Is Big Tech too big to regulate?

Tuesday 26 November 6.00pm to 7.30pm

In-person event

PEL 7.0.1A (Silverstone Room), Pethwick Lawrence House

Are tech giants too big to regulate in the public interest? Can regulation rein in and remedy Big Tech for the public good? Or will regulation only ever lead to tweaking and taming of global corporate giants that will continue to reproduce and extend the gross inequalities and harms that global capitalism perpetuates? Come and discuss with our fantastic panel of experts in media & technology.

Speakers: Dr Jennifer Cobbe, Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana, Dr Vincent Obia and Katie Heard.

Chair: Professor Lee Edwards.

This event is co-organised on behalf of the Media Reform Coalition.

Is the internet good for children?

Wednesday 27 November 2024 6.30pm to 8.00pm (drinks reception to follow)

In-person and online public event

Sheikh Zayed Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building

Public anxiety about children’s digital lives and wellbeing is reaching a fever pitch, marking a notable turnaround from the decades-long efforts to ensure children are fully digitally included, literate and empowered. While arguments rage over what’s wrong with ‘screen time,’ ‘online harms,’ and data-driven forms of exploitation, this lecture hosted by the Digital Futures for Children centre will examine how a children’s rights lens can help steer an evidence-based path towards better digital futures for children.

Speaker: Professor Sonia Livingstone. 

Chair: Professor Ellen Helsper.

Death Without Mercy + Director Q&A

Thursday 28 November 2024 6.30pm to 8.00pm

In-person event

CLM.5.02, Clement House

Screening of new documentary Death Without Mercy by Oscar nominated director Waad Al-Khateeb.

Death Without Mercy is a deeply personal film that tells the harrowing stories of survivors from the devastating earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey. At its heart are Fuad Sayedissa and his wife, Safa, who both endured unimaginable tragedy during the disaster. Fuad, through his activist work, has long understood the importance of documenting such events, and his footage, along with Safa’s voice notes recorded while she was trapped under the rubble, forms the backbone of the film. Their story captures not only the personal toll of the earthquake but also the extraordinary resilience of individuals facing the destruction of their homes, families, and communities.

Speakers: Waad Al-Khateeb, Fadi Alhalabi, Fuad and Safa Sayedissa.

Chair: Professor Shakuntala Banaji.

DFC Day 2024

Friday 29 November 2024 10.00am to 6.00pm

DFC public event, in-person

During the day, we will hear the research from colleagues and collaborators at the DFC and engage in collaborative research discussions. 

Registration: 
This public event is free and open to all, but there are limited spaces for external guests. Pre-registration is required, as places are limited. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. 

Book a place now.

Journalism AI Festival

Tuesday 3 to Wednesday 4 December 2024

Further details to be announced

Technocolonialism: when technology for good can be harmful

Thursday 5 December 2024 6.30pm to 8pm (drinks reception to follow)

In-person and online public event

Old Theatre, Old Building

In this talk, Professor Mirca Madianou will put forward the notion of technocolonialism which she has been developing to explain the ways that digital innovation, automation and data practices in the humanitarian sector revitalize colonial legacies. Technocolonialism refers to the convergence of digital developments with humanitarian structures, state power and market forces and the extent to which they reinvigorate and rework colonial genealogies. Technocolonialism shifts the attention to the constitutive role that data and digital innovation play in entrenching power asymmetries in the global context.

Drawing on eight years of research in the aid sector, Professor Madianou observes that colonial genealogies are reworked by extracting value from the data of affected communities; by experimenting with untested technologies in humanitarian settings; and by materializing racial discrimination and dehumanizing suffering. 

Speaker: Professor Mirca Madianou (Goldsmiths, University of London).

Chair: Dr Alison Powell.

Racism, anti-racism and the politics of popular culture

Thursday 6 February 2025 6.30pm to 8.00pm

In-person and online public event

Old Theatre, Old Building

Racism and antiracism clash on a daily basis in media discourse. This joint talk reflects on current practices of "othering" in popular media and probes the nature and meaning of media diversity amidst far right appeals to media representation. These practices point to shifts in whom a plural media system can and ought to serve and why. Francesca will discuss the pop culture portrayals of vampires, immortality, and the racial politics of desiring "demons", and Anamik will address the turn to diversity in media and the ascendency of the far right.

Speakers: Professor Anamik Saha and Dr Francesca Sobande.

Chair: Professor Lee Edwards.

The Last Human Job: AI, Depersonalization and the Industrial Clock

Wednesday 19 February 2025 6.30pm to 8.00pm (drinks reception to follow)

In-person and online public event

Auditorium, Centre Buildling

In this public lecture, Pugh explains how we have ended up in a moment in which machines have time for people, while human workers rush by, bent to the dictates of the industrial clock, and maps out its implications for the future of our social health. Critics commonly warn about three primary hazards of AI – job disruption, bias, and surveillance/privacy concerns. Yet the conventional story of AI’s dangers is missing a vital issue and blinding us to its role in a cresting “depersonalization crisis.” If we are concerned about increasing loneliness and social fragmentation, then we need to reckon with how technologies enable or impede human connection. Based on five years of interviews and observations with more than 100 people employed in humane interpersonal jobs, as well as the administrators and engineers overseeing and systematizing this work, Pugh identifies what these jobs have in common as “connective labor.” Pugh argues that the degradation of connective labor serves as a justification for its automation, part of the way socio-emotional AI is sold.

Speaker: Professor Allison Pugh (John Hopkins University).

Chair: Professor Sonia Livingstone. 

Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood 

Thursday 6 March 2025 6.30pm to 8.00pm

Shaw Library, Old Building

Why is being a victim such a potent identity today? Who claims to be a victim, and why? How have such claims changed in the past century? Who benefits and who loses from the struggles over victimhood in public culture? In this timely and incisive book, Professor Lilie Chouliaraki shows how claiming pain is about claiming power: who deserves to be protected as a victim and who should be punished as a perpetrator. She argues that even if suffering is universal, this "politics of pain" is deeply embedded within power relations and ultimately privileges the voices of the powerful over those of the powerless.

Speakers: Professor Lilie Chouliaraki. 

Chair: TBC.

Hindutva Pop: the making of fascist stars

Tuesday 12 November 2024, 6.30pm to 8.00pm

PEL 7.0.1A (Silverstone Room), Pethwick Lawrence House

Departmental event - open to all LSE students (including doctoral and Masters students) and staff.

Kunal Purohit is an award-winning independent journalist, documentary film-maker and podcast creator. At this event, they will discuss their latest book with Professor Shakuntala Banaji.

Chair: Professor Shakuntala Banaji.

Roundtable on Digital Innovation and Refugees

Thursday 24 October 2024 5.30pm to 7pm

PEL 7.0.1A (Silverstone Room), Pethwick Lawrence House

Departmental event - open to all LSE students (including doctoral and Masters students) and staff.

In a roundtable discussion, panel members will reflect on the historical continuity of media practices in migration, questioning the notion of "digital innovation" in the refugee context. Drawing on examples such as refugee camps and the Temporary Protection Directive for Ukrainian refugees, discussions will focus on how media and technologies - both digital and pre-digital - are used to navigate displacement, governance, and homemaking in uncertain times. The event will also explore the role of digital media in shaping refugee experiences, examining how platforms like TikTok are employed for self-representation and political contestation, particularly during the Russia-Ukraine war.

Speakers: Professor Giorgia Donà, Dr Sara Marino, Dr Philipp Seuferling and Dr Jeannine Teichert. 

Chair: Dr Yael Gordon.

Dead Men’s Propaganda: Ideology and Utopia in Comparative Communications Studies

Monday 21 October 2024 6.30pm to 8pm (drinks reception to follow)

In-person and online public event

Old Theatre, Old Building

Who were the key pioneers in the formation of comparative communications between the 1920s – 1950s, and how do their legacies of scholarship and practice inform the contemporary global landscapes of news reporting on war and the dissemination of propaganda?  

Exploring Terhi Rantanen’s new book, Dead Men’s Propaganda: Ideology and Utopia in Comparative Communications Studies, this panel will examine how comparative communications research, from its very beginning, can be understood as governed by the Mannheimian concepts of ideology and utopia and the power play between them. The close relationship between these two concepts resulted in a bias in knowledge production in comparative communications research, contributed to dominant narratives of generational conflicts, and to the demarcation of Insiders and Outsiders. 

By focusing on a generation at the forefront of comparative communications at this pivotal time, this book uses detailed archival research and case studies to challenge dominant orthodoxies in the intellectual histories of communication studies. 

Speakers: Professor Bingchun Meng, Professor Jeff Pooley (online), Professor Terhi Rantanen, Dr Marsha Siefert (online) and Dr Wendy Willems.

Chair: Professor Myria Georgiou.

This event is co-hosted by LSE Press. Watch the replay.

LSE Election Night 2024

Thursday 4 July 2024 9.15pm to 2.00am

In-person and online public event

12.30am - 1.15am Panel 5: AI, fake news and the media

Join LSE academics and guest speakers for an evening of lively analysis, debate and conversation covering the winners, losers, and the consequences for the UK and the rest of the world.

Speakers: Dr Nick Anstead, Helen Margetts and Julie Posetti.

Chair: Professor Charlie Beckett.

Watch the replay.

The Power of Trust | LSE Festival

Saturday 15 June 2024 at 5.00pm to 6.00pm

In-person and online public event

Great Hall, Marshall Buidling

Trust (in the media, in institutions, in politics and democracy) is widely reported to be in decline, but how important is it for a functioning society and why? What’s the relationship between trust and power? Our panel will consider whether and why trust matters, and how it could be restored. 

Speakers: Professor Charlie Beckett, Rafael Behr, Dr Laura Gilbert and Ros Taylor.

Chair: Professor Neil Lee.

Watch the replay.

Authoritarian Populism and Media Freedom | LSE Festival

Tuesday 11 June 2024 at 5.00pm to 6.00pm

In-person and online public event

Great Hall, Marshall Buidling

How did the Trump administration capture one of the world’s most important public service news networks, The Voice of America? How did the BBC, an exemplary public service broadcaster, end up being accused of bias towards the privileged and the ruling elites?  

