In her keynote ‘Next billion users, next billion journalists?’ on May, 5 professor Arora will talk about how cheap mobile phones and data plans have brought the “next billion” users online, the vast low-income communities in the global south who are engaging with and shaping the global infosphere and the future of data-driven journalism. Does this translate to Spivak’s subaltern finally gaining voice not just as speakers but as authors, as reporters? The talk pushes against simplistic tropes of empowerment and collective intelligence by looking closely at the politics of Archiving for future facts, the Aesthetics of everyday news-making, and the Affect of digital communalism that impacts newsworthiness.

Continue reading “‘Next billion users, next billion journalists?’ – Prof Payal Arora will give her keynote at the online conference ‘Automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western world’”

The program of the conference  ‘Automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western world: actors, practices, and socio-political impact’ (5-6 May 2021) includes a keynote lecture by Professor Payal Arora from Rotterdam Erasmus University and seven sessions where scholars from all continents will present their research.

If you want to participate in the conference as an attendee (without paper), please fill in the registration form latest during May 3, 2021.

In April Kirill Filimonov will present his research “Beyond the state as the “cold monster”: Russian alternative media and their hegemonic contestations”.

Online talk will be organized in Zoom April, 13 from 12:00 to 13:30 (GMT+3). If you want to participate and get emails about the next online talks, please leave your contact information here until April, 12 noon: registration form.

Continue reading “Online talk on Russian media in April: Russian alternative media and their hegemonic contestations”

In March Liudmila Sivetc and Mariëlle Wijermars will present their research “Leveraging public-private partnerships in effectuating online media control: The case of Russian Netoscope”.

Online talks will be organized in Zoom March, 9 from 12:00 to 13:30 (Finnish time). If you want to participate and get emails about the next online talks, please leave your contact information here until March, 8 noon: registration form.

Continue reading “Online talk on Russian media in March: Leveraging public-private partnerships in effectuating online media control in Runet”

In January Vera Zvereva from the University of Jyväskylä will present her research ”Trolling as a Digital Literary Practice in the Russian Language Internet”.

This talk presents trolling as a form of literary activity. It describes a number of specific types of trolling on the Russian-language Internet in connection with digital literature and the literary practices of various groups of Internet users.

Continue reading “Online talk on Russian media in January: Trolling as a Digital Literary Practice in the Russian Language Internet”

The research project ‘Sustainable journalism for the algorithmic future’ in partnership with the Aleksanteri Institute and Swedish School of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki invite the submission of papers to be presented at the online conference ‘Automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western world: actors, practices, and socio-political impact’

Continue reading “CfP: Online conference ‘Automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western world: actors, practices, and socio-political impact’, May 5–6 2021”

by Olga Dovbysh

Benjamin Peters is the Hazel Rogers Associated Professor and Chair of Media Studies at the University of Tulsa as well as affiliated faculty at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Taking critical, historical, and global approaches, he investigates media change over regimes of time, space, technology, and power.

In October 2019 Peters was a keynote speaker at the Annual Aleksanteri Conference, where he addressed some issues on the role of the political regime in the development and successful release of technologies. This speech was inspired by Peters’ recent book How Not To Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet, published with MIT Press in 2016. For more, see benjaminpeters.org

How do regimes of power shape the process of technological development and implementation? 

The phrase “regimes of power” frames a fundamental question behind my research agenda: why and how do apparently similar technologies take shape differently in different contexts? Namely, how can focusing on the complex cultural, political, and economic forces already at work in the world improve our understanding of the causes and consequences of technology? Media scholars have long been studying questions of media and technological influence over the vital variables of time, space, and matter; by adding the phrase “regime of power,” I aim to underscore that no study of media is without its own politics: the script to our mediated globe is acted out on a stage populated by explicit and implicit political actors, including the history of political economy, cultural production, media theory, and many others.

Continue reading ““No study of media is without its own politics” – Interview with Prof. Benjamin Peters on regimes of power in technological development, smart technologies, and Russian hackers”