[spectre] Digital Media and Digital Culture Seminar Series

[Ned Rossiter]

Digital Media and Digital Culture Seminar Series
Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster
Coleraine Campus, Northern Ireland
http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/media/cmr.html

For futher information, expressions of interest and inquiries, please 
contact:

Ned Rossiter
Senior Lecturer in Media Studies (Digital Media)
Centre for Media Research
University of Ulster
Cromore Road
Coleraine
Northern Ireland
BT52 1SA

email: n.rossiter at ulster.ac.uk
tel.+44 (0)28 7032 3275

All are welcome

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||


Wednesday 6 April, 2005
4-6 pm, Venue: B244, South Building, Coleraine Campus

Professor Paschal Preston <Paschal.Preston at dcu.ie>
School of Communication, Dublin City University

Abstract

'Who Rules the 'Net: Global Governance and Regulation of the Internet'


What is the most appropriate framework for the international regulation 
or governance of the Internet and  related services?  Should the 
Internet be subject to any formal (explicit) regulation, especially at 
the international level?  If so, how are the boundaries between the 
public interest and private troubles to be defined and drawn? What 
interests and organisations should be involved or represented in any 
such regulatory regime?  What role, if any, should governments, 
technical experts, private sector corporations and/or "civil society" 
organisations play in the international regulation of the Internet? How 
do the Internet's inherent communication characteristics and functions 
support a multilateral dialogue and approach to global regulation?


These are the some of key questions at the centre of current debates on 
the international regulation of the Internet.  This seminar 
presentation will consider the significant pressures to create a new 
international regime for Internet regulation over the past few years, 
especially in the context of the UN's World Summit on the Information 
Society (WSIS) process.

The presentation describes how, in part, such regulation issues have 
emerged in line with the expanding global role of the Internet and its 
diversifying scope.  The very rapid diffusion of Internet since the 
early 1990s has been based around a specific "regulation-lite" regime, 
very much led by the US government.  Yet, the very success of Internet 
protocols and techniques is now leading to multiple new convergences 
with the mainstream telecoms sector and growing concerns about 
security, commercial, geo-political and social aspects of this 
increasingly global network.

The second section will focus on contested concepts and positions 
concerning the "public" and "private" dimensions of  Internet 
regulation with respect to two selected major themes:

i.)  How the Internet is defined by some actors as a "strategic" new 
global communication network, a key platform for the delivery of an 
array new services in the 21st century "knowledge economy";

ii.)  How contested notions of "private" and "public" interests are 
bound up with current initiatives to create a more formal, and hence, 
"multilateral" framework for Internet governance via UN related 
institutions.

The seminar will consider whether and how Internet regulation may be 
taken as a crucial test-case for competing regulatory rhetorics, 
concepts and practices relevant to wider debates about multilateral 
versus unilateral modes of international governance - which are 
especially pointed when it comes to "knowledge-based" or "-intensive" 
services sectors.

Time permitting, a final section 5 will (briefly) reflect on how there 
has there been a distinct (or "significant") silence on such Internet 
regulation developments in Irish policy discourse compared to other EU 
countries.


Bio

Paschal Preston is founder director of the Society, Technology, Media 
(STeM) centre in DCU.  He has been engaged in research on 
socio-economic and policy aspects of new ICT for almost 20 years. He is 
founder and director of the STeM (Society, Technology and Media) 
research centre in Dublin City University. His research and teaching 
interests are focused on the social, political-economic and spatial 
aspects of new ICTs and the information society, the changing role of 
information and media in international political-economic relations.

Paschal Preston has conducted research and consultancy for governmental 
and international policy organisations including: Irish and British 
governments, the EC and OECD. He was wide experience of multi-country 
research and networking, including participation in many prior 
EU-funded projects. He has recently acted as consultant to the Irish 
government on broadband rollout policies and on the knowledge/skills 
trends related to the digital content sector. He is an active member of 
several international professional associations and a member of the 
Scientific Committee responsible for the annual Euro Communications 
Policy Research Conference. His recent books include Reshaping 
Communications Technology, Information and Social Change (London and 
Thousand Oaks California: Sage, 2001).


|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||


Tuesday 12 April, 2005
4-6 pm, Venue: TBA, South Building, Coleraine Campus

Professor Sandra Braman <sbraman at wi.rr.com>
Department of Communication, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Abstract

'Posthuman Law in the Human World'

The assumption that the law is made by humans for humans no longer 
holds: Increasingly, the subject of policy is the information 
infrastructure itself, machinic rather than social values play 
ever-more important roles in decision-making, and laws and regulations 
for human society are being supplemented, supplanted, and superceded by 
machinic decision-making.  The transformation of the legal system 
wrought by such changes is so profound that it may be said that we are 
entering a period of posthuman law.  These trends are likely to be 
exacerbated in future as ubiquitous embedded computing at the 
nanotechnological level destroys any meaningful distinction between the 
"information infrastructure" and the material environment.  They will 
in turn force reconsideration of distinctions among the "natural," the 
"human," and the "machinic".  And they raise quite new questions about 
what it might mean to effectively participate in decision-making about 
the conditions of our individual and social lives.