Join our expert speakers to examine the disconcerting dynamic between authoritarian populism and public service media - from the politicisation of public service media, beginning with Trump's presidency in the US and Boris Johnson's government in the UK, to the unremitting threats of democratic backsliding facing journalists today.

Speakers: Alan Rusbridger, Dr Damian Tambini and Dr Kate Wright.

Chair: Professor Bart Cammaerts.

Watch the replay.

Report Launch | LSE Common Sense Digital Citizenship Curriculum Evaluation

Tuesday 11 June 2024 at 6.30pm to 8.00pm

Public event - open to all. Drinks reception to follow

LSE Theatre, Centre Building

Are certain school and familial environments better able to offset and combat digital dangers while others ignore the potential harms of screen-time, AI, deep-fakes, disinformation and false advertising? Which strategies work best to strengthen 6-16 year old's digital citizenship? Funded by DSIT's Media Literacy Programme, our team in the LSE Department of Media and Communications partnered with non-profit stakeholder Common Sense Media in an independent evaluation of the effectiveness of their Digital Citizenship Curriculum. 

At this inclusive and critical launch event for the project’s evaluation report, we discuss the findings of a year-long study exploring changes in students’ digital citizenship, media literacy and dispositions towards misinformation and disinformation after the teaching of the Common Sense Media curriculum. We will outline our key findings about the best ways to strengthen media literacy and resistance to disinformation, and reveal the patterns emerging from our evaluation.

Find out more about the LSE Common Sense digital citizenship curriculum evaluation.

Speakers: Dr Fiona Abades Barclay and Professor Shakuntala Banaji.

Chair: Dr Nick Anstead.

A Year of Elections: Power and Politics in 2024 | LSE Festival

Monday 10 June 2024 at 6.30pm to 7.45pm

In-person and online public event

Great Hall, Marshall Buidling

This year people around the world are going to the polls. What have been the surprises and takeaways from election results so far, and what is still to come? Our panel will explore some of the issues coming to the fore in this bumper year for politics as well as the implications of key outcomes.

Speakers: Dr Nick Anstead, Professor Mukulika Banerjee, Professor Sara Hobolt and Bill Neely.

Chair: Professor Larry Kramer.

Watch the replay.

Tech Tantrums: When Tech Meets Humanity

Wednesday 5 June 2024 at 6.30pm to 8.00pm

In-person and online public event

Old Theatre, Old Building

AI is poised to supercharge its impact on almost every aspect of economic, public and personal life. Tech leaders in Silicon Valley believe that AI poses an existential threat to humanity even as they enter an arms race to be ’the ruler of the world”. This year 50% of the world’s population go to the polls, without a single party offering a vision of how they will ride, contain or regulate the wave of change that AI will bring.

In this talk, Beeban Kidron, best known for her global impact on tech regulation to benefit children, will set out why issues around AI must not be left to tech experts and unaccountable corporations.

Speakers: Baroness Beeban Kidron.

Chair: Professor Sonia Livingstone.

Watch the replay.

Divest! The History and Politics of a Demand

Tuesday 4 June 2024 at 5.30pm to 7.30pm

In-person public event

Sheikh Zayed Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building

This panel brings together scholars, experts, practitioners, and organisers who have investigated how financial investments can be entangled with human rights abuses, the arms trade, and climate breakdown.

Taking its point of departure in a just-released report prepared by LSE students and staff, the panel will shed light on how such entanglements can be traced–and place calls for divestment within a broader historical and political context.

Speakers: Dr Shahd Hammouri, Dr Dena Qaddumi, Andrew Feinstein, Katie Fallon, Peter Frankental, Dr Mahvish Ahmad, Dr Milli Lake and Professor Fawaz A. Gerges.

This event is hosted by the Department of Sociology.

The Sixth Suspect: Stephen Lawrence, Investigative Journalism and Racial Inequality

Thursday 16 May 2024 at 6.30pm to 8.00pm

In-person and online public event

Old Theatre, Old Building

In June 2023, a major BBC investigation led by BBC News reporter Daniel De Simone produced new evidence that revealed the identity of a previously unnamed key suspect in the April 1993 racist murder of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence by a gang of 5-6 white men in Eltham, South East London that changed policing and race relations in Britain. 

In his first public talk, BBC correspondent Daniel De Simone will offer previously unheard insights into his two-year investigation, how the sixth suspect was identified, his methods and findings, with responses by a panel of experts drawn from academia and politics. The discussion also allows for an exploration of the potential of contemporary investigative journalism practices in uncovering historical institutional failings and intervening in structural racial inequalities.

Speakers: Daniel De Simone, Ann-Marie Cousins and Clive Nwonka.

Chair: Professor Shakuntala Banaji.

This event is hosted by LSE International Inequalities Institute.

Watch the replay here.

Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back

Tuesday 14 May 2024 at 6.30pm to 8.00pm

Sheikh Zayed Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building

In-person and online public event

Public event - open to all. Drinks reception to follow.

Join us for this public event to celebrate the book launch of Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back with the authors.

Speakers: Professor Nick Couldry and Professor Ulises A. Mejias (SUNY Oswego).

Chair: Professor Myria Georgiou.

This event is co-hosted by LSE International Inequalities Institute.

Watch the replay here.

Digital Media Use in Early Childhood: Birth to Six

Tuesday 7 May 2024 at 4.00pm to 5.15pm

Shaw Library, Old Building

Drinks reception to follow

Join us to celebrate the book launch of Digital media use in early childhood with the co-authors as they be outline key arguments in the book, and reflect on a child rights-informed approach to early years’ digital activities and screen time.

The easy interface of touchscreen technologies like tablets and smartphones has enabled children to access the digital world from a very young age. But while some commentators are enthusiastic about how this can open a new world for fun, learning, and developing digital skills, others see the dangers of yet more screens, inauthentic play, and time spent isolated with electronic babysitters that detract from interaction with parents and learning social skills. Taking five as the age when children transition into formal education, the book draws on a three-year research project examining the realities of under six-year-olds' experiences of these technologies in the UK and Australia. 

Speakers: Professor Sonia Livingstone, Susan Danby, Lelia Green and Brian O’Neill.

This event is co-hosted by Digital Futures for Children Centre (DFC) and 5Rights Foundation.

Digital Cities for Humans or for Profit?

Monday 18 March 2024 at 6.30pm to 8.00pm (in-person and online event)

Auditorium, Centre Building

Public event - open to all. Drinks reception to follow.

On the occasion of Professor Myria Georgiou’s book publication, Being Human in Digital Cities, this panel brings together experts on digital urbanism and on digital justice to address from their different perspectives a number of questions: What are the values driving digital change and ‘smartcitization’? Who speaks and who is silenced when digital cities are planned and realised in the name of urban humanity’s progress? Can we imagine alternative digital futures in cities torn by inequalities and divisions?

This event is co-hosted by LSE Cities.

Watch the replay here.

Ambivalence in (un)certain times

Thursday 7 March 2024 at 5.30pm to 7.00pm

LSE Law School Student Common Room

LSE Event only open to the LSE community

Shani Orgad reflects on the ‘war on ambivalence’ in current public discourse and how the insistent discourse of either/or is geared towards humiliation.

Epistemic reflexivity as a tool to decolonise teaching and learning practices

Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 12.30pm to 2.00pm

Silverstone Room, PEL.7.01A

Departmental event - open to all LSE students (including doctoral and Masters students) and staff. Lunch will be provided at this event.

Please join Dr Pablo Morales and Dr Suzanne Temwa Gondwe Harris for the launch of their podcast series that discusses current pedagogical practices to help decentre European/North American knowledge production by contextualising and highlighting other epistemologies and the process of disclosing positionalities. The project was made in conjunction with, and funding from, the Eden Centre IEAP Fellowships focussing on Decolonising Academia.

Speakers: Dr Pablo Morales and Dr Suzanne Temwa Gondwe Harris.

Register here.

Data grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Resist It

Thursday 8 February 2024 at 4.30pm to 5.30pm (in person and online event) 

Large Seminar Room, UCL Knowledge Lab, 23-29 Emerald Street, London WC1N 3QS

Join this event at UCL to hear Professors Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias talk about how 'data colonialism' is reinforcing and producing highly unequal social arrangements whose negative impacts are more acutely felt by the traditional victims of colonialism. Their new book Data Grab: The new Colonialism of Big Tech and how to fight back is available to order from Penguin.

This event is organised by UCL.

China’s image building in Africa through media development assistance: The role of pay-TV company StarTimes in China’s public diplomacy​

Tuesday 6 February 2024 at 4.00pm to 5.30pm

Silverstone Room, PEL.7.01A

Departmental event - open to all LSE students (including doctoral and Masters students) and staff. Refreshments will be served before the seminar.

In this seminar, Dr Angela Lewis discusses her research examining the phenomenal growth over recent years of StarTimes, a Chinese pay-TV company with around 30 million subscribers providing satellite television to 20 African countries. The broadcaster, whose markets include demographic groups deemed uneconomic by Western television providers, combines entertainment such as Chinese drama and Kung Fu content dubbed into African languages with Chinese state programming, thus making the station at least partially a public diplomacy instrument. At the same time, the channel provides new indigenous language channels, widened access to television in rural areas, and sponsors African soccer brands. 

Speaker: Dr Angela Lewis (Xian-Jiatong Liverpool University).

Chair: Dr Simidele Dosekun.

 Find out more here.

Why Is It Worth Staying Curious About Racial Capitalism?

Wednesday 31 January 2024 at 6.30pm to 7.30pm (in person and online event)

Old Theatre, Old Building 

There has been a huge increase in discussion of racial capitalism, linked both to a revisiting of anticapitalist analysis and of the legacies of colonial violence. However, the framing of racial capitalism can become a way to freeze analysis - as if the same circuit of dispossession and violence continues across time and space and, with the desperate implication, for always. In this talk, Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya considers the changing violences of racial capitalism and considers how can we use this language to identify emerging patterns of racialised dispossession, and what might we then do about it.

