Digital Peripheries: Internet Activism and Surveillance in the Mediterranean

This conference brings together scholars and activists who focus on the Mediterannean region to analyze the uses of technology for political mobilization, surveillance, and repression. Investigating how contemporary information and media technologies might encourage decentralized collaboration and/or invite novel occasions for social control, the conference interrogates the extent to which new forms of web 2.0-oriented participation have actually enabled critical publics. Panelists will also explore how activists are attempting to counter the corporate and state control of content, the ways in which information is curated and disseminated, and the growth of innovative modes of surveillance. To what extent has the Internet helped to create conditions conducive to a world-affirming politics and to what extent is it like any other technological advance—also or even primarily dependent on the content?

Participants:

• Emiliano Campagnola
• Michael Dawson
• Sylvia De Fanti
• Donatella Della Ratta
• Sami Ben Gharbia
• Johanne Kuebler
• Korinna Patelis
• Lisa Wedeen
• Ebru Yetiskin

This event is co-sponsored by 3CT and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture.