Digital Media and Digital Culture Seminar Series
Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster
Coleraine Campus, Northern Ireland
http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/media/cmr.html
For futher information, expressions of interest and inquiries, please
contact:
Ned Rossiter
Senior Lecturer in Media Studies (Digital Media)
Centre for Media Research
University of Ulster
Cromore Road
Coleraine
Northern Ireland
BT52 1SA
email: [log in to unmask]
tel.+44 (0)28 7032 3275
All are welcome
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Wednesday 6 April, 2005
4-6 pm, Venue: B244, South Building, Coleraine Campus
Professor Paschal Preston <[log in to unmask]>
School of Communication, Dublin City University
Abstract
'Who Rules the 'Net: Global Governance and Regulation of the Internet'
What is the most appropriate framework for the international regulation
or governance of the Internet and related services? Should the
Internet be subject to any formal (explicit) regulation, especially at
the international level? If so, how are the boundaries between the
public interest and private troubles to be defined and drawn? What
interests and organisations should be involved or represented in any
such regulatory regime? What role, if any, should governments,
technical experts, private sector corporations and/or "civil society"
organisations play in the international regulation of the Internet? How
do the Internet's inherent communication characteristics and functions
support a multilateral dialogue and approach to global regulation?
These are the some of key questions at the centre of current debates on
the international regulation of the Internet. This seminar
presentation will consider the significant pressures to create a new
international regime for Internet regulation over the past few years,
especially in the context of the UN's World Summit on the Information
Society (WSIS) process.
The presentation describes how, in part, such regulation issues have
emerged in line with the expanding global role of the Internet and its
diversifying scope. The very rapid diffusion of Internet since the
early 1990s has been based around a specific "regulation-lite" regime,
very much led by the US government. Yet, the very success of Internet
protocols and techniques is now leading to multiple new convergences
with the mainstream telecoms sector and growing concerns about
security, commercial, geo-political and social aspects of this
increasingly global network.
The second section will focus on contested concepts and positions
concerning the "public" and "private" dimensions of Internet
regulation with respect to two selected major themes:
i.) How the Internet is defined by some actors as a "strategic" new
global communication network, a key platform for the delivery of an
array new services in the 21st century "knowledge economy";
ii.) How contested notions of "private" and "public" interests are
bound up with current initiatives to create a more formal, and hence,
"multilateral" framework for Internet governance via UN related
institutions.
The seminar will consider whether and how Internet regulation may be
taken as a crucial test-case for competing regulatory rhetorics,
concepts and practices relevant to wider debates about multilateral
versus unilateral modes of international governance - which are
especially pointed when it comes to "knowledge-based" or "-intensive"
services sectors.
Time permitting, a final section 5 will (briefly) reflect on how there
has there been a distinct (or "significant") silence on such Internet
regulation developments in Irish policy discourse compared to other EU
countries.
Bio
Paschal Preston is founder director of the Society, Technology, Media
(STeM) centre in DCU. He has been engaged in research on
socio-economic and policy aspects of new ICT for almost 20 years. He is
founder and director of the STeM (Society, Technology and Media)
research centre in Dublin City University. His research and teaching
interests are focused on the social, political-economic and spatial
aspects of new ICTs and the information society, the changing role of
information and media in international political-economic relations.
Paschal Preston has conducted research and consultancy for governmental
and international policy organisations including: Irish and British
governments, the EC and OECD. He was wide experience of multi-country
research and networking, including participation in many prior
EU-funded projects. He has recently acted as consultant to the Irish
government on broadband rollout policies and on the knowledge/skills
trends related to the digital content sector. He is an active member of
several international professional associations and a member of the
Scientific Committee responsible for the annual Euro Communications
Policy Research Conference. His recent books include Reshaping
Communications Technology, Information and Social Change (London and
Thousand Oaks California: Sage, 2001).