Speaker: Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya (UCL, Sarah Parker Remond Centre, Institute of Advanced Studies).

Chair: Professor Bart Cammaerts.

Watch the replay here.

Digital Futures for Children (DFC) and 5Rights Foundation

Wednesday 17 January 2024 at 3.00pm to 5.00pm 

Silverstone Room, PEL 7.01A

Departmental event - open to all LSE students (including doctoral and Masters students) and staff. This event will be followed by a reception.

This joint LSE and 5Rights research centre supports an evidence base for advocacy, facilitates dialogue between academics and policymakers and amplifies children's voices, following the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General comment No. 25. Please join us to discuss the priorities for the DFC research agenda and to identify shared interests and future possibilities.

Speakers: Professor Sonia Livingstone, Baroness Beeban Kidron (5Rights), Gerison Lansdown (DFC Advisory Board) and Professor Bart Cammaerts.

To identify how to embed children’s rights in the digital environment, especially in legislation, regulation and policy, we’re keen to discuss the role of evidence in advocacy, likely conceptual and methodological challenges, and comparative and international perspectives. The main part of the meeting will be interactive to hear from all participants, followed by a round table discussion.

JournalismAI Festival 2023

Tuesday 5 - Wednesday 6 December 2023 (online)

A celebration of the most exciting developments at the intersection of journalism and artificial intelligence.

The JournalismAI Festival features conversations and case studies that explore the intersection of journalism and artificial intelligence. It is all about using AI to make journalism better. Together.

Find out more here.

Medical Influencers: What Happens When Doctors Become Social Media Celebrities?

Tuesday 28 November 2023 at 11.00am to 11.30am

Shaw Library, Old Building

‘‘Medfluencers’’ represent a growing niche within the ever-expanding influencer industry. For many, this is a decidedly positive development as it is widely assumed that accredited expertise is a remedy for and antidote to health misinformation. But there are downsides to the rise of ‘‘medfluencers’’. In this talk Dr Rachel O’Neill examines what the entry of doctors to the ranks of social media celebrity might mean for the profession and for public health.

Speaker: Dr Rachel O'Neill.

Register and find out more about LSE Research Showcase here.

Brexit and the Digital Single Market  

Thursday 23 November 2023 at 4.30pm to 6.00pm

Silverstone Room, PEL.7.01A

Departmental event - open to all LSE students (including doctoral and Masters students) and staff

Join us for the launch of Professor Alison Harcourt's book, Brexit and the Digital Single Market, which examines the important historical role of the UK in DSM development, the consequences of Brexit for the UK's digital sector, and future EU and UK policy trajectories. Assessing both vertical sectors and horizontal policies, the book demonstrates how the UK acted as a policy entrepreneur in pushing for a deregulatory framework by exploiting temporal events historically.

Speaker: Professor Alison Harcourt (University of Exeter; LSE).

Discussant: Professor Maria Michalis (University of Westminster).

Chair: Maria Donde (OFCOM).

Find out more here.

Launching Digital Futures for Children - a new LSE and 5Rights Research Centre

Tuesday 21 November 2023 at 3.00pm to 4.00pm (online)

Join us for the launch of our new research centre Digital Futures for Children - a research collaboration between 5Rights Foundation and the department.

Find out more here.

Chaitybhumi: Film Screening and Q&A with Director

Tuesday 24 October 2023 at 6.30pm to 8.30pm (in-person)

Silverstone Room, PEL.7.01A

Departmental film screening - open to all LSE students (including doctoral and Masters students) and staff. Limited seating available, entrance on a first come basis.

Chaitybhumi brings to light the history and cultural politics of how people commemorate December 6 at Chaityabhumi and what is the relevance of this public event in contemporary India. It explores how the Dalit community comes together to honour this day and the political implications it holds for their identity and empowerment. The documentary examines the complex interplay of caste and public space politics in Mumbai city.

Join us for this departmental screening and Q&A with the director.

Speaker: Somnath Waghmare (Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Mumbai).

Chair: Professor Shakuntala Banaji.

Conspiracy Theories, Disinformation, and Communication Rituals: Reconsidering the Nature of Motivations in Motivated Reasoning 

Monday 16 October 2023, 4.00pm to 5.30pm

Silverstone Room, PEL.7.01A

Departmental Seminar - open to all LSE students (including doctoral and Masters students) and staff

Political communication scholars often draw on cognitive science models and methods when explaining political polarization. In general, they find that people cling stubbornly to factually unsound beliefs, despite corrections. In this seminar, Livingston argues that the cognitive science approach, while insightful in many ways, fails to specify the nature of motivation in directional reasoning. Rather than look to brain function, we must instead look to people’s search for meaning and purpose (motivation properly understood) in societies wrought by extreme social and economic inequality and the disruptions these conditions bring. The crisis of democracy is the consequence of social anxieties emerging from lived experiences that lead not only “deaths of despair”, but also to the embrace of “deep stories” that, while not necessarily socially salubrious, serve to affirm meaning, purpose, and identity. Drawing on the communication (or media) ritual research literature, Livingston argues that meaningful narratives are best thought of as deep stories – stories that offer emotional truths that are sustained by communication rituals. 

Speaker: Professor Steven Livingston (George Washington University).

Respondent: Dr Nick Anstead.

Chair: Professor Sonia Livingstone.

ARS 2023: Disrupted or disruptive audiences? From reception to participation in a post-truth era

Tuesday 12 - Thursday 14 September 2023

Porto, Portugal

Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE will deliver a keynote presentation.

Find out more about the conference, keynote speakers and registration here.

The Tragedy of Heterosexuality in Global Context

Tuesday 12 September 2023 at 3.00pm to 4.30pm

In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, Jane Ward critiques one of the basic premises of the mainstream LGBT rights movement—that heterosexuality is easier than queerness—by asking for whom, and under what conditions, is straightness easier. Drawing from ethnographic field work, archival research, and cultural studies methods, Ward examines the 20th century emergence of a “heterosexual repair industry”—a self-help empire designed to romanticize and ease heterosexual misery while eliding attention to heteropatriarchy and the queer, feminist interventions poised to undo it. In this talk, Ward takes her analysis in new directions, pointing to the global implications of heterosexual misery by analyzing the global “anti-gender” (or “gender critical”) movement and the collective anxiety about gender and sexuality that animates it. Ward conceptualizes “gender critical” projects as expressions of heteroparanoia and psychic dissonance aimed at reconciling the paradoxes of modern heterosexuality, and offers a feminist assessment of these projects' trajectories.

Speaker: Professor Jane Ward (University of California Santa Barbara).

Chair: Dr Rachel O'Neil.

Find out more here.

#MeToo in the Media: survivors, believability, and emotional labour | LSE Festival

Saturday 17 June 2023 at 4.00pm to 5.00pm (in-person and online event)

Marshall Building, LSE

Is the #MeToo movement about affecting change, or simply about visibility? More than five years after the first Weinstein allegations appeared in news headlines, #MeToo continues to impact our media landscape, but we should not ignore the impact this movement has had on the individual people caught in the glare of the media spotlight.  Which survivors are seen as believable in the media?  What is the emotional labour required of survivors whose experiences of trauma are made so very public? 

Our unique panel will look at these mediated struggles for visibility, authenticity, and recognition around #MeToo, drawn from their own lived experience, media practice, and academic research.

Speakers: Rowena Chiu, Kathryn Claire Higgins, Winnie M Li and Lucia Osborne-Crowley.

Chair: Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser.

Find out more here. Watch the replay.

Media Futures: The Department of Media and Communications 20th Anniversary Conference

Thursday 15 - Friday 16 June 2023, LSE

We are living in turbulent and increasingly dangerous times which are in large part defined and influenced by the very thing we study and research, namely media, communication infrastructures, algorithms, and data. Faced with an uncertain future, we can discern both dystopian and optimistic scenarios. In terms of the former we need critique, as well as ethical norms and values to validate those critiques. Regarding the latter, alternative imaginaries of hope, social justice and solidarity need to be developed or indeed rejuvenated.

In our 20th anniversary conference, we aim to address both the critiques of the present and to consider and imagine alternative pathways. Papers will be aligned with our four research themes: Media Culture and Identities; Histories and Futures; Media, Participation and Politics; and Communication, Technology, Rights and Justice.    

Find out more about the conference here.

The Power of "Good Enough" | LSE Festival

Wednesday 14 June 2023 at 6.30pm to 7.30pm (in-person and online event)

Marshall Building, LSE

Over the past 30 years, there has been a substantial increase in the percentage of people who feel they need to be perfect. The pressure we put on ourselves to be perfect and the expectations we feel from others and society-at-large can lead to depression, burnout and other mental illnesses, particularly amongst younger generations. How do we escape this perfection trap and embrace the idea of “good enough”?

Speakers: Dr Thomas Curran, Adrienne Herbert and Dr Rachel O'Neill. 

Chair: Dr Grace Lordan.

Organised by the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science (PBS).

Find out more here. Watch the replay.

ICA Conference 2023

Tuesday 23 - Monday 29 May 2023

Toronto, Canada

The 73rd Annual ICA Conference theme Reclaiming Authenticity in Communication, invites communication scholars to examine how authenticity has become a variable, rather than a constant, in public discourses and popular culture across the globe, and with what relational, social, political, and cultural implications. 

View the full list of presentations from department members at ICA 2023 here. Find out more about the conference here.

Greenwashing, carbon capitalism and the role of PR

Friday 5 May 2023 at 1.00pm to 2.30pm (online)

The climate crisis is an existential threat for all who inhabit the planet. For marginalised regions, nations and social groups, the intensity of the threat has been felt more keenly than by those who are already privileged. These inequalities are due not only to the political economy of climate change mitigation and adaptation, but also to the media and communications ecology that surrounds and supports climate discourse in variable ways. Research on media representations of climate change effects has already demonstrated the ways in which coverage privileges western-driven understandings of climate, nature, and human life, and stops short of calling for the fundamental change that is required for planetary survival.

