Censorship in the Age of Facebook and Twitter
Presenters
- Yochai Benkler
Harvard University
Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard University, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Before joining the faculty at Harvard Law School, he was Joseph M. Field '55 Professor of Law at Yale. He writes about the Internet and the emergence of a networked economy and society, as well as the organization of infrastructure, such as wireless communications. In the 1990s, he played a role in characterizing the centrality of information commons to innovation, information production and freedom in both its autonomy and democracy senses. In the 2000s, he worked on the sources and economic and political significance of radically decentralized individual action and collaboration in the production of information, knowledge and culture.
His work has been widely discussed in both the business sector and civil society. His books include The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (2006), which received the Don K. Price award from the American Political Science Association for best book on science, technology and politics; the American Sociological Association's CITASA Book Award for an outstanding book related to the sociology of communications or information technology; the Donald McGannon award for best book on social and ethical relevance in communications policy research; and was named best business book about the future by Strategy & Business. In civil society, Benkler received the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award in 2007, and the Public Knowledge IP3 Award in 2006.
- Gabriella Coleman
New York University
Trained as an anthropologist, Gabriella (Biella) Coleman is an assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. She writes and teaches on the politics and culture of computer hacking and digital activism, as well as on free software and trolls. She is completing a book manuscript, Coding Freedom: Hacker Pleasure and the Ethics of Free and Open Source Software, with Princeton University Press and is currently a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.
Photo © Simon Law
- Reihan Salam
Journalist
Reihan Salam is the author of National Review Online’s The Agenda, a daily web log centered on domestic policy. With Ross Douthat, Salam is the co-author of Grand New Party: How Conservatives Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (Doubleday, 2008). Salam writes frequently for publications including National Review and Foreign Policy, and websites including Forbes.com, The Daily Beast and Slate. He is editor of the website The American Scene. Previously, Salam was an associate editor at The Atlantic; a producer for NBC News; a junior editor and editorial researcher at the New York Times; a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations; and a reporter-researcher at The New Republic. As a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, Salam also writes on how radical technological advances are changing the way we live and think, and in particular on how the advent of machine intelligence and the ongoing genomics revolution will shape our understanding of democracy and equality. Salam is interested in the evolution of warfare and crime, participatory culture, regulatory policy, migration and the future of the welfare state.
- Nancy Scola
techPresident
Nancy Scola is a journalist and writer trying to make sense of the connections between technology, politics, public policy, science, communications, science, food and culture.
Nancy currently serves as associate editor at techPresident, a publication of the Personal Democracy Forum, and as a contributing writer on TAPPED, the group blog of the American Prospect Magazine. Her freelance work has appeared in publications including Salon, New York, Seed, Columbia Journalism Review and the Atlantic. Nancy studied anthropology and African studies at George Washington University and Boston University, receiving a B.A. at the former and M.A. at the latter. She's still waiting to make use of that summer spent in New Haven studying Swahili. More recently, Nancy taught a class on "new media and new politics" at New York University.
Born and raised in northern New Jersey, Nancy now lives in Brooklyn in an apartment too small for her books. In a past life, under the influence of The West Wing, Nancy worked in actual politics, first as a staffer on Rep. Henry Waxman's Committee on Government Reform (later rebranded the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as an aide to former Governor, now Senator Mark R. Warner of Virginia as he explored a presidential bid. Nancy began her career in Washington at a nonprofit called Social Compact, where she mostly made maps of American neighborhoods and cities.
- Jonathan Zittrain
Harvard University
Jonathan Zittrain is professor of law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, professor of computer science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. His research interests include battles for control of digital property and content, cryptography, electronic privacy, the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture, human computing, and the useful and unobtrusive deployment of technology in education.
He performed the first large-scale tests of Internet filtering in China and Saudi Arabia, and now as part of the OpenNet Initiative, he has co-edited a series of studies of Internet filtering by national governments, including "Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering," and "Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace."
He is a member of the board of trustees of the Internet Society, the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the board of advisers for Scientific American. His book The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It is available from Yale University Press and Penguin UK -- and under a Creative Commons license. Papers may be found at www.jz.org.
Audio
- When
- Friday, April 8, 11:00am - 12:30pm
- Where
- Harborview Ballroom 2
map (pdf) - Track
- Technology and Innovation
A number of websites and technologies now operate as "platforms" that serve as communities, communications infrastructure, journalistic outlets and, ultimately, gatekeepers of speech.
Thanks to our vigorous adoption of these platforms, we've given an extraordinary amount of power to companies whose main motive is the bottom line. In an age in which Facebook operates a proprietary communications tool for 500 million people; in which new devices like the iPad and Apple's App Store feature proprietary ecosystems; and in which Twitter is being used to organize revolutions, what responsibility do these platforms have to ensuring free expression? Should we be worried that private companies have so much control over our speech? That governments can spy on or shut down these platforms?
This panel will look at the role private tech companies play as gatekeepers of expression, with both critics and supporters discussing how we can protect social media users while keeping these platforms open, secure and innovative.
