This document discusses how disability can serve as a new paradigm for understanding society, technology, and media. It argues that disability is a major site of social change and an important area of research in relation to technology and media. Around 10-20% of global populations have significant disabilities. While disability was traditionally viewed as a medical issue, the social model of disability recognizes that social environments can disable people. New technologies both pose challenges and opportunities for inclusion. Disability is now a mainstream social and political issue. The document examines the rise of disabled athletes in media through the Paralympics. It discusses how disability intersects with digital platforms, artificial intelligence, and communication rights. Disability is at the cutting edge of understanding digital inclusion and securing benefits

1. Disability & Digital
Inclusion: Reimagining
Mass Media & Society
Gerard Goggin, NTU (@ggoggin)
Guest lecture for
‘Current Issues of Mass Media’ course
Lomonosov Moscow State University 14 Sept 2020

2. Globally societies are in intense
transformation
especially with long waves of change
associated with technology
these developments pose challenges
& opportunities for
Reimagining media

3. In this talk I draw upon two dynamic &
interdisciplinary areas of contemporary social
science scholarship:
• communication and media research
• critical disability studies
& I argue for disability as a new
paradigm to help us better
understand society, technology, &
media
in relation to emergent understandings of
human, species, environment

4. Around the world,
disability is often to
frame general concerns
& claims about
emergent technologies
and their role in social
life

5. the new paradigm of
disability -integral part of
human life; major site of
social change
important new area of
research, especially in
relation to technology &
media

7. disability: how we deal with difference
• estimated 10-20% of populations around the world are people with
significant disability – e.g. 13.3% of Singapore resident population
over 50 years
• People with disabilities still face exclusion, discrimination, poverty,
and injustice
• typically disability regarded as medical issue (= illness, deficit or lack), or
deserving pity or charity
• ‘if only we could find a cure for it’, ‘better dead than disabled’, ‘I hope I
don’t have a child with Down’s’
• yet we will all acquire impairment, and, if we live long enough, will
certainly become disabled
• the line between who is and who is not thought to be disabled is potentially
very dynamic
• disability is now mainstream societal & political issue in global
societies

8. disability: a social & political issue
• new approach is the ‘social model’
• & other social & cultural approaches to disability
• rather than seeing disability as a deficit, and a ‘private’,
individual medical, or health issue (on the biomedical
model), the social component of disability has been
brought into the foreground, with an acknowledgement of
the specific cultural & linguistic conceptions of disability
• Disability is now firmly established as a human rights issues
also
• The challenge is that our social arrangements are often
disabling
• disability goes deep into our culture – very deep meanings
& practices associated with disability

10. Case study of disability & mass
media – Olympic sport
• The epochal, world historical changes in disability in
social life and mass media can be seen in sport,
well symbolized in the Olympics
• People with disabilities were very marginalized in
relation to sport – ‘special Olympics’, ‘Paralympics’,
not taken seriously compared to Olympics
• E.g. Russia declined to host 1980 Paralympics
• Russia was not alone; people with disabilities were
‘invisible’, marginalized, and excluded in most
societies

11. Rise of disability in media sport
• Sport is prominent part of many societies; and it is
very big global mass media business
• Via Paralympics from 2000 onwards, disabled
athletes and sport slowly became of more
mainstream interest
• Althetes with disability moved from being called
‘brave, ‘inspiring’ (e.g. patronizing terms) to being
regarded as sportspeople in their own right
• & celebrities – sexy, desirable, marketable,
controversial etc

12. ‘O brave new world, that has such people in’t!’,
Miranda, The Tempest

19. ‘As the 1980 Moscow
Olympics approached, a
Soviet official was asked
whether his country
would host that year’s
Paralympics for the first
time.
“There are no invalids in
the U.S.S.R.!” he
thundered back, a phrase
that went down in
history.’

20. ‘For decades, Russia has had an uneasy relationship
with its disabled population. Many of them are
injured veterans of the Chechen wars or the Soviet
war in Afghanistan, chapters of history that many
would prefer to forget, even as many of those same
veterans win gold medal after gold medal.
Now circumstances are forcing a rethink. Russia’s
Olympic ambitions mean hosting the Paralympics too
- and, hopefully, an end to invisibility.
From “no invalids” to champions in 34 years - now
that’s inspiring.’
‘Russia’s journey from “no invalids” to Paralympic champions’, Ellingworth, Russia
Beyond, 2013

25. 2018 International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP
Report; https://www.ipsp.org/ ) chapter on media &
communications authored by Couldry et al. (included
Inaya Rakhmani from U.I.) argued that:
• disability becomes a paradigm case for
rethinking both media and media’s
potential contribution to social progress
• disability is a key part of wider
understandings of cultural and media
diversity, but is of particular interest
because of disability struggles’ strong
focus on digital technologies and their
(creative) affordances.