In this panel discussion, we add to this work by exploring how the public relations profession has facilitated climate narratives that obfuscate, while perpetuating technodeterministic solutionism that protects corporate ambition and sacrifices the collective good. We contrast such anti-planetary work with a discussion of how public relations strategies and tactics are used by activist groups that fight greenwashing and carbon capitalism to create genuine change that supports, rather than endangers, our collective futures.

Speakers: Melissa Aronczyk (Rutgers University), Clea Bourne (Goldsmiths, University of London), Professor Benedetta Brevini, Paulina Magaña Carbajal (El Poder del Consumidor) and Jotham Keleino (Evangelical Lutheran Church of PNG).

Chair: Professor Lee Edwards.

Find out more here. Watch the replay.

Digital Platforms and the Future of Political Solidarity

Tuesday 28 March 2023 at 6.30pm to 8.00pm

Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, LSE

Open to all, entry on a first come basis. Drinks reception to follow.

Digital platforms are where we live out much of our lives, including our politics. But are the digital platforms we have today, and the business models that drive them, good for political life? And even if they are good for some dimensions of politics, for example mobilization, do they work as well for building solidarity and for forming long-term campaigns of progressive political change? 

What weight should we give to the fears of polarization online versus the more positive potentials of the digital? And differences of scale matter here between urban politics and the national or global? Finally, if we do have concerns about our current digital platforms, how do we build better ones? Who should do this, and what sorts of resource will they need? Our speakers who have all written books highly relevant to these topics will address and debate these urgent questions. 

Speakers: Professor Myria Georgiou, Miranda Hall (The Independent Workers of Great Britain), Dr James Muldoon (University of Exeter), Dr Alex Williams (University of East Anglia) and Dr Alison Winch (Goldsmiths, University of London).

Chair: Professor Nick Couldry.

Co-organiser: Professor Jeremy Gilbert, University of East London.

Listen to the podcast recording. Find out more here and @platformsolid for updates on the project.

The state of cybersecurity in education: towards a standard for EdTech in K-12 education 

Wednesday 8 February 2023 at 7.00pm to 8.00pm (online)

The state of cybersecurity in education is messy. Cybercrime in education continues to grow in frequency and magnitude. EdTech companies don’t have a specific cybersecurity framework to adhere to, which addresses the needs of K-12 education. International cybersecurity experts, policymakers, school leaders, and EdTech businesses from the UK, Europe, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia will gather to discuss ways forward in building resilient and cyber secure educational environment that prioritises children’s rights and privacy. 

Find out more here. See Dr Hillman's Media@LSE blog post on this topic here.

Journalism AI Festival

Wednesday 7 - Thursday 8 December 2022 (online)

An online global conference exploring the intersection of journalism and AI.

Find out more here.

Imagining Information and Communications Technologies for a Fairer World

Monday 5 December 2022 at 6.30pm - 8.00pm (hybrid)

Sheikh Zayed Theatre, LSE 

Open to all, entry on a first come basis. 

Join us for this celebratory event as speakers address the legacy of LSE’s Robin Mansell, a leading figure in the field of information and communication technologies (ICTs) theory and practice.

Speakers: Professor Hopeton Dunn (University of Botswana), Dr Alison Norah Gillwald (Research ICT Africa), Dr Linje Manyozo (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), Gillian Marcelle (Resilience Capital Ventures LLC), Professor Marc Raboy (McGill University) and Professor Sharon Strover (University of Texas).

Chair: Professor Bart Cammaerts.

Find out more here. Watch the replay.

Youth Mental Health and Internet Use: Benefits and Risks of Digital Skills

Wednesday 30 November 2022 at 4.00pm to 5.15pm (online)

What is the relation between young people’s mental health difficulties and their internet use? There are growing public and expert concerns that social media platforms can be harmful to young people with vulnerable mental health. Do algorithms make things worse? Can social and peer-to-peer interaction on the internet worsen mental health difficulties? Most importantly, what is the role of digital skills in mediating wellbeing outcomes?

Join us for the launch of our new report exploring how digital skills improve or undermine the wellbeing of European young people with lived experiences of diverse mental health difficulties. As part of the EU-funded Youth Skills (ySKILLS) project, we present the calls for action, underpinned by the findings and highlighting the voices and concerns of young people in Norway and the UK.

Speakers: June Lowery-Kingston (European Commission), Leen d'Haenens (KU Leuven), Tine Jensen (University of Oslo), Mariya Stoilova, Line Indrevoll Stänicke (University of Oslo).

Chair: Professor Elisabeth Staksrud (University of Oslo).

Co-organiser: Youth Skills (ySKILLS).

Find out more here.

Implementing Child Rights Online: new cross-national evidence to guide policy

Wednesday 23 November 2022 at 3.00pm - 4.30pm (online)

Our panel will explore the global evidence on children’s internet-related risks and opportunities to inform policymakers internationally.

Speakers: Dr Alexandre Barbosa (CETIC.br), Patrick Burton (Director of the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention), Daniel Kardefelt-Winther (UNICEF), Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE, Professor Manisha Pathak-Shelat (MICA) and Marium Saeed (UNICEF).

Find out more here. Watch the replay.

Representing Black British History on the Screen

Wednesday 26 October 2022, 6.30-8.30pm

CLM.4.02, Clement House, 4th floor

This event comprises of a screening of the ‘Lovers Rock’ episode part of the Small Axe’s series that Steve McQueen produced for the BBC in 2020. Instead of emphasising Black suffering, this episode was often framed as a celebration of Black joy. The screening is followed by a discussion on the tension between commemoration and celebration in representing Black British history on the screen.

We welcome students, alumni, and staff to celebrate Blackness through discussion, reflection, and open dialogue.

Speakers: Dr Suzanne Temwa Gondwe Harris and Dr Clive Nwonka (UCL).

Chair: Dr Wendy Willems.

Find out more here.

Social Media and Hate

Tuesday 25 October 2022, 6.30-8pm (hybrid)

Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, LSE

Co-authors Professor Shakuntala Banaji and Dr Ram Bhat discuss their latest book, Social Media and Hate (2021, Routledge) which investigates the theoretical and practical intersection of misinformation and social media hate in contemporary societies. They argue that these phenomena, and the extreme violence and discrimination they initiate against targeted groups, are connected to the socio-political contexts, values and behaviours of users of social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, ShareChat, Instagram and WhatsApp. 

Chair: Dr S.M. Rodriguez (LSE Gender).

Find out more here. Watch the replay.

Order Social Media and Hate here.

ECREA 2022 - 9th European Communication Conference - Rethink Impact

Wednesday 19 - Saturday 22 October 2022

Aarhus University, Denmark

Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE will deliver a keynote presentation.

Find out more about the conference, keynote speakers and registration here.

(Europe's) Migrations and the Media

Tuesday 21 June 2022, 10am-5pm (hybrid)

PEL 7.01.A (Silverstone Room), Pethick-Lawrence House, LSE

This one-day seminar explores political and media discourses of forced migration in Europe in the contexts of the war in Ukraine and the earlier ‘refugee crisis.’ The seminar brings together researchers and practitioners to explore political and media constructions of migrants and refugees, past and present. 

Find out more.

Mediated Wars, Mediated Refuge

Monday 20 June 2022, 10am-6pm (hybrid)

Post-graduate seminar

PEL 7.01.A (Silverstone Room), Pethick-Lawrence House, LSE

This all-day post-graduate and early career seminar seeks to understand the relationship between communication, global politics, and war. It examines the role of global media in shaping the global conversation around war, global security, resistance, and refuge.

The seminar evaluates how media’s coverage of recent wars, and their discursive production of knowledge informs and legitimizes practice in global politics. The interdisciplinary character of the seminar and of the case studies of media from Western and non-Western traditions brings together conceptual and theoretical strands from multiple disciplines: media and communications, history, politics, war studies, migration studies.

Find out more.

LSE Festival 2022: The Age of Refugees

Saturday 18 June 2022 11am - 12pm

UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre National University of Ireland Galway 10th Biennial International Conference

Thursday 9 June 2022, 4.30–5.15pm

National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland

Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE will deliver a keynote presentation titled 'Young People’s Rights in a Digital World'.

Find out more about the conference here.

Guy Debord in the Global South: A Prehistory of the 'Society of the Spectacle' in India

Monday 6 June 2022, 5-6.30pm

PEL 7.01.A (Silverstone Room), Pethick-Lawrence House, LSE

Join us for this seminar with invited speaker, Professor Arvind Rajagopal (NYU) as he reflects on Guy Debord’s idea of the spectacle within the context of the Global South, which will be chaired by Professor Shakuntala Banaji. 

Find out more here.

ICA Conference 2022

Thursday 26 - Monday 30 May 2022

The 72nd Annual ICA Conference theme One World, One Network‽ invites reimagining communication scholarship on globalization and networks. The use of the interrobang glyph - a superposition of the exclamation and question punctuation marks – seeks to simultaneously celebrate and problematize the “one-ness” in the theme.

View the list of department presentations at ICA here. Find out about the conference here.

ICA Pre-conference 2022: Patriarchal Worlds, Feminist Networks, and the Conjuncture

Thursday 26 - Monday 30 May 2022

Paris, France

The visibility and currency of popular, post and neoliberal feminisms seem to be thriving. Ideas and sentiments such as feminist solidarity, mutual aid, and care have surfaced and been reinvigorated, particularly in the wake of the pandemic. Yet, at the very same time, we have seen the rise and increasing visibility of reactionary forces including misogynoir, anti-feminisms, and anti-gender movements. This ICA pre-conference will provide a forum to discuss these contemporary developments within global patriarchies.

Organisers: Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser, Professor Jo Littler, Professor Shani Orgad, Dr Catherine Rottenberg and Professor Rosalind Gill.

View the call for papers and submission guidelines here, and here for details on the ICA pre-conference.

Epistemic Media and Communication Rights and Justice in a Digital Age

Tuesday 24 May 2022, 2-3.30pm

Silverstone Room, Pethick - Lawrence House, LSE

Departmental Research Seminar/Workshop - Open to all LSE students and staff

Professor Hannu Nieminen: 'Ontological security and epistemic democracy: reflections on COVID-19 and Ukraine War'.

