness of consumers to adapt to DTV. Second, others have examined ho…
Earth Observation and Signal Territories: Studying U.S. Broadcast Infrastructure through Historical Network Maps, Google Earth, and Fieldwork
This article engages with three different modes of Earth observation—historical network maps, Google Earth interfaces, and fieldwork—to develop the concept of “signal territories” and elucidate a critical approach for studying U.S. broadcast infrastructure. This approach: 1) highlights physical infrastructures—technological hardware and processes in dispersed geographic locations—as important sites for historical and critical analysis in media an…
Vertical Mediation: Geospatial Imagery and the US Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
"Stuff You Can Kick": Toward a Theory of Media Infrastructures
This chapter contains sections titled: Mail Sorters, Power Poles, Satellite Dishes, Conclusion, Notes
Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures
Drones, Vertical Mediation, and the Targeted Class
This article explores how US military drone use has (re)organized everyday life in some parts of the world by producing a new disenfranchised targeted class through practices of vertical mediation. The author argues that the critical analysis of drone technology and warfare needs to extend beyond Paul Virilio’s important recognition of the technological fusion of the airplane, the camera, and the gun to include more careful consideration of the v…
Life in the Age of Drone Warfare
From platform jumping to self-censorship: Internet freedom, social media, and circumvention practices in Zambia
This article describes the complex media environment of urban Zambia based on qualitative interviews with 42 active ICT and social media users in Lusaka. After a contextual discussion of media censorship and Internet freedom, the article draws upon interview data to delineate four circumvention practices: (1) platform jumping; (2) anonymity; (3) self-censorship; and (4) negotiation of legal challenges. Rather than approach circumvention as a set …
Rethinking Media Coverage: Vertical Mediation and the War on Terror
In the post-9/11 era, media technologies have become increasingly intertwined with vertical power as airwaves, airports, air space, and orbit have been commandeered to support national security and defense. In this book, Lisa Parks develops the concept of vertical mediation to explore how audiovisual cultures enact and infer power relations far beyond the screen. Focusing on TV news, airport checkpoints, satellite imagery, and drone media, Parks …
Life in the Age of Drone Warfare
Televisual epistemologies and beyond
In this interview, Lisa Parks shares her reflections on a range of questions that remain central to her research, including what television is at the present moment and might become in the future; how satellites could be treated as part of an integrated history of media; the compartmentalizations of academia; research on surveillance, and the relationship between surveillance and capitalism; the invisibility and materiality of infrastructure, and…
Political science (23 works) · Computer Science (20 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Law (13 works) · Engineering (12 works) · Business (11 works) · Media studies (11 works) · Public relations (11 works) · Geography (8 works) · Social science (7 works)