[Air-L] AoIR2025 Keynote Speaker - R. Marie Santini , Wednesday, October 15

[AoIR Association Coordinator]

The #AoIR2025 organizing committee is pleased to announce R. Marie Santini
as our Keynote Speaker. Dr. Santini is an Associate Professor at the School
of Communication, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She is the
founder and director of NetLab - Laboratory for Internet and Social Network
Studies, at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. NetLab researches the
phenomenon of digital disinformation and its social consequences to inform
public policies that promote ethics in governance, transparency, and
integrity of digital media in Brazil. Marie is a CNPq Research Fellow, an
Associate Researcher at the European Centre of Excellence VOX-Pol; a member
of the expert committee of the International Observatory on Information and
Democracy (OID); and a researcher on the Scientific Committee of the
International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE).

Dr. Santini’s talk is titled *The Digital Break: When Big Tech (re)Fused
the Global North and South. *

The regulation of Big Tech companies has become one of the most central
geopolitical, economic, and social issues in Western countries. These
corporations have intensified their efforts in lobbying, attacking
researchers, engaging in commercial and constitutional violations,
disregarding local laws, and abusively collecting personal data, all while
profiting from fraudulent advertising. This has caused significant harm to
their users, especially in the Global South. Such actions largely aim at
two major objectives that together ensure the perpetuation of their
hegemonic powers: maximizing profits and preventing any type of regulation,
whether local or global. Brazil has played a significant role in attempting
to create the conditions of possibility for Big Tech's regulation in the
Global South. Here, the political confrontation has taken the form of hard
disputes in public opinion over media outlets. It has also involved the
judiciary through the  Brazilian Supreme Federal Court, the executive
branch through the government, as well as provoking strong engagement in
academia and civil society to produce evidence and advocacy on this issue.
Nonetheless, the Global South faces additional and more severe challenges
in confronting Big Tech: beyond a colonial extractivist posture by these
North American companies, which typically have used Brazil as a laboratory,
researchers still have to contend with a lack of data, reduced transparency
and limited funding for research. Nevertheless, the strategic political and
economic approach of Big Tech, characterized by non-compliance with laws
and alliances with authoritarian governments attempting to shut down
research, has caused instability worldwide, in both the Global North and
South, for those who work with empirical research, social data science, and
the social impacts of Big Tech. For the Global North, this conjuncture of
data deserts and resource scarcity may represent a rupture in established
dynamics; for the Global South, it is a continuation of pre-existing
challenges. This reality, nonetheless, places both the Global North and
South before common obstacles, which can generate opportunities for new
research perspectives and for robust global academic and civil society
articulation in confronting Big Tech worldwide.

The Keynote will be held Wednesday, 15 October 2025 at the Oscar Niemeyer
Popular Theater, R. Jorn. Rogério Coelho Neto, s/n - Centro, Niterói - RJ,
24020-011 at 18:00 Brasília Time (BRT).

The event will be live streamed. Details on how to join the live stream
will be available closer to the event.

There are two different registrations for this conference – one for in
person attendees and one for remote attendees.
In person only: https://members.aoir.org/event-6216401
Online only: https://members.aoir.org/event-6216484

**Please note** *All presenting authors and Doctoral Colloquium attendees
must be fully registered and paid by August 1st deadline to be included in
the 2025 program. *