Professor Bart Cammaerts: 'Radical Imaginaries and Justifications for Public Interventions in Media and Communication'.

Respondents: Eleonora Mazzoli and Professor Nick Couldry.

Chair: Abel Guerra.

Epistemic Media and Communication Rights and Justice in a Digital Age

Friday 20 May 2022, 10am-6.30pm

The future is always unknown but at times it seems more difficult to imagine than others. Certainly, we are living in times when visions of the future feel dystopic, whether in political or technological realms. But how do we approach studying the future?

This research symposium brings together media professionals and academics to examine the idea of the future in its affective and conceptual sense within the context of the Middle East and North Africa. Panels engage with questions such as: What are the future trends in Arab media? What media forms and technologies mediate the future, and how? How do we navigate histories of, and past intellectual debates about, political futures? How do we study a fickle concept like the future from the vantage point of the Middle East and North Africa? 

This symposium is organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and forms a key component of the research project Arab News Futures, led by Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi and Dr Abeer Al-Najjar (American University of Sharjah).

View the programme here.

War, Death and Mediation

Tuesday 10 May 2022, 5-6.30pm (hybrid event), 6.30-7.30pm drinks reception

Graham Wallas Room, Old Building, LSE

Departmental Seminar - Open to all LSE students and staff

Today we live in a society of hyper mediated death. War in Ukraine has brought death to the centre of social and political life in Europe, as well as elsewhere in the world. As a phenomenon, hyper mediation of death is anything but neutral social or cultural phenomenon. It touches upon profound ethical, moral and political questions related to a variety of issues including hierarchies associated with the value of life as well as questions concerning whose suffering and death are worth public mourning or who can claim hero or witness positions in the current communication environment shaped by information warfare. In this highly digitalized media war, death is not only present, but weaponized at multiple levels. This condition invites scholarship to examine issues of belonging, solidarity and compassion, but also instrumentalization, manipulation or even banalization of death in the present society characterized by ubique digital media saturation.

Speakers: Professor Mirca Madianou (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Dr Tal Morse (LSE PhD alumni, Hadassah Academic College, University of Bath) and Dr Johanna Sumiala (LSE and University of Helsinki).

Order Dr Sumiala’s new book on the topic Mediated Death (Polity).

Order Dr Morse's latest book The Mourning News: Reporting Violent Death in a Global Age (Peter Lang).

View event details here.

Transitioning from Tankers to Tablets? Assessing Inequalities in Kuwait's Digital Readiness

Monday 4 April 2022 3-4.30pm (online event)

This webinar will reveal the current state of inequalities in relation to Kuwait’s digital readiness. Kuwait occupies a privileged position in the region and aims to depend on ICTs for its planned transition from a reliance on hydrocarbon exports toward a high-tech, knowledge-based economy. The project Co-PIs will discuss key findings from Kuwait’s Digital Inequalities Report: 2022 related to ICT access, skills, uses, and outcomes among important communities across Kuwait.

Speakers: Professor Ellen Helsper, Fahed Al-Sumait, Cristina Navarro, Nouf Al-Saif (Gulf University for Science and Technology) and Courtney Freer (LSE Middle East Centre).

Watch here and view event details here.

Hosted by the LSE Middle East Centre.

Communicative Cities Research Network Symposium 2022: Communication, Isolation, and Reconnection in the (Post-)Pandemic City

Thursday 24 - Friday 25 March 2022 (hybrid event)

Graham Wallas Room, 5th floor, Old Building, LSE

The CCRN 2022 Symposium focuses on the communicative configurations and transformations of the (post-)pandemic city. Cities across the world have experienced the pandemic differentially but acutely, with abrupt interruptions of their economic and cultural life and with physical isolation resetting conditions for urban communication. As cities across the world come out of and change because of the Covid-19 pandemic, physical isolation, collective trauma, and fears of consequent crises cast their shadows over urban life. While cities look ahead into diverse and wide-ranging challenges for their futures, urban communication is at the heart of many of those challenges.

View event details here.

Confidence Culture

Wednesday 23 March 2022, 6-7.30pm (hybrid event), 7.30-8.30pm drinks reception

Auditorium, LSE

In Confidence Culture, Professors Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill argue that imperatives directed at women to “love your body” and “believe in yourself” imply that psychological blocks hold women back rather than entrenched social injustices. Interrogating the prominence of confidence in contemporary discourse about body image, workplace, relationships, motherhood, and international development, Orgad and Gill draw on Foucault’s notion of technologies of self to demonstrate how “confidence culture” demands of women near-constant introspection and vigilance in the service of self-improvement. They argue that while confidence messaging may feel good, it does not address structural and systemic oppression. Rather, confidence culture suggests that women—along with people of color, the disabled, and other marginalized groups—are responsible for their own conditions. Rejecting confidence culture’s remaking of feminism along individualistic and neoliberal lines, Orgad and Gill explore alternative articulations of feminism that go beyond the confidence imperative.

Speakers: Dr Katherine Angel, Professor Rosalind Gill, Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola and Professor Shani Orgad.

Chair: Dr Rachel O'Neill.

Order Confidence Culture here.

View the recording and event details here.

The Digital Disconnect 

Monday 7 March 2022, 5.30-7pm (hybrid event) 

Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building

From societal causes to the impact of everyday actions, The Digital Disconnect by Professor Ellen Helsper, explores the relationship between digital and social inequalities, and the lived consequences of digitisation. 

Professor Helsper goes beyond questions of digital divides and who is connected. She asks why and how social and digital inequalities are linked and shows the tangible outcomes of socio-digital inequalities in everyday lives. 

Order The Digital Disconnect here. 

View the recording here, and event details here.

Public service broadcasting in its second century

Wednesday 2 March 2022, 6.30-7.30pm (online event)

The BBC is expected to provide programmes that meeting the needs of diverse audiences and to demonstrate ‘professional skill and editorial integrity’ and it must do so in ways that encourage public understanding. Yet the future of the BBC and its public service remit are under constant scrutiny with multiple new entrants in the news and entertainment market and with changes in the way audiences, especially young people, consume content. Co-sponsored by LSE’s Department of Media and Communications and the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association - MeCCSA - Policy Network, the BBC’s Director General Tim Davie and Baroness Minouche Shafik will discuss issues such as the prominence of public service providers in the face of competitive threats from video-on-demand providers, the BBC’s future financial sustainability and opportunities for the BBC created by digital technologies.

Speakers: Tim Davie, CBE.

Chair: Baroness Minouche Shafik.

View the recording and event details here.

Im/materialities - Structural tensions between AI and the environment

Thursday 24 February 2022, 3.30-5pm (online event)

Join the JUST AI Deep Sustainability working group for a continued panel discussion about the possibilities and limitations of AI as a solution to the climate crisis.

Speakers: Professor Jennifer Gabrys, Dr Paola Ricaurte and Dr Victor Galaz.

Chair: Dr Alison Powell.

Find out more here.

China and the World in the Post-COVID Era: a new agenda of public policy

Monday 21 February 2022, 6.30-8pm (online event)

In this public event celebrating the launch of the LSE-Fudan Global Public Policy Hub, an interdisciplinary panel of experts will be discussing key public policy challenges that China and the world faces post-pandemic.

Leading scholars of health policy, development economics, urban governance and public administration will assess the policy agenda of their respective field in relation to the goal of building ‘common prosperity’ recently proposed by the CCP.

Speakers: Bill Bikales, Professor Xiaobo Lü, Dr Xuefei Ren and Professor Winnie Yip.

Chair: Dr Bingchun Meng.

Find out more here.

Stronger Together Global Virtual Summit: Protecting Children from Online Pornography by Inviting a Public Health Response

Thursday 17 February 2022, 8-8.55am MST/ 3-3.55pm UK time (online event)

Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE will deliver a highlighted presentation titled 'A Child's Rights Perspective'.

Find out more about the conference here and view the agenda.

EVENT CANCELLED: Transnational Black Femininities and Feminisms: A Conversation

Wednesday 16 February 2022, 6-7.30pm (online event)

How do black women in the global South see themselves and fashion identities in the context of contemporary neoliberal globalization, US cultural dominance, and deeply historicized structures, and feelings, about race and class? How do they navigate 'feminism'? What does transnational feminist cultural studies offer us as an approach to understanding and representing such women's lives and images and narratives of self?

Dr Simidele Dosekun and Dr Rachel Afi Quinn (University of Houston) will be in conversation about their recently published books, Being La Dominicana: Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo (University of Illinois Press, 2021) and Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular Femininity and Transnational Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2020).

New Directions in Feminist Thought: Research in Times of Crisis and Change

Wednesday 26 - Thursday 27 January 2022 (online event)

This two-day event organized by City University of London, Coventry University, LSE, USC Annenberg, and Annenberg Penn, will consist of panels on a range of subjects connected to gender and research in times of crisis and change.

This event is open to PhD and post-doc researchers to showcase their work from all areas of research within the field of feminist and gender studies to present work on a range of subjects connected to gender and research in times of crisis and change.

Find out more.

Digital technologies and mental health vulnerabilites in adolescence

Wednesday 15 December 2021, 9-10am (online event)

The report examines the relationship between digital technologies and mental health in adolescents made vulnerable by pre-existing mental health problems.

Public and policy debates often link rising rates of adolescents’ mental health problems to increasing internet use. But these debates have not always been rigorously grounded in evidence concerning both possible benefits and harms. There is a gap in understanding between those who are experts in mental health and those with expertise in the culture, political economy and regulation of the digital environment, hence many questions remain. Can adolescents’ internet use increase the risk of poor mental health and what aspects of ‘the internet’ matter? Can digital technologies support adolescents’ mental health, whether by placing barriers on the pathway to harm or by introducing online help?

In answering these questions, we draw on a scoping review of relevant published evidence with new insights from pilot focus groups with adolescents with experiences of self-harm, eating disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as well as interviews with relevant experts.

Speakers: Christopher Edwards (King's College London), Kasia Kostyrka-Allchorne (King's College London), Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE and Dr Mariya Stoilova.

