Stefania will present two papers at the International Symposium on Media Innovations, in Tallinn in October 16-17, 2017. The papers, both co-authored, as entitled “Fake News as Innovation Engine? Balancing Content Regulation and Freedom of Expression in the Age of Platforms” (with Vidushi Marda, Center for Internet & Society in Bangalore) and “Social Media-Innovation: Towards a critical analysis of media innovations that address societal challenges” (with Niamh Ní Bhroin, University of Oslo). Check out the program. Stefania’s participation to the Symposium was made possible by a grant of the Internet Policy Observatory at the Anneberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Davide, Kersti and Stefania are attending the annual conference of the European Consortium for Political Research in Oslo (September 6-9), reconnecting with their political and social science souls.

The three of them will take part in the panel exploring “the next stage of digital activism. Reviewing Practices and Concepts in the Era of Datafication”, organized by Stefania. Davide will present an excerpt of his PhD thesis, entitled “Contentious Branding. Occupy and Anonymous between the Connective and Collective”. Kersti will present two papers, “Governance from the Grassroots: Digital Activism for Government Accountability” and “Accounting for Power in the Big Data Era: The Meaning of Collectivity in Datafied Societies”. Stefania, too, will present two papers, a snapshot from her work “Towards a Socio-Technical Theory of Political Agency in Datafied Societies” and “Political Agency, Digital Traces and Bottom-up Data Practices”, soon to appear in the International Journal of Communication.

On May 19, Stefania will present two papers at the conference ‘TILTing Perspectives 2017: Regulating a connected world’ in Tilburg. Both of them tells pieces of the DATACTIVE story. The first features research on internet governance and privacy (and the WHOIS databased in particular), partially told thanks to BigBang, the software DATACTIVE is currently developing with the key help of Research Associate Sebastian Benthall. The paper that follows explores the connection and interaction between software cultures (and hacker values in particular) and the counter-expertise of data activism. The conference is organized by the Tilburg Institute for Law Technology and Society (TILT), of which Stefania is a Research Associate. Check out the amazing program of TILTing 2017!

DATACTIVE PI Stefania Milan will speak at the Research Seminar “Tracking Experience – Enhancing Lives?”, organized by Stine Lomborg at the Center for Communication and Computing, University of Copenhagen, on April 24-25. She will  deliver a talk on “Questioning and subverting the tracking of experience: Distributed agency and alternative epistemologies from the ground up”, bringing in a critical perspective on self-tracking seen in relation to political agency. Other speakers include Dorthe Brogård Kristensen (University of Southern Denmark), Minna Ruckenstein (University of Helsinki), Katarzyna Wac (University of Copenhagen) and Rob Procter (University of Warwick), Jan Ekstrom (IBM), and the organizer Stine Lomborg. Check out the program of the research seminar here.

Stefania Milan joins Kees Verhoeven (MP, D66) and Doutje Lettinga (Amnesty International) to comment on digital rights and cybersecurity. The Q&A session follows the screening of Black Code, premiering in the Netherlands as part of the Movies that Matter Film Festival in The Hague (March 25th at 14.15). Black Code is a documentary movie by Nicholas De Pencier, inspired to the book of the same title by Ronald Deibert (Citizen Lab). Read more (in Dutch).

On March 27th Becky Kazansky was in Cambridge, UK, to participate in the workshop ‘Human Rights Practice in the Digital Age’. She presented a paper entitled “Reasoning Through Risks to Privacy and Security: The Analytical Strategies of Human Rights Defenders, Security Trainers, and Privacy Enhancing Technology Developers”. Learn more here.