ProfileDr. James N. Gilmore is an Assistant Professor of Media and Technology Studies in the Department of Communication. He completed his PhD in Communication and Culture at Indiana University, and his MA in Film and Television at UCLA. He has been at Clemson since 2018.
Dr. Gilmore's research analyzes the cultural politics of media and communication technologies, with a particular interest in how they produce knowledge about individuals. He advises graduate students on research projects related to issues such as media infrastructures, cultural politics, surveillance, representation, discourse analysis, and popular culture. He teaches undergraduate courses on topics such as critical-cultural communication, media studies, and public communication of science and technology.
Dr. Gilmore is primarily known for his research on wearable technologies. He has been researching wearable technologies and everyday life since 2014, a project which is culminating in his completed book manuscript, "Bringers of order: Wearable technologies and the manufacturing of everyday life." The book maps the ways wearable technologies have become connected to different elements of society and human life. It charts how wearables have been implemented in areas of accessibility, health, sport, labor, law enforcement, and infrastructure. Each chapter explores one of these areas and demonstrates how wearables have consistently been positioned as authoritative means for recording different elements of daily life (from heart rate to workplace productivity) to produce knowledge about human activity. This production of knowledge, however, ends up reproducing what he outlines as three distinct modes of power: normalcy (or reinforcing what is considered ‘normal’ behavior), surveillance (or monitoring people’s activities to make determinations about behavior), and solutionism (or the use of technology to try and solve public problems).
He is the co-editor of two anthologies: Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts (co-edited with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, Indiana University Press, 2018), and Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go Digital (co-edited with Dr. Matthias Stork, Rowman and Littlefield, 2014). He also co-edited, with Dr. Blake Hallinan, a double issue of Cultural Studies on infrastructural politics (2021). His research has been published in leading journals such as New Media & Society; Cultural Studies; Communication, Culture, & Critique; and Critical Studies in Media Communication.
He is available for media comment and interview on issues related to technology and culture, including wearable technologies, data collection practices, digital platforms, and popular culture. Dr. Gilmore has served as an expert source for publications such as Wired, The Verge, and The Observer, as well as interviewed with a number of local radio programs and podcasts. He is the owner and operator of Culture Critically (www.culturecritically.com), a blog and podcast showcasing student work and commentary on issues related to media, technology, and culture.
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Research InterestsMy research studies how media technologies act as knowledge machines; how they produce knowledge about individuals, what that knowledge is used to do, and the consequences of those knowledge-generating practices on socio-cultural formations. Within the field of communication my research primarily contributes to media and technology studies, and I draw interdisciplinary focus from cultural studies as well as science and technology studies for theoretical and analytical frameworks. I primarily utilize discourse analysis and other interpretive qualitative methods, as well as critical theory to trace the cultural politics of technological devices, platforms, and infrastructures.
My research contributions can be divided into two broad categories: Emerging media (with a particular focus on wearable technologies) and media infrastructures (with a particular focus on digital platforms).
My current research agenda is committed to understanding the consequences of datafication, or the processes by which more and more operations of media and daily life are converted into data which is manufactured and analyzed. My research demonstrates how datafication is transforming collective understandings of everyday life, as all elements of human activity—from step counts to viewing habits to heart rate—are converted to computational data and stored on various servers to be used in personal or institutional analysis and decision-making.
Research Publications Books
Gilmore, J.N. and Gottlieb, S. (Eds.). (2018). Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Gilmore, J.N. and Stork, M. (Eds.). (2014). Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go
Digital. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Journal Special Issues
Hallinan, B. and Gilmore, J.N. (Eds.). (2021). Infrastructural politics [Special double issue].
Cultural Studies 35(4-5).
Book Manuscript
Gilmore, J.N. Bringers of order: Wearable technologies and the manufacturing of everyday life
[proposal and sample chapters available upon request]
Journal Articles
Gilmore, J.N. (2023). Deathlogging: GoPros as forensic media in accidental sporting deaths. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 29(2): 481-495. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221105787
Gilmore, J.N., Troutman, B., Kenney, K., DePuy, M., Engel, J., Freed, K., Campbell, S., and Garrigan, S. (2023). Stuck in a cul de sac of care: Therapy Assistance Online and the platformization of mental health services for college students. Television & New Media 24(2): 204-220. https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764221092159
White, C. and Gilmore, J.N. (2022). Imagining the thoughtful home: Google Nest and logics of domestic recording. Critical Studies in Media Communication (online ahead of print): 1-14. https://doi.org/10.10080/15295036.2022.2143838.
Gilmore, J.N. and DuRant, M. (2021). Emergency infrastructure and location extraction: Problematizing Computer Assisted Dispatch Systems as public good. Surveillance & Society 19(2): 187-198. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v19i2.14116
Hallinan, B. and Gilmore, J.N. (2021). Infrastructural politics amidst the coils of control. Cultural Studies 35(4-5): 617-640. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2021.1895259
Gilmore, J.N. (2021). Predicting COVID-19: Wearable technologies and the politics of solutionism. Cultural Studies 35(2-3): 382-391. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2021.1898021 [editorially reviewed only].
