DataPolitik 2019

Program

INTRODUCTION

DataPolitik2019 1st day on politics and communication in the era of big data is an invitation to interdisciplinary dialogue and the sharing of methodological perspectives, socio-political visions, concrete results and lines of research on how digital environments have changed the structure of communication and the grammars of social interaction

DETAILS

Politics and communication have been transformed into the information age. The popularity of online social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter has increased the number of actors capable of spreading political, commercial and other types of messages to a massive number of potential recipients.

The transformation of the access to the dissemination of statements in the public sphere has given rise to a double phenomenon: on the one hand, processes of disintermediation of mass communication and mass self-communication, which have disrupted the traditional media influence map; on the other, new forms of mediation and the concentration of power that escape the forms of democratic control developed in the classical framework of the mass media.

Today we already know that the multiplication of information options is not always accompanied by an empowerment of the information-consuming citizenship. On the contrary, they often generate a harmful collateral effect: the so-called informative infoxication or overstimulation, which translates into the impossibility of attending public debates beyond some scraps or moments. Consequently, social perception and narration of what is "true", about what "reality" is, appears fragmented and uncertain in our societies.

The tensions between these two tendencies (one that points to emancipation and another that points, either towards new forms of domestication, or towards new forms of disinhibition and dumbing down) indicate that the dispute is not closed. However, the difficulties are many. Among them, the lack of deep, scientific knowledge of the mechanisms of operation of the production and consumption of information in the digital environment, as well as its relationship with the “analog layer” of traditional media and modes of communication and interpretation . These mechanisms exhibit common patterns, due to the characteristics shared by the information societies, but at the same time they show differences according to the social and cultural context.

In order to address the problem effectively, it is urgent to establish a permanent observatory in which the science of communication, sociology, politology and the science of complex systems, among other disciplines, collaborate to improve our understanding of what is happening in social platforms, particularly in Catalonia and throughout the State. For the moment, we propose to “sit at the same table” those people and research groups that are developing studies in this direction or who are bearers of practical knowledge in the aforementioned areas.

The #DataPolitik day is an invitation to interdisciplinary dialogue and the sharing of methodological perspectives, socio-political visions, concrete results and lines of research on how digital environments have changed the structure of communication and the grammars of social interaction.

The issues that, among others, we want to address in this day are:

• The fake news and its political effects
• The polarization of media space
• The assumptions of viralization
• Platform designs and their influence on social behavior and social action
• Post-truth, cultural wars and their impact on the network society
• Big data and political communication
• The rise of data capitalism and datacracy and the crisis of democracy

Check the programme!