26. Internet accessibility is now 20+ years old (as
least as old as the World Wide Web)

27. Stephen Hawkings, Opening Ceremony Paralympics;
Cf Goggin, “Paralympics Opening Ceremony – A Tour de Force
for Humanity”, The Conversation, 30 August 2012

28. Deaf mobile messaging cultures

29. People with
intellectual
disabilities &
tablet
computers

33. ‘For a significant proportion of people with disabilities
staying at home is a default. In their lives, if
infrastructure, capacity, and preference exists, their
reliance on digital participation modes has long been
heightened. Accordingly with nearly full spectrums of
populations precipitating the switch to digital-by-default
social life, across disability communities many people
expressed the feeling of potential relief and shared
solidarity. Now the rest of the population had the
opportunity to gain a sense and even share the lived
experience of what such necessary confinement to
households would be like’
Goggin & Ellis, 2020 ‘Disability, communication, and life itself in the COVID-19
pandemic’ – open access article

34. the need to decipher and push back against the
‘enforcing of normalcy’ (Davis, 1995) that frames and
dominates COVID reconstruction of social life.
Here the starting point is a fundamental contesting
of the … ratio by which societies are encouraged to
make sense of whose lives were valuable, or would
be given priority, in COVID times.
In emergencies and disasters (Kelman & Stough,
2015) –– perhaps especially in infectious diseases
and their pandemics ––– we find out, courtesy of
disability, truths about our societies and who and
what matters, after all’
Goggin & Ellis, 2020 ‘Disability, communication, and life itself in the
COVID-19 pandemic’ – open access article

35. Disability & digital platforms –
advancing inclusion or ’disability
porn’?
Key issue: what are the
terms of inclusion for
digital platform workers,
such as people with
disabilities?
On the one hand, economic
opportunity, social
participation, etc
On the other hand, framed
in terms of disability
stereotypes (e.g.
‘inspiration’) rather than
real/major social progress?

36. ‘Through technology,
GO-LIFE is providing
opportunities for people
who are looking for
work, and for disabled
people who previously
had a hard time to get a
job, there are more
opportunities available
than ever’ Indra Budiari,
‘Including the Excluded:
GO-LIFE …’, 29 Oct 2018

37. tech’s disability/inclusion
turn

38. Exchange
Telstra
blog, 1
May 2014

40. AI moment as
significant new socio-
technical conjuncture
of intersectional
disability
AI has been hailed as a potential
‘game changer’ for people with
disabilities, not least across various
areas where accessibility is a
problem (e.g. in work,
communication, social connection,
and so on) –– with significant
investment being put into new
initiatives in this area by a range of
powerful actors.

41. the AI moment
• much to do with technology is being ‘redescribed’ as AI
• ‘narrow’ AI is key facet of ecology of emergent technology
(e.g. data, computing, algorithms, mobile & Internet
networks, sensing technology
• AI platforms being assembled that combine: human
operators, domestic infrastructure, Internet infrastructure,
Internet platforms & services, AI training (e.g. on ‘training
datasets’ (summary based on Kate Crawford & Vladan Joler
case study of Amazon Echo in their Anatomy of an AI
System, 2018)
• One dominant frame for discussing AI is ‘ethics’ – e.g. USYD
Ethics of Data Science
• Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA)
‘Artificial Intelligence and Ethics’ series of events
• Another dominant frame is ‘bias’

42. Microsoft’s
‘AI for
Accessibility’

43. HireVue – machine recruits you
for a job (or not)

44. 'Augmented’ Intelligence, algorithms,
automation in (digital) government
services & social support

45. Thinking with disability, we can
reimagine communication - and
conceptualize & claim new kinds of
communications rights
A good first step is provided by the
UN Convention on Rights of
Persons with Disabilities
See: Gerard Goggin. ‘Communication Rights and Disability Online: Policy and
Technology after the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS),’
Information, Communication & Society 18.3 (2015): 327-341.

46. Conclusion - disability at cutting
edge of digital society changes, so
digital inclusion is key
• Developers, designers, industry, government, communities are
intensely interested in how to secure benefits of next wave of
technologies – especially post-mobile & social media,
automation, AI, data, IoT
• Yet stumbling blocks typically include: designing for diverse users;
configuring technology for aims of inclusion, diversity,
participation – and combatting ‘automated inequality’ (Eubanks);
opening up the ‘black box society’ (Pasquale) for transparency,
democracy, and accountability
• Disability is a new cutting-edge area that is often in the ‘mix’ in
understanding our social complexities as well as our technology
puzzles and opportunities
• should be part of our innovation in social science + reimagining
future media & society

47. Questions (for discussion,
assignments, etc)
How do we understanding disability when it comes to
digital inclusion? What is specific to disability (e.g.
accessibility, particular relationships to media
affordances & uses? What can disability tell us about the
nature of media, especially emerging technology?
Do you think mass media is still dominated by
stereotypes, myths, bias relating to people with
disabilities? Or, have digital technologies, social media,
etc, been a ‘game-changer’ for disability representations
– especially because people with disabilities gain new
avenues for ‘voice’ and ‘listening’ via digital technology?