Gilmore, J.N. (2020). Alienating and reorganizing cultural goods: Using Lefebvre’s controlled consumption model to theorize media industry change. International Journal of Communication 24: 4474-4493. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/14554
Gilmore, J.N. (2020). To affinity and beyond: Clicking as communicative gesture on the experimentation platform. Communication, Culture, & Critique 13(3): 333-348. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcaa005
Gilmore, J.N. and Troutman, B. (2020). Articulating water to infrastructure: Agri-culture and Google’s South Carolina data center. International Journal of Cultural Studies 23(6): 916-931. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877920913044
Gilmore, J.N. (2020). Securing the kids: Geofencing and child wearables. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 26(5-6): 1333-1346. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856519882317
Gilmore, J.N. (2019). Design for everyone: Apple AirPods and the mediation of accessibility. Critical Studies in Media Communication 36(5): 482-494. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2019.1658885
Gilmore, J.N. (2019). ‘Put your hand against the screen’: U2 and mediated environments. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 33(1): 65-76. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2018.1537392
Gilmore, J.N. (2017). From Ticks and Tocks to Budges and Nudges: The Smartwatch and the Haptics of Informatic Culture. Television & New Media 18(3): 189-202.
Hassoun, D. and Gilmore, J.N. (2017). Drowsing: Towards a concept of sleepy screen engagement. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 14(2): 103-119.
Gilmore, J.N. (2017). Zero Dark Thirty and the writing post of post-9/11 history. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 34(3): 275-294.
Gilmore, J.N. (2016). Everywear: The quantified self and wearable fitness technologies. New Media & Society 18(11): 2524-2539.
Gilmore, J.N. (2014). The curious adaptation of Benjamin Button: Or, the dialogics of Brad Pitt’s face. Mediascape (Fall): http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/Fall2014_CuriousAdaptation.html
Gilmore, J.N. (2013). Absolute anxiety test: Urban wreckage in The Dark Knight Rises. Mediascape (Fall): http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/Fall2013_TheDarkKnightRises.html [editorially reviewed only].
Book Chapters
Gilmore, J.N. (2018). Progressivism and the struggles against racism and anti-semitism: Welles’s correspondences in 1946. In J.N. Gilmore and S. Gottlieb (Eds.), Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts (pp. 131-149). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Gottlieb, S. and Gilmore, J.N. (2018). Introduction: The totality of Orson Welles. In J.N. Gilmore
and S. Gottlieb (Eds.), Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts (pp. 1-10). Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Gilmore, J.N. (2017). Circulating The Square: Digital distribution as (potential) activism. In C.
Barker and M. Wiatrowski (Eds.), The Age of Netflix: Critical Essays on Streaming Media, Digital
Delivery, and Instant Access (pp. 120-140). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).
Gilmore, J.N. (2017). Spinning webs: Constructing authors, genre, and fans in the Spider-man film franchise. In M. Yockey (Ed.), Make Ours Marvel: Media Convergence and a Comics Universe (pp. 248-267). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Gilmore, J.N. (2015). A eulogy of the urban superhero: The everyday destruction of space in the superhero film. In P. Petrovic (Ed.), Representing 9/11: Trauma, Ideology, and Nationalism in Literature, Film, ad Television (pp. 53-63). Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Gilmore, J.N. and Stork, M. (2014). Introduction: Heroes, converge! In J.N. Gilmore and M. Stork (Eds.), Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go Digital (pp. 1-10). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Gilmore, J.N. (2014). Will you like me when I’m angry? Discourses of the digital in Hulk and The Incredible Hulk. In J.N. Gilmore and M. Stork, Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go Digital (pp. 11-26). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Gilmore, J. (2013). ‘I moved on, and so did the rest of us’: The masculine ideal and its discontents in Superman Returns. In N. Farghaly (Ed.), Examining Lois Lane: The Scoop on Superman’s Sweetheart (pp. 211-234). Lanham: Scarecrow Press.
Conference Proceedings
Gilmore, J.N., Hamer, M., Erazo, V., and Hayes, P. (2021). ‘It’s 1776, baby!’: Broadcasting revolutionary performance during the U.S. Capitol Riots. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research (September): https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12173
Encyclopedia Entry
Gilmore, J.N. (2019). Special effects. In D.L. Merskin (Ed.), The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society (pp. 1648-1651). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
Book Reviews
Gilmore, J.N. (2022). Rev. of Esther Milne, Email and the Everyday: Stories of Disclosure, Trust, and Digital Labor. Media Industries Journal 9(1): https://doi.org/10.3998/mij.2452
Gilmore, J.N. (2015). Stories of nationalist costumes. Cultural Studies 30(6): 1029-1031.
Honors and AwardsOutstanding Teaching of the Year (Junior Tenure-Track), College of Behavioral, Social, and Health Sciences, Clemson University, 2022-2023.
Outstanding research publication for Securing the kids: Geofencing and child wearables, College of Behavioral, Social, and Health Sciences, Clemson University, 2022.
Research Faculty Spotlight, College of Behavioral, Social, and Health Sciences, Clemson University, Spring 2021 [recognized in April 2021 university research report].
Ray Camp Award for Most Outstanding Research Paper, for “Smart Listening Systems and the Informatization of Communication,” Carolinas Communication Association, 2018.
Top Faculty Paper Panel Participant, for “Smart Listening Systems and the Informatization of Communication,” Carolinas Communication Association 2018 Conference.
Robert Gunderson Award for Best Graduate Student Writing, for “The Smartwatch Imaginary and the Weight of Time,” Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University, 2016 [co-recipient].
Brantlinger-Naremore Essay Prize for Best Graduate Student Writing, for “The Smartwatch Imaginary and the Weight of Time,” Cultural Studies Program, Indiana University, 2016 [co-recipient].
Outstanding Achievement in Leadership and Service, Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University, 2015.
Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award for CMCL-C190 – Introduction to Media,
Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University, 2015.
LinksPersonal Website
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