Elizabeth Rodwell

I am a media anthropologist who is interested in interactivity, television, emergent technology (in general), and artificial intelligence (specifically). I am also a usability researcher (UX). My first book Push the Button: Interactive Television and Collaborative Journalism in Japan (forthcoming) examines the post-Fukushima tensions in the Japanese journalism and television industries, and seeks to account for the ways that media professionals are responding to increasingly skeptical and distracted audiences. I also track the global debut of interactive television in Japan– a cutting-edge fusion of mediums that represented the most dramatic departure from existing television technology in several decades. I was interested in examining how the concept and practice of participation change as technology evolves the means by which people can contribute.

Currently I am working on a project at the intersection of artificial intelligence / machine learning and user experience (UX). Partnering with UX researchers and designers in companies both in the U.S. and Japan, and I am exploring what it means to think about usability when we’re attempting to replicate human interaction via machine.