The aisle as assembly line
In June of 2026, I attended the Annual Conference of the Canadian Communication Association (CCA) in Windsor, Ontario. I presented on the panel Troubling Tech: Critical Takes on Algorithms, Interfaces, and Affordances alongside other media studies and platform studies researchers.
The aisle as assembly Line: Appraising the Algorithmic management of retail customers examined how Canadian self-service retail businesses in the 2020s have attempted to optimize the in-store labour performed by customers by deploying unprecedented customer-facing forms of algorithmic management. It did so through an extended case study of Aisle 24, a Toronto-based unstaffed grocery chain.
This presentation is currently being developed as a dissertation chapter and future journal article.