Digital Media and Digital Culture Seminar Series
Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster
Coleraine Campus, Northern Ireland
Tuesday, 23 November, 2004
4.30-6pm Venue: Room C102, South Building
Dr Soenke Zehle <[log in to unmask]>
Saarland University, Germany
Abstract
‘Beyond a Politics of Info-Rights’
After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the bilateral order,
the discourse of human rights has become an important 'placeholder' for
agendas of social change and transformation that are no longer
articulated in 'third worldist' or 'tricontinentalist' terms. In the
field of communication and information, major NGOs and their network
'campaigns' have also decided to approach WSIS-related issues by
calling for new rights. But when info-politics are approached in the
general context of a politics of human rights, what happens to the
tactical and interventionist perspectives and practices developed by
media activists? What is the role of autonomous efforts like 'We Seize'
in articulating an alternative politics of information? And what can be
learned from the demise of the originally third-worldist project of a
New World Information and Communication Order, beyond an embrace of the
new politics of human rights?
The workshop will offer a survey of info-rights campaigns in the
context of WSIS, the UN World Summit on the Information Society and
critically explore this debate in the context of the rise of a
post-third-worldist politics of human rights.
Bio: Soenke Zehle teaches transcultural media studies at Saarland
University (Germany) and is the co-founder of the incommunicado-network
(<http://www.incommunicado.info>).
For further details, contact:
Ned Rossiter
Senior Lecturer in Media Studies (Digital Media)
Centre for Media Research
University of Ulster
Cromore Road
Coleraine
Northern Ireland
BT56 1SA
tel. +44 (0)28 7032 3275
fax. +44 (0)28 7032 4964
email: [log in to unmask]
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