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Tuesday 12 April, 2005
4-6pm, 4-6 pm, Venue: TBA, South Building, Coleraine Campus
Professor Sandra Braman <[log in to unmask]>
Department of Communication, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Abstract
'Posthuman Law in the Human World'
The assumption that the law is made by humans for humans no longer
holds: Increasingly, the subject of policy is the information
infrastructure itself, machinic rather than social values play
ever-more important roles in decision-making, and laws and regulations
for human society are being supplemented, supplanted, and superceded by
machinic decision-making. The transformation of the legal system
wrought by such changes is so profound that it may be said that we are
entering a period of posthuman law. These trends are likely to be
exacerbated in future as ubiquitous embedded computing at the
nanotechnological level destroys any meaningful distinction between the
"information infrastructure" and the material environment. They will
in turn force reconsideration of distinctions among the "natural," the
"human," and the "machinic". And they raise quite new questions about
what it might mean to effectively participate in decision-making about
the conditions of our individual and social lives.
Bio
Sandra Braman has been studying the macro-level effects of the use of
digital technologies and their policy implications since the mid-1980s.
Current work includes Change of State: An Introduction to Information
Policy (in press, MIT Press) and the recent edited volumes
Communication Researchers and Policy-makers (2003, MIT Press), The
Emergent Global Information Policy Regime (2004, Palgrave Macmillan)
and The Meta-technologies of Information: Biotechnology and
Communication (2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). With Ford
Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation support, Braman has been working
on problems associated with the effort to bring the research and
communication policy communities more closely together. She has
published over four dozen scholarly journal articles, book chapters,
and books; served as book review editor of the Journal of
Communication; and is former Chair of the Communication Law & Policy
Division of the International Communication Association. Braman
currently sits on the editorial boards of six scholarly journals; is a
Fulbright Senior Specialist; and has been appointed a fellow of the
Educause Center for Applied Research, a think tank focused on IT and
higher education. During 1997-1998 Braman designed and implemented the
first graduate-level program in telecommunication and information
policy on the African continent, for the University of South Africa.
Currently Professor of Communication at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Braman earned her PhD from the University of
Minnesota in 1988 and previously served as Reese Phifer Professor at
the University of Alabama, Henry Rutgers Research Fellow at Rutgers
University, Research Assistant Professor at the University of
Illinois-Urbana, and the Silha Fellow of Media Law and Ethics at the
University of Minnesota.
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Wednesday 27 April, 2005
4-6pm, 4-6 pm, Venue: TBA, South Building, Coleraine Campus
Dr Aphra Kerr <[log in to unmask]>
Media Policy strand, Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster
Abstract
'Post-Culture? Digital Media Policy Debates'
In film, television, radio and print media the battle is won - we no
longer have to defend the cultural role of traditional media in
academia, policy circles or even our everyday lives. Despite the
erosion of 'public service' ideals it is generally accepted that it is
'good' and 'right' that individuals should be enabled to produce
content which is reflective of their own stories, identities and
culture. By contrast, digital media policy - from the internet to
computer games - struggles to talk in these terms and go beyond
discussions of the market and regulation. In most cases the market is
seen as the arbitrator of public interest and what should be produced.
Similarly, the state's role is merely to educate and
regulate/de-regulate where appropriate. While there is growing support
for media literacy, and this includes support for making media content,
the debate about locally produced digital content or, at the very
least, culturally diverse content is largely absent from national and
some transnational industrial and cultural policy circles. This seminar
will explore recent debates and policy documents produced by the OECD,
the Republic of Ireland and the UK and reflect on the implications for
Northern Ireland's digital media industries.
Bio
Dr. Aphra Kerr is a research associate at the Centre for Media Research
at the University of Ulster, Coleraine and her work focuses on
political economic and social aspects of digital media. She is author
of a forthcoming book Gamework: Gameplay (Sage, 2005) and a number of
book chapters and articles on the political economy and culture of
digital games and digital media more generally.
Much of her work has involved either conducting research to inform
policy making or scrutinizing existing policy documents. She has worked
as a consultant for government agencies in the Rep. of Ireland such as
FÁS and Forfás as well as the DTI in the UK and most recently has
contributed to the OECD's policy work on broadband content. She has
also worked on a number of European funded network research projects
including 'Strategies of Inclusion: Gender and the Information Society'
(SIGIS), 'Social Learning in Multimedia' (SLIM) and 'Science and
Technology Policy in Less Favoured Regions'.
Aphra is the academic liaison officer on the Irish chapter of the
International Game Developers Association and runs the online resource
www.gamedevelopers.ie. She was a founding member of the Digital Games
Research Association (DiGRA) and is on the editorial board of Game
Studies.
More info: http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/media/kerr/
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