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Seminar

The space of the world: can human solidarity survive social media and what if it can’t?

I dette seminaret vil Professor Nick Couldry (London School of Economics) diskutere hvorvidt sosiale medier er forenlige med menneskelig solidaritet, og hvordan vi kan forestille oss et annerledes rom ("space of the world") for menneskeheten.

book cover
Foto/ill.:
Polity

Hovedinnhold

Dette seminaret vil foregå på engelsk.

Abstract

In this lecture, drawing on his recent book for Polity, Nick Couldry will reflect on the global space of social communications and interaction that has been constructed over the past three decades through a commercialized internet and the emergence of digital platforms whose business model depends on the extraction of data from their users and the shaping of user behaviour in order to optimize user behaviour that will generate advertising value.

What if those conditions – valid perhaps in their own commercial terms – have guaranteed a space of human interaction that is larger, more polarized, more intense, and more toxic than is compatible with human solidarity? This would be a major problem for humanity that social theory might play some role in deconstructing and potentially even solving, by formulating alternatives. So how might we imagine a different space of the world that would be less likely to be toxic, and more likely to generate the solidarity and effective cooperation that humanity needs if it is to have any chance of addressing its huge, shared challenges?

The lecture will last approximately 45 minutes, and there will be plenty of time for questions and discussion.

Speaker: Nick Couldry

Nick Couldry is a sociologist of media and culture. He is Professor of Media Communications and Social Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and since 2017 a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. He is the author or editor of seventeen books including The Mediated Construction of Reality (with Andreas Hepp, Polity, 2016), Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity 2012) and Why Voice Matters (Sage 2010). His latest books include The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What if it Can’t?  (Polity 2024), Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back (Penguin/W. H. Allen 2024, with Ulises Mejias), Media: Why It Matters (Polity: 2019) and Media, Voice, Space and Power: Essays of Refraction (Routledge 2021). Nick is also the co-founder of the Tierra Común network of scholars and activists (https://www.tierracomun.net/ ).

Practical matters

The lecture will take place on 26.11 at 13:15 in the Department of Information Science and Media Studies' premises on the 2nd floor of Media City Bergen, seminar room 2. Coffee and tea is served.

Welcome!