View the recording here and event details here. The report is available online, as well as a summary of key findings and implications on this blog post.

Seen But Not Heard: Youth Citizenship Identities and Participation in Kuwait

Wednesday 8 December 2021, 4-5.30pm (online event)

Speakers: Dr Rania Al-Nakib (Gulf University for Science and Technology) and Dr Sam Mejias.

Chair: Dr Courtney Freer (LSE Media East Centre).

Listen to the recording here and find out more about the event here.

Hosted by the LSE Middle East Centre.

Journalism AI Festival 2021

Monday 29 November - Friday 3 December 2021 (online event)

The JournalismAI Festival is the place where the worlds of journalism and artificial intelligence meet every year. The 5-day programme features speakers from newsrooms, media companies, and research institutions from around the world – coming together to talk about how journalism is evolving and what is the role of AI technologies in this evolution.

The Festival is a unique occasion to come together with a global community of like-minded people striving to create a better future for journalism with AI.

Find out more about the festival and view the recordings here.

Global Forum on AI for Children

Tuesday 30 November 2021, 3.10-3.55pm (5.10-5.55pm Helsinki time) (online event)

On 30 November - 1 December 2021, UNICEF and the Government of Finland will host the Global Forum on AI for Children. This first-of-its-kind, virtual event will gather the world’s foremost children’s rights and technology experts, policymakers, practitioners and researchers, as well as children active in the AI space, to connect and share knowledge on pressing issues at the intersection of children’s rights, digital technology policies and AI systems.

Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE will be participating in 'Breakout Group 2: Ensure inclusion of and for children' as a panellist.

Find out more about the forum here.

Proxies: the cultural work of standing in

Thursday 18 November 2021, 5pm – 6pm (online event)

Join us for the launch of Dr Dylan Mulvin’s new book, Proxies: The Cultural Work of Standing In.

Our world is built on an array of standards we are compelled to share. In Proxies, Mulvin examines how we arrive at those standards, asking, “To whom and to what do we delegate the power to stand in for the world?” Mulvin shows how those with the power to design technology, in the very moment of design, are allowed to imagine who is included—and who is excluded—in the future. Mulvin also explores the ways technologies, standards, and infrastructures inescapably reflect the cultural milieus of their bureaucratic homes. Drawing on archival research, he investigates some of the basic building-blocks of our shared infrastructures. He tells the history of technology through the labour and communal practices of, among others, the people who clean kilograms to make the metric system run, the women who pose as test images, and the actors who embody disease and disability for medical students. Each case maps the ways standards and infrastructure rely on prototypical ideas of whiteness, able-bodiedness, and purity to control and contain the messiness of reality.

Speakers: Dr Dylan Mulvin, Dr Cait McKinney (Simon Fraser University) and Dr Tarleton Gillespie (Microsoft Research/Cornell University).

View the recording here, or event details here. Order Proxies or view the free download from MIT Press via Open Access.

Social media, learning and wellbeing: Opportunities and responsibilities for educators

Friday 12 November 2021, 4pm (online event)

Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE delivers a keynote at the SPH Network Conference, Unmute Yourself: Communication and Education in Response to Crises.

Find out more here.

Digital Futures Commission: Playful by Design - Free Play in a Digital World

Thursday 4 November 2021, 4pm (online event)

In response to children’s views about what free play means to them.

Speakers: Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE (DFC lead researcher and report author), Dr Sangeet Bhullar (Executive Director, WISE KIDS), Dr Tim Gill (Rethinking Childhood, Author of Urban Playground) and Professor Mimi Ito (University of California - Irvine).

Chair: Baroness Beeban Kidron (5Rights Foundation).

The event will be followed by a Q&A with attendees. 

Find out more here.

Calling In, Not Calling Out

Wednesday 13 October 2021, 4-5pm (online event)

In this talk, Professor Loretta J. Ross invites us to call others in, rather than call them out. Fighting against oppression and injustice are the dues we pay for the privilege of being conscious and we are honoured to be able to challenge it with great responsibility. We begin to build a unified and strategic human rights movement that weaves our strengths together, that uses our differences as a platform for modelling a positive future built on justice and the politics of love, rather than a return to the past based on the politics of fear and prejudice. However, to create this movement we need to make a commitment to recognise and support each other – Calling People in rather than Calling them Out. Ross will talk about how we can transform the Calling Out Culture into a Calling In Culture in order to build a united movement for human rights.

Speakers: Professor Loretta J. Ross (Smith College).

Chair: Professor Shani Orgad.

View the recording here, and event details here.

Cyprus’ partition: political culture, political economy, and the narratives of division

Wednesday 6 October 2021, 6-7.30pm (online event)

This event examines the political communication and public culture that surround and shape the dynamics of Cyprus’ continuing division. A panel of experts in political communication and international relations speak to the topic, with the occasion of the publication of Ioannou’s new book, The Normalization of Cyprus’ Partition Among Greek Cypriots: Political economy and political culture in a divided society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

Speakers: Dr Emel Akcali (University of Swansea), Dr Gregoris Ioannou (University of Sheffield), Professor Neophytos Loizides (University of Kent) and Professor Eugenia Siapera (University College Dublin).

Chair: Professor Myria Georgiou.

View the recording here, and event details here.

Navigating Collapse: Where Next for Lebanon?

Monday 4 October 2021, 6-7pm (online event)

In this webinar, nearly two years on from the 17 October Revolution, we hear from speakers active in the fields of politics, labour union organising, urban space and law, who will address the aftermath of the Beirut explosion, the future of political activism, the upcoming elections and what may be emerging in Lebanon.

Speakers: Ghida Frangieh (Legal Agenda), Ibrahim Halawi (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Abir Saksouk (Public Works Studio).

Chair: Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi. 

Find out more here.

Hosted by the LSE Middle East Centre.

Book launch: Media Freedom

Monday 20 September 2021, 5pm-6.30pm (online event)

Join us for the launch of Dr Damian Tambini’s new book, Media Freedom, where we'll be joined media experts to discuss media freedom and international human rights law standards in media governance today.

Speakers: Dr Damian Tambini, Professor David Kaye (University of California, Irvine), Alan Rusbridger and Professor Jean Seaton (University of Westminster). 

Chair: Professor Lee Edwards.

View the event recording here, or event details here. Order Media Freedom here.

LSE Research Showcase: Dr Dylan Mulvin

Proxies: the cultural work of standing in

Wednesday 18 August 2021, 11-11.30am
(online event)

Our world is built on an array of standards we are compelled to share – where some bits of the world end up standing in for other bits in order to facilitate the design of technologies and services. But how are those standards determined? Drawing on his new book, Proxies, Dr Dylan Mulvin will share some stories from the history of technology to show the way technologies, standards and infrastructures inescapably reflect the cultures that created them, and how those with the power to design technology, in the very moment of design, are allowed to imagine who is included—and who is excluded—in the future. Come along to find out more about the people who clean kilograms to make the metric system run; the women who pose as test images; and the actors who embody disease and disability for medical students.

Find out more about the LSE Research Showcase.

LSE Research Showcase: Dr Simidele Dosekun

Spectacular Femininity: the unattainable standards of postfeminism

Wednesday 11 August 2021, 11-11.30am
(online event)

Postfeminism is an upbeat, celebratory cultural address to women, and promise, that they are past or post- the need for feminism, that they are already individually empowered and can ‘have it all’, ‘do it all’. Drawing on her book, Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular Femininity and Transnational Culture, Dr Simidele Dosekun will tell the stories of women she interviewed in Lagos, Nigeria, who practise a spectacularly feminine style and what their lives and attitudes tell us about postfeminism in Africa. She discovers that the postfeminist emphasis on happy affects and choice and ‘can do’ leave little imaginative and emotional space for complaint, critique or resistance. Its encouragement to women to work on themselves, to work on their attitudes and their confidence, to ‘lean in’, obscures the material conditions that it requires.

View the recording here. Find out more about the LSE Research Showcase.

CO:RE Theories webinar on online opportunities for children

Monday 12 July 2021, 4-5pm UK / 5-6pm CEST (online event)

A multidisciplinary webinar on theories and concepts to understand children’s opportunities online.

Online opportunities bring diverse benefits for children, including positive outcomes on learning, participation, creativity, and identity. An important “ladder of opportunities” for children in Europe, digital technologies can activate the potential for social inclusion, equality and children’s rights. Even so, relatively little is understood about how online opportunities generate benefits for children. Opportunities for children have long been theorised, but how should they be rethought in a digital world? In this webinar we will debate the theories and concepts that underpin such questions, drawing on different disciplinary approaches.

Speakers: Professor Shakuntala Banaji, Koen Leurs (Utrecht University), Giovanna Mascheroni (Università Cattolica of Milan), Jochen Peter (University of Amsterdam).

Chair: Professor Sonia Livingstone.
Discussant: Dr Mariya Stoilova.

View the recording here and event details here.

The Powerful and the Damned: life behind the headlines in financial times

Thursday 8 July 2021, 7-8pm (online event)

Join us for this event with former editor of the Financial Times Lionel Barber at which he will discuss his new book, The Powerful and the Damned: life behind the headlines in financial times.

Lionel Barber spent over a decade rubbing shoulders with the global giants of business, finance and politics. Recounting conversations, late-night dinners and unexpected comic nuggets from those who make the news, The Powerful and the Damned is a portrait of the rich, famous, powerful and occasionally damned. In his first authored book, Barber offers unflinching pen portraits of the world’s leading characters, from Trump, Merkel and Draghi, to Prince Andrew, Mohammed Bin Salman and Dominic Cummings. In parallel, Barber provides a personal account of how he transformed the FT into a multi-channel global news organisation with a strong of international awards and groundbreaking reporting. This created a monumental shift for the whole news media landscape.

Chair: Professor Charlie Beckett.

View the recording here and event details here.

