idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
We live in a revolutionary age of communicative abundance in which many media innovations. In the field of politics, hopeful talk of digital democracy, web 2.0, cybercitizens and e-government is flourishing. Too little attention has been paid, though, to the troubling counter-trends, the decadent media developments that encourage concentrations of cunning power without limit, so weakening the spirit and substance of democracy. Clever new methods of government censorship - the Chinese and Russian cases are the most sophisticated - and the use by governments and corporations of spin tactics and back-channel public relations are the most obvious examples. Echo chambers, rumour storms, Berlusconi-style mass media populism, flat earth news, cyber-attacks, online gated communities, publicity bombs and organised lying and media silence in the face of unaccountable power are trends that also bode ill for democracy. The lecture offers a guide to understanding and explaining these trends, and how best to deal with them.
John Keane is Professor of Politics at Sydney University and Research Professor at the WZB. Among his publications are The Media and Democracy (first print 1991) and most recently The Life and Death of Democracy (2009). He has a blog on issues of democracy: http://johnkeane.net/blog/
Wolfgang Merkel is Director of the WZB Research Unit on Democracy.
Information on participating / attending:
The WZB provides child care during the lecture. If you are interested, please respond by January 12, 2011.
To register, please reply by January 18, 2011, to Marie Unger: marie.unger@wzb.eu, fax: 030/25491-680.
Date:
01/19/2011 17:00 - 01/19/2011 19:00
Registration deadline:
01/18/2011
Event venue:
Reichpietschufer 50, Raum A 300
10785 Berlin
Berlin
Germany
Target group:
Journalists, Scientists and scholars
Email address:
Relevance:
transregional, national
Subject areas:
Information technology, Law, Media and communication sciences, Politics, Social studies
Types of events:
Presentation / colloquium / lecture
Entry:
01/05/2011
Sender/author:
Dr. Paul Stoop
Department:
Informations- und Kommunikationsreferat
Event is free:
yes
Language of the text:
English
URL of this event: http://idw-online.de/en/event33688
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