Andy Miah will give a keynote on Anti-Social Media
For Social Media: Uses and Abuses
Leicester University
http://usesandabuses.wordpress.com/
Social media is the latest phenomenon in the new media world and it is opening up whole new ways of thinking about media and its place in our public and private lives. The social networking boom has quickly been followed by the explosion in micro-blogging. This one day seminar, organized by PhD students at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester, aims to capture some of what is happening and present current research on it.
Relevant issues include but are not limited to:
* “Make things and get excited”: New media, collaborative culture and the reaction to the credit crunch
* “Why aren’t you following me back?”: The (new) rules for human interaction
* Networks of networks: Making connections and revisiting the importance of weak ties
* Social Media and the digital divide
* New media, political parties and citizen participation
The event will integrate new media into its form as well as content so the aim is to set new benchmarks in academic practice as well as research focus. Presenters will include academics, practitioners and PhD students. The plan is to make it an entirely paper free seminar – with a blog forming the central communications hub for all information about the day. This will include guidance on Twitter for those who are new to this form of micro blogging to facilitate an event back channel. This will not only connect the event in real time to outside, online discussion and collaboration – it will also increase the event’s profile on search engines and allow for live updating of discussion
‘We are aiming to make this an exciting ‘first’ in terms of bringing together the theory and practice of social media’, explained PhD student Jennifer Jones, who is leading the organization of the event with the support of PhD Tutor Dr Gillian Youngs. ‘Images can be tagged on photo hosting sites, blog entries can be aggregated and we’ll have a dynamic and multimedia stream of information that can be tapped in presently, or at a later date, at our fingertips and ready to be mashed up and (hopefully) used for future projects. There is no better way to demonstrate social media tools than to get people to use them in collaboration with an offline “face-to-face” event.’
IEET Blog