[Air-L] Join us online for the upcoming Oxford Global Media Policy Seminar Series!

[Kira Allmann]

Hi all,

Just letting you know about the fantastic lineup of speakers we have this
term for the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy's (PCMLP) Global
Media Policy Seminar Series! Jointly hosted by the University of Oxford and
the University of Johannesburg.

Please register using the links below:


*Dr Elinor Carmi (University of Liverpool)*Date: Tuesday, Feb 23rd, 16:00
UTC
Title: "From the back end to the front end: Producing the surveillance
adtech ecosystem"
Register:
 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/oxford-uj-global-media-policy-seminar-series-elinor-carmi-tickets-138607475691
<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/oxford-uj-global-media-policy-seminar-series-elinor-carmi-tickets-138607475691>
Abstract: In this presentation I'll talk about my new book - Media
Distortions (open access). The book examines the power behind producing
deviant media categories. It shows the politics behind categories we take
for  granted such as spam and noise, and what it means to our broader
understanding of, and engagement with media. Drawing  on repositories of
legal, technical and archival sources, the book amplifies three stories
about the construction and negotiation of the  ‘deviant’ in media. In this
talk I'll focus on the second story: the early 2000s, specifically the web
metric standardization in the European Union showing how the digital
advertising industry constructed what is legitimate communication, while
making spam illegal. By lobbying EU legislators and the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF), the digital advertising industry and tech
companies standardized the category of spam around any ‘problematic’
behaviour threatening their business. This required configuring spaces and
people on the web, establishing the foundations for the surveillance adtech
ecosystem we experience today.


*Dr Fiona Shen-Bayh (The College of William and Mary)*
Date: Wednesday, March 3rd, 16:00 UTC
Title: "Framing the International Criminal Court: Tracking Sentiment in
African News Media"
Register:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/oxford-uj-global-media-policy-seminar-series-fiona-shen-bayh-tickets-139204557579
Abstract: his paper examines how African elites affect perceptions of
international justice as illegitimate, unfair, and corrupt. We argue that
forums such as the African Union (AU) can have ripple effects on how
international justice is discussed among the general population, in some
cases, changing the literal terms of debate. To test this argument, we use
an original web-scraped corpus of over 142,000 articles from African news
sources and leverage novel text-as-data approaches to track how the
International Criminal Court (ICC) is discussed in local media. Using a
word embedding analysis, our findings reveal that the content of ICC news
coverage varies over time and in response to major developments of the AU,
wherein elite efforts to discredit the ICC were subsequently reflected in
more negative news coverage. Our findings underscore the complex, nuanced
relationship between elite and popular perceptions of international justice
and suggest new mechanisms by which elite discourse is filtered down to
domestic audiences.


*Prof Rob Kitchin (Maynooth University)*Date: Tuesday, March 3rd, 16:00 UTC
Title: "Collective Strategies for Slow Computing"
Register:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/oxford-uj-global-media-policy-seminar-series-rob-kitchin-tickets-138610458613
Abstract: Digital technologies should be making life easier. And to a large
degree they do, transforming everyday tasks of work, consumption,
communication, travel and play. But they are also accelerating and
fragmenting our lives affecting our well-being and exposing us to extensive
data extraction and profiling that helps determine our life chances. Is it
then possible to experience the benefits of computing, but to do so in a
way that asserts individual and collective autonomy over our time and data?
This talk seeks to answer this question by exploring collective strategies
and actions to achieve slow computing, and the policy and legal
interventions required, with the analysis framed within an ethics of
digital care rooted in concepts of data justice and time and data
sovereignty.

Best,
Kira

*Dr Kira Allmann*
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Media Law & Policy
Centre for Socio-Legal Studies
University of Oxford