International Conference: Revisiting the Emancipatory Potential of Digital Media in Asia

Join us on Friday 24 and Saturday 25 January at Leiden University (the Netherlands) to discuss the transformative role of digital media in Asia in all its complexity. 


 

Image (c) F. Schneider / Tagxedo.com 2013

Over the past decade, new forms of information and communication technologies have shaped the way people relate to each other, engage in social activities, conduct commerce, and participate in political processes. The inception of so-called Web 2.0 services such as Facebook in 2004, Youtube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006, has introduced a degree of interactivity to communication processes that surpasses that of previous technologies. Numerous companies from around the world have since imitated the success of these large networking, video-sharing, and micro-blogging sites. The popularity of such interactive digital media has meanwhile generated much debate regarding the emancipatory potential of these tools – a debate that has largely focuses on American and European experiences, and that in its extreme revolves on the one hand around the arguments of liberal scholars like Clay Shirky or Yochai Benkler, who emphasize the potential of such technologies to empower citizens, and on the other hand around the concerns of cultural critics like Evgeny Morozov or Sherry Turkle, who see these innovations as exploitative, domineering, and potentially damaging.

This international conference moves such debates to Asia, and confronts them with the realities of digital media usage in this vibrant region.
There'll be contributions on e.g. China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, India  and a special panel dedicated to digital media in Taiwan.


With a keynote speech by Professor Richard Rogers, Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam, Director of the Govcom.org Foundation and the Digital Methods Initiative, and author of book such as 'Information Politics on the Web' and 'Digital Methods'

The academic journal Asiascape:Digital Asia (DIAS), in collaboration with the Goto-Jones VICI project Beyond Utopia funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and the Spotlight Taiwan project, welcomes all those interested to this international conference on digital media in Asia.


More information and free registration