Bio

Sandra Braman has been studying the macro-level effects of the use of 
digital technologies and their policy implications since the mid-1980s. 
  Current work includes Change of State: An Introduction to Information 
Policy (in press, MIT Press) and the recent edited volumes 
Communication Researchers and Policy-makers (2003, MIT Press), The 
Emergent Global Information Policy Regime (2004, Palgrave Macmillan) 
and The Meta-technologies of Information: Biotechnology and 
Communication (2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).  With Ford 
Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation support, Braman has been working 
on problems associated with the effort to bring the research and 
communication policy communities more closely together.  She has 
published over four dozen scholarly journal articles, book chapters, 
and books; served as book review editor of the Journal of 
Communication; and is former Chair of the Communication Law & Policy 
Division of the International Communication Association.  Braman 
currently sits on the editorial boards of six scholarly journals; is a 
Fulbright Senior Specialist; and has been appointed a fellow of the 
Educause Center for Applied Research, a think tank focused on IT and 
higher education.  During 1997-1998 Braman designed and implemented the 
first graduate-level program in telecommunication and information 
policy on the African continent, for the University of South Africa.  
Currently Professor of Communication at the University of 
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Braman earned her PhD from the University of 
Minnesota in 1988 and previously served as Reese Phifer Professor at 
the University of Alabama, Henry Rutgers Research Fellow at Rutgers 
University, Research Assistant Professor at the University of 
Illinois-Urbana, and the Silha Fellow of Media Law and Ethics at the 
University of Minnesota.


|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||


Wednesday 27 April, 2005
4-6 pm, Venue: TBA, South Building, Coleraine Campus

Dr Aphra Kerr <a.kerr at ulster.ac.uk>
Media Policy strand, Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster

Abstract

'Post-Culture? Digital Media Policy Debates'

In film, television, radio and print media the battle is won - we no 
longer have to defend the cultural role of traditional media in 
academia, policy circles or even our everyday lives. Despite the 
erosion of 'public service' ideals it is generally accepted that it is 
'good' and 'right' that individuals should be enabled to produce 
content which is reflective of their own stories, identities and 
culture.  By contrast, digital media policy - from the internet to 
computer games - struggles to talk in these terms and go beyond 
discussions of the market and regulation. In most cases the market is 
seen as the arbitrator of public interest and what should be produced. 
Similarly, the state's role is merely to educate and 
regulate/de-regulate where appropriate. While there is growing support 
for media literacy, and this includes support for making media content, 
the debate about locally produced digital content or, at the very 
least, culturally diverse content is largely absent from national and 
some transnational industrial and cultural policy circles. This seminar 
will explore recent debates and policy documents produced by the OECD, 
the Republic of Ireland and the UK and reflect on the implications for 
Northern Ireland's digital media industries.

Bio

Dr. Aphra Kerr is a research associate at the Centre for Media Research 
at the University of Ulster, Coleraine and her work focuses on 
political economic and social aspects of digital media. She is author 
of a forthcoming book Gamework: Gameplay (Sage, 2005) and a number of 
book chapters and articles on the political economy and culture of 
digital games and digital media more generally.

Much of her work has involved either conducting research to inform 
policy making or scrutinizing existing policy documents. She has worked 
as a consultant for government agencies in the Rep. of Ireland such as 
FÁS and Forfás as well as the DTI in the UK and most recently has 
contributed to the OECD's policy work on broadband content. She has 
also worked on a number of European funded network research projects 
including 'Strategies of Inclusion: Gender and the Information Society' 
(SIGIS), 'Social Learning in Multimedia' (SLIM) and 'Science and 
Technology Policy in Less Favoured Regions'.

Aphra is the academic liaison officer on the Irish chapter of the 
International Game Developers Association and runs the online resource 
www.gamedevelopers.ie. She was a founding member of the Digital Games 
Research Association (DiGRA) and is on the editorial board of Game 
Studies.
More info: http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/media/kerr/