Geneva Media Conference invitation: Deadline 15 October 2011

Webster University Geneva
International Media Conference: Media Trends 2012

New Media Tools and Human Rights: More or Less Human?
March 26-27, 2012

Abstract: The aim is to investigate how new media tools have been used in the recent revolutions and uprisings taking place in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. We will look to the effects of these tools on the individual, society and culture and try to understand how they might be assessed. We will also consider how the media might deal with the ethical implications of using new media tools.

Call for papers: The questions that we wish to have addressed at the conference are based on the works discussed in this concept note. Papers, projects and presentations do not need to be based on these theorists, which are used more as a springboard for discussions.

Proposal deadline: Initial proposals should be submitted to lowstedt@webster.edu, rosso@webster.ch and visconti@webster.ch by October 15, 2011. The first proposal does not need to be a completed project, just an outline of what you would like to investigate. For further information please feel free to contact Tammy Rosso, Media Program Heat at rosso@webster.ch.

The conference aims to investigate and debate:
• New media and information technology from an ethical perspective by analyzing the effects of these tools on users and receivers,
• Ways in which new media tools can be used to maximize their benefits and minimize their harm on the individual, society and culture,
• Whether these tools have been used to primarily promote or inhibit political change in repressive states.

Questions to be addressed include:
• Are new media tools considered responsible for affecting political changes? Should they be? Are the new tools doing a better job at affecting change (positive and negative) than the old tools?
• Do new media allow for greater government transparency, participation and accountability? Do they serve to enhance or extend the public sphere in repressive regimes?
• What happens when everyone has become a journalist and information from around the globe is available to anyone at all times? How do we make sense of the mountains of information that we are bombarded with every day? What information are we to consider important? In other words, how are we to pass judgment?
• What happens when one uses these new tools? What sort of human beings are we becoming: less free and more robotic, i.e. increasingly programmed by others, or increasingly free to experience and appreciate more and more deeply? Or both?
• Are these new tools really so new or are they just alterations to traditional means of communicating, such as Africa’s rich oral culture? Which might lead one to question whether these “new tools” are actually changing ourselves as social beings or is it a question of changing our conceptions of what it means to be social beings?
• In the 1960s Marshall McLuhan claimed that electronic communication fosters and encourages unification and involvement in society. Was he right? If we look to the use of these new tools, what type of a society are we becoming? Are we achieving collective identity or are we merely fragmenting further than ever?
• McLuhan refers to the global village as an acoustic space and as such a return to a “tribal base.” Prior to mass mediated messages hearing was believing, but with the invention of writing seeing became believing. What then do we make of a cell phone in terms of McLuhan’s ideas? What happens when the global village is both visual and aural?
• What would McLuhan make of the impact of new media tools on the public sphere?
• Has the public sphere become more inclusive, allowing for a diversity of expression from those who formerly had no voice or has it become more divisive?
• What about Todd Gitlin’s public and private ‘sphericules’: should they be sacrificed for the greater good of the unitary public sphere? What would McLuhan have thought? How relevant can the public sphere become in the face of today’s globalized world?