LSE Online Safety Bill Briefing

Thursday 8 July 2021, 9am - 1.30pm (online event)

This briefing will provide an overview of the draft Online Safety Bill and create an outcome-focused online discussion on key elements of the Bill that require scrutiny. Each panel discussion will explore and analyse pivotal debates within the Bill for the wide range of individuals and organisations engaged in discussions about how to regulate the complex and difficult area of online harms and their effects on individuals and on society. Attendees will be able to engage in interactive and robust discussions with panellists, and the focus on the interactions between law, policy and practice will be of interest to policymakers, regulators, civil society organisations, academics and industry.

Speakers: Imran Ahmed (Center for Countering Digital Hate), Damian Collins MP, Dr Edina Harbinja (Aston), Dame Margaret Hodge MP, Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE (LSE), Katie Morris (DCMS Security and Online Harms Directorate), John Nicolson MP, Chi Onwurah MP, Graham Smith (Bird & Bird), Dr Damian Tambini (LSE), Glen Tarman (Full Fact), Professor Lorna Woods (University of Essex) and Richard Wronka (Ofcom).

Chair: Professor Lee Edwards. 

View the recording here and event details here.

Ruptures in Authenticity: Gender and Vulnerability Online

Monday 28 June 2021, 6 - 7pm, (online and in person event) 

In person: CBG Auditorium, Lower Ground Floor (LSE staff and students

Online: Zoom webinar (open to all).

In this talk, Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser will explore ideas of authenticity and gender on social media, followed by a Q&A.

The idea of authenticity has been applied unquestionably as a valued attribute of the self: it is through our “authentic” selves that we inspire trust, loyalty, believability. The appearance of authenticity remains central to how individuals organize their everyday activities and craft their very selves. In the 21st century, as personal and professional identities are increasingly created, curated and manipulated in digital and social media, the concept of authenticity seems to carry even more weight, not less, so that one of the central questions in the age of digital media is whether and how successfully one can perform authenticity in order to claim visibility and identity. Social media amplifies this tension, as it is often positioned as a kind of open space, where one can be “oneself,” while at the same time it is also structurally designed as constantly manipulable. This has particular relevance for young cis-gendered women who perform authenticity on social media, because normative hetero-femininity is always constructed in terms of its artifice, where femininity is defined as a necessary contrived performance, from make-up to bodies to behaviours. Unlike the performance of authentic masculinity, which emphasizes its unfiltered quality, the performance of authentic femininity is always already suspect, always already a contradiction in terms.

Chair: Dr Polly Withers.

If you are an LSE student or staff member and would like to attend on campus (CBG Auditorium), please register here.

If you would like to join online (open to all), please register here.

Motherhood and Work Conference 

Friday 25 June 2021, 9.15 - 10am (GMT+1) (online event)

Professor Shani Orgad will be delivering the opening keynote of the second day of the Motherhood and Work conference, organised by Maynooth University. Professor Orgad will present her research 'Heading Home: Fantasies and Injuries of Motherhood and Work'.

Event details here.

Prototyping AI ethics futures

Monday 21 - Friday 25 June 2021 (online event)

A week-long series of dialogues and workshops highlighting the new possibilities of a humanities-led, broadly engaging approach to data and AI ethics.

View the full line-up of events here. 

Speakers: Dr Alison Powell, Louise Hickman and Imre Bard.

Organised by the Ada Lovelace Foundation.

Migration on demand: The impact of streaming on migration cinema

Tuesday 22 June 2021, 6pm (online event)

Once a marginalised niche within cinema, films about migration are now quite literally moving into the mainstream, with streaming platforms from Netflix to MUBI featuring films that put the immigrant and refugee at the heart of the story. And in the era of COVID-19, streaming has never been more popular.

But what is the effect of this on viewers? What kind of stories are being told and whose voices are being platformed? And is there potential for this mainstreaming to truly change how the public thinks about migration? An exciting panel of content curators, academics, and filmmakers will consider these questions and many more.

Speakers: Professor Myria Georgiou, Charlie Phillips (The Guardian) and Mo Scarpelli (filmmaker and director).

Event details here.

Pride Month Screening and Guest Talk

'Love That Journey for Me: The Queer Revolution of Schitt's Creek'

Monday 21 June 2021, 1 - 2pm (online event)

Dr Emily Garside discusses her new book 'Love That Journey for Me: The Queer Revolution of Schitt's Creek', which dives deep into the world of Canadian comedy-drama Schitt's Creek and how it became a watershed moment in sitcom history and the portrayal of gay relationships in popular media.

Register here.

EdTech and the colonisation of our digital future: The role of EU's DSA

Tuesaday 8 June 8 2021, 3pm - 4.30pm (online event)

The recent pandemic gave society a glimpse of the potentially disastrous effects of unregulated, hasty deployment of digital services. The health and education sectors offered the most pronounced examples of the vitality of digital services for mitigating the effects of social-distancing and sustaining the global economy. At the same time, it demonstrated the threats that the “inescapable” character of the digital condition poses for human freedom particularly when its governance is almost exclusively in the control of private actors.

The new EU legislation packages aim to address the emerging power asymmetry between Big Tech and society. In its current form the DSA recognises the importance of acting on the avoidance of intermediary liability and the lobbying of platforms to be perceived as mere conduits of communication. Yet, the DSA risks missing its mark by failing to take stock of the critical role and distinct nature of education technology (EdTech) platforms.

The EdTech landscape is currently regulated by GDPR, but this barely succeeds in safeguarding children’s rights or their most fundamental freedoms, including their right to self-determination. In the field of education, digital services can collect and sell data but also ‘train’ their AI-based systems constantly through observation of educational processes. The growing "knowledge capital" acquired by educational technology companies widens the power asymmetry between the industry and society and generates lobbying power and knowledge to reconstruct education systems to suit EdTech business models.

This discussion brings together experts from across sectors to discuss the challenges and opportunities that the DSA/DMA legislation packages create considering two important parameters: a) the “inevitability” of the collaboration of the public and private sector in the process of the digitalisation of education and b) the risks involved in the unchecked deployment of data-driven services in education including the colonisation of society’s collective vision about its future by profit-driven businesses.

Speakers: Professor Sonia Livingstone, Dr Ioanna Noula, Dr Velislava Hillman, Eva Kaili (Member of the European Parliament and Chair of European Union’s Future of Science and Technology Options Assessment), Dr Desmond Bermingham (Australian Council for Education Research), Dr Ben Wagner (TU-Delft) and Mitzi László (Nextcloud GmbH).

Chair: Professor Nick Couldry. 

View event details here. 

Refusing Discriminatory Technologies of Power: racial justice and the challenge of hi-tech policing

Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series 

Tuesday 11 May 2021, 12.30pm - 1.30pm (online event)

From informational capitalism to biased code, technological systems increasingly form part of larger structures of oppression and domination. This talk tackles the topic of technology, injustice, and inequity with a focus on bottom-up practices of resistance, rejection, and refusal of digital and automated systems that increasingly govern people’s lives.

Drawing from examples of data-driven policing in Europe and the United States, this talk explores the narrative, technical, and political challenges faced by members of affected communities - especially minoritised and racialised communities - in countering these discriminatory technologies of power. Given these challenges, what can affected communities learn from other practices of technological refusal?

Speaker: Dr Seeta Peña Gangadharan.

Chair: Professor Ellen Helsper (Research Theme Convenor, Politics of Inequality) and Professor in Digital Inequalities, Department of Media and Communications, LSE.

Children and the Digital Environment

Friday 7 May 2021, 3.30 - 5pm (online event)

Technologies are spreading into all aspects of our lives via smart devices, internet of things, augmented reality, and data profiling. Children’s lives have become digital by default and technology is the taken-for-granted means of playing, seeing family, doing schoolwork, hanging out with friends in a post-COVID world. The distinction between the offline and online no longer offers a meaningful way of conceptualising the infrastructure of life but what can we replace it with? Where does the digital begin and end, what does it incorporate? What are the implications for children? This webinar will debate the theories and concepts that underpin such questions, drawing on different disciplinary approaches.

Speakers: Jean-Christophe Plantin, Taina Bucher, Bieke Zaman and Christine Hine.

Chair: Sonia Livingstone.

Discussant: Mariya Stoilova. 

Watch the recording here.

This webinar is part of a webinar series on theory for the EU H2020 project CO:RE - Children Online: Research and Evidence.

Book Launch: Digital Technology and Democratic Theory

Thursday 6 May 2021, 6 - 7pm (online event)

One of the most far-reaching transformations in our era is the wave of digital technologies rolling over and upending nearly every aspect of life. Work and leisure, family and friendship, community and citizenship have all been modified by now ubiquitous digital tools and platforms. Digital Technology and Democratic Theory looks closely at one significant facet of our rapidly evolving digital lives: how technology is radically changing our lives as citizens and participants in democratic governments. To understand these transformations, the book brings together contributions by scholars from multiple disciplines to wrestle with the question of how digital technologies shape, reshape, and affect fundamental questions about democracy and democratic theory. As expectations have whiplashed, from Twitter optimism in the wake of the Arab Spring to Facebook pessimism in the wake of the 2016 US election, the time is ripe for a more sober and long-term assessment. How should we take stock of digital technologies and their promise and peril for reshaping democratic societies and institutions? To answer, this volume broaches the most pressing technological changes and issues facing democracy as a philosophy and an institution.

This book includes a chapter by Dr Seeta Peña Gangadharan entitled 'Digital Exclusion: A Politics of Refusal'. To purchase a copy of Digital Technology and Democratic Theory, click here.

Speakers: Dr Seeta Peña Gangadharan, Archon Fung, Bryan Ford, Hélène Landemore and Lucy Bernholz.

A video of this event is available to watch here. View event details here. 

Hosted by the Ada Lovelace Institute and in partnership with Stanford Philanthropy and Civil Society Center.

Realizing Children’s Rights in the Digital Environment through the new General Comment no. 25

Friday 30 April 2021, / 1.30 - 4.30pm (UK / Lisbon time) (online event)

This event will be the first in a series of webinars bringing together practitioners and academic experts to develop greater knowledge and understanding of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and its implementation. This is part of the pre-launching initiatives of the new Advanced Studies Children`s Rights Programme (AACRP) of Nova School of Law that had its beginning with the Roundtable on the Rights of the Child: New Challenges and Opportunities, on 3rd February 2021.

