The Institute of North American Studies is hosting an event open to the public:
The Politics of Social Media
Social media are both subject to political surveillance and sites of political resistance and community mobilisation. This interdisciplinary event explores the political uses and abuses of social media in different global contexts. While Internet based applications such as Twitter and Facebook will be the main focus of this discussion, we will also consider how less virtual communities – those with little access to the Internet – are using other communication technologies to exchange information in ways that replicate at least some of the characteristics of Internet-based social media. This event works from a broad definition of social media (beyond/before new media) as communication technologies that assist the social networks needed for local, micro- and global, macro-political engagement.
Speakers
Shubhranshu Choudhary was a BBC South Asia producer for more than 10 years. He is currently a Knight International Journalism Fellow working on a project training citizen journalists in rural India. Shabhranshu’s visit is funded by the King’s India Institute.
Samuel Greene, Director of King’s Russia Institute, is an expert in Russian politics and social movements, and
the link between Russian domestic and foreign policy. His research interests
include the social, political and economic effects of new media.
Paulo Gerbaudo, Culture, Media & Creative
Industries, KCL, is author of Tweets and
the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism (Pluto) and will be talking
about the role of social media in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Craig Larkin, Department of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies, KCL, is the author of Memory and Conflict in Lebanon:
Remembering and Forgetting the Past (Routledge) and will be discussing social media and the separation barrier around
Jerusalem.
Anna Boermel, China Institute, KCL, has research interests in social and cultural
change in contemporary China. She will discuss her research into the use of smart phones to monitor
food safety in China as well as other elements of the Chinese experience with
social media.
Chair: Clare Birchall, Institute of North
American Studies, KCL.
4th February 2013, 6-8pm. Followed by a drinks reception.
The Edmond J. Safra Lecture Theatre, Strand Campus, at King’s College London.
Open to the public. All welcome. Followed by a drinks reception.
For more information, contact [log in to unmask]