[liberationtech] Rebele Panel on New Media and Politics -- May 14th 2-4pm

[Daniel Kreiss]

the department of communication presents

Rebele Panel on New Media and Political Communication

2:00-4:00pm Thursday | May 14
Mendenhall Library | McClatchy Hall
450 Serra mall | Stanford University

OVER THE LAST DECADE, scholars have argued that enormous changes have  
taken place in the political process and public sphere.  The ubiquity  
of digital, networked communications technologies has reshaped the  
spaces where citizens come together to debate issues of public  
concern, how political organizations communicate with voters, and the  
collective action of social movements, advocacy groups, and networks  
of citizens.  Amid these changes, a startling range of pronouncements  
on the future of democracy has ensued.  For some scholars, digital  
technologies promise nothing less than the realization of  
participatory democracy and a realignment of political power, as  
information costs fall dramatically affording new ways of producing  
culture and knowledge and acting collectively.  For others, digital  
media enable the powerful to dominate civil society and the public  
sphere given new tools for surveillance and the micro-targeting of  
political communication.  Finally, some scholars look to the ways  
that new media amplify existing patterns of an exclusionary political  
debate through a socio-technical infrastructure that rewards those  
most informed, popular, and wealthy among us.

This panel will present a range of perspectives on the social and  
symbolic action afforded by new media in the realm of politics.  Some  
of the key questions addressed by panelists will include: what are  
the new forms of networked, collective action?  Who are the key  
actors (individuals, organizations, and networks) in the practice of  
politics online?  What are the historical sources of new media  
political practices and the digital repertoires of social  
collectives?  And, how should we think about the production of  
contemporary political culture and the implications for democracy?

A number of scholars will come together to discuss these issues whose  
work draws from a variety of disciplines, including Communication,  
Political Science, Sociology, Science, Technology, and Society,  
Anthropology, and Computer Science.  At the same time, their  
empirical inquiry focuses on very different sites, all of which  
provide insight into these questions.

panelists include:

Matthew Hindman  Assistant Professor of Political Science | Arizona  
State University
Philip Howard  Associate Professor | Department of Communication |  
University of Washington
Daniel Kreiss  Ph.D. Candidate | Department of Communication |  
Stanford University
Steven Weber  Professor of Political Science | Director of the  
Institute of International Studies | University of California at  
Berkeley

moderated by Fred Turner  Assistant Professor | Department of  
Communication | Stanford University



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/attachments/20090501/1155fdaf/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Rebele New Media and Political Communication Flyer-2.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 2510393 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/attachments/20090501/1155fdaf/attachment.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/attachments/20090501/1155fdaf/attachment-0001.html>