Professor Sonia Livingstone will deliver a keynote entitled 'Pros and cons of child rights impact assessment for digital decision makers'. 

Organised by the Nova School of Law.

Privacy Studies Journal Inaugural Conference

Wednesday 28 April 2021, 4.05 - 4.25pm UK / 5.05 - 5.25pm CEST (online event)

The Privacy Studies Journal is an interdisciplinary, open access, peer-reviewed journal published by the Danish National Research Foundation Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen.

At its inaugural conference, Professor Sonia Livingstone will deliver her presentation 'Privacy from whom? The clashing logics of child development and the data ecology'. 

Find out more about the conference and registration here.  

Organised by Danmarks Grundforskningsfond Danish National Research Foundation.

Adult Online Harms Revenge: Pornography and Online Stalking

Wednesday 28 April 2021, 2pm - 3.30pm (UK time) (online event)

This webinar brings together high-level experts from research, policy and practice. It is organised by UKCIS Evidence Group in collaboration with the Institute for Connected Communities, University of East London & Middlesex University.

Speakers: Professor Sonia Livingstone, Dr Victoria Nash, Professor Clare MCGlynn, Dr Emma Short, Kathryn Tremlett and Saskia Garner.

Chair: Professor Julia Davidson.

Book your place here.

Data as an instrument of coloniality: A panel discussion on digital and data colonialism

Tuesday 27 April 2021, 3.30 - 5pm (online event)

Maps and surveys of "new worlds"; passport photos and vaccination cards to control the movement of "impure" bodies; accounting spreadsheets used in plantations of enslaved peoples... All of these technologies suggest that data has always been an instrument of colonialism. But can the history of European and American colonialism also help us interpret contemporary phenomena like algorithmic racial violence, quarantine apps and vaccination apartheid, the injustices of the gig economy, and disinformation campaigns that threaten our democratic futures? By examining these trends not just in the context of the past few decades, but through the lens of the past 500 years, we can perhaps gain new insights into why theories of capitalist production may not be enough to make sense of the extractivist technologies of today. These technologies need to be understood as manifestations of something deeper, constitutive of colonialism. Only by looking at the histories of colonial extraction and appropriation of land, nature and labor can we understand that our lives are being reconfigured in unprecedented ways, through the medium of data.

Confronted with the new infrastructures of data colonialism, which perpetuate old racial, gender and class injustices, we must learn from past and present anti-colonial and anti-racist movements and thinkers. Decolonizing our data in this context means developing new strategies for resisting the new extractivist order, and for re-imagining internet governance and the digital commons. Join us for this important discussion with four authors who, in different ways, have analyzed our datafied world through the framework of coloniality.

Speakers: Professor Nick Couldry, Professor Ulises Mejias, Paula Chakravartty and Miriyam Aouragh.

Chair: Dr Alison Powell.

Register here.

Hosted by the Alan Turing Institute.

Building the Fugitive Academy: Communication, Culture, Media, & Rhetoric Scholars on the Work of Transformation Conference 

Friday 23 April 2021, 6.30 - 8.30pm UK (1.30 - 3.30pm EST) (online event)

For many years, metrics have been a site for social justice contestation in the academy. Disputes over assessment have been growing across organizations, including NCA, ICA, and RSA for the past decade. Black and Brown scholars have consistently contested the internal dynamics of journal editorial ships, awards processes, hiring decisions, graduate programs, and so on as based on exclusionary models of rigor. This seminar seeks to refocus conversations about rigor and merit, with an eye toward crafting communication and media studies specific models inclusive and equitable excellence.  By exploring a variety of perspectives and approaches for defining rigor and merit, the panelists offer ways of broadening both concepts in favor of using them as tools of inclusivity and equity that center a pluriverse of epistemic positions and traditions instead of reinforcing Euro-American gatekeeping. 

Speakers: Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi, Vani Kannan, Carmen Kynard and Kimberly Moffitt.

Moderator: Aymar Jean Christian.

Find out more about the session here, and register here.

Organised by The Institute for the Liberal Arts, Boston College.

A Theory of Media Freedom - Annual Eric Barendt Law Lecture (University of Oxford)

Tuesday 23 March 2021, 2pm - 3.30pm (online event)

Recent controversies, such as Trump de-platforming and debates about how to regulate internet intermediaries raise fundamental questions of freedom of expression. Should internet intermediaries be considered as censors of speech, against which the rights of individuals must be asserted? To what extent do they have rights as ‘media’ to be autonomous or independent of the state, or to receive other benefits? The lack of shared principles of media freedom undermines the legitimacy of all responses to these questions. Whilst the number of international organisations with media freedom in their mandate grows, and the UK Foreign Office leads a campaign for Media Freedom, this lecture examines the history of different theories of media freedom, and the extent to which it may be possible to advance a shared one based in international human rights.

Speakers: Dr Damian Tambini.

Hosted by University of Oxford and Bonavero Institute. Register here.

When violence endures: inequality, resistance, and repression in India's Maoist guerrilla zones

Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series 

Tuesday 23 March 2021, 12.30 - 1.30pm (online event)

This event engages with the concept of violence in the context of the ongoing Maoist insurgency and counterinsurgency in India. During the five-decade-long armed conflict involving the Maoist guerrillas and the landless/poor peasants on the one side, and the state security forces and upper-caste/private militias on the other, violence has taken multiple forms. It has spiralled, giving rise to new formations and new theatres of war, especially in the forested areas which are home to indigenous populations. In this event, Dr George Kunnath will attempt to conceptualise this enduring violence and reflect on the possibility of resolutions, drawing on twenty years of his research in conflict-affected regions in India, and recently in Colombia. Employing the framework of the ‘Spiral of Violence’ developed by Helder Camara (1909–1999), a Brazilian liberation theologian, Dr Kunnath will explore the many faces of violence as manifested in a continuum of structural inequality, resistance and repression. As there has been no meaningful transition from violence to peace in India’s guerrilla zones, Dr Kunnath will also draw on a comparative model, and discuss the insights that the 2016 peace agreement in Colombia might provide for India. In Colombia, also ravaged by the cycle of violence, the peace agreement between the FARC and the state facilitated the end of a similarly long-lasting armed conflict. The comprehensive peace process in Colombia, in spite of its setbacks, has demonstrated that without addressing the persisting inequalities, the spiral of violence cannot be broken. What could India learn from the achievements and pitfalls of the Colombian model?

Speaker: Dr George Kunnath (Research Fellow, International Inequalities Institute at LSE).

Chair: Professor Ellen Helsper.

More information here.

Digital by Default: the COVID-19 generation

Wednesday 3 March 2021, 5pm - 6pm

Almost overnight, following lockdown, children’s lives became digital by default. Join us for this discussion where leading experts critically reflect on how children’s experiences, needs and rights are being, and could be better, served in a digital world.  

Speakers: Patricio Cuevas-Parra, Laurie Day, Maya Göetz and Konstantinos Papachristou.

Chair: Professor Sonia Livingstone.

Hosted by LSE Festival: Shaping the Post-COVID World.

A video of this event is available to watch here.

The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism

Thursday 25 February 2021, 6pm - 7.30pm

Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias will discuss their book, The Costs of Connection: How Data Colonizes Human Life and Appropriates it for Capitalism.

Couldry and Mejias argue that the role of data in society needs to be grasped as not only a development of capitalism, but as the start of a new phase in human history that rivals in importance the emergence of historic colonialism. This new "data colonialism" is based not on the extraction of natural resources or labour, but on the appropriation of human life through data, paving the way for a further stage of capitalism. 

Speakers: Professor Nick Couldry, Professor Ulises A. Mejias and Mutale Nkonde.

Chair: Dr Bingchun Meng.

A video of this event is available to watch here.

Mothering and Work, Mothering as Work

Thursday 28 January 2021, 6pm - 7.30pm

In this event we will grapple with past and present experiences of mothering. How can we tell a story of maternal labour in the past, in the absence of data? What does it mean to study mothering today, in the context of intensified neoliberalism? How does mothering enter the radar of policymakers? And what is the relationship between these questions and how we study them in contemporary academia?

The Politics of Inequality: why should we focus on resistance from below?

Wednesday 27 January 2021, 2pm - 3.30pm

While it is now widely accepted that inequality is the defining issue of our time and there is growing research on the drivers and impacts of inequalities, there has been less focus on how inequalities are experienced and resisted by ordinary people and communities. The newly launched Politics of Inequality research theme at the International Inequalities Institute explores the practices of resistance, mobilisation, and contestation from a bottom-up perspective.

Speakers include: Professor Ellen Helsper.

Journalism AI Festival 2020

Monday 7 - Friday 11 December 2020

A week long celebration of the best innovation at the intersection of journalism and AI. The Festival will be a celebration of some of the most exciting developments at the intersection of AI and journalism that we have witnessed over these 24 months and a unique occasion to bring together our global network.

Find out more about the festival and the programme of events here.

Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser leads a seminar on Gender and Identity at Loughborough University

Thursday 19 November 2020, 2pm - 4.30pm

The webinar will feature papers addressing how claims to “real” femininity and masculinity are contested and how gender politics frequently involves the negotiation of competing claims to authentic voices, bodies and gendered ways of being.

Register here.

Media@LSE Virtual Research Exhibition 

Wednesday 11 November 2020, 6.30pm - 8pm

Explore the ground-breaking research of faculty, doctoral researchers and students in the Department of Media and Communications, LSE, by gaining a hands-on virtual experience of their work through interactive videos, posters, and visualizations of their work on this virtual exhibition space, created in collaboration with interactive platform Artsteps.

View the exhibition here.

Rapid Response Publishing Roundtable

Friday 6 November 2020, 1.30pm - 2.30pm

Join us for a virtual roundtable discussion followed by a Q&A.

Register here.

Launch: Digital City of Refuge

Wednesday 28 October 2020, 6pm - 7pm

Stories from London, Berlin and Athens exploring the experiences of newcomers and civic actors in the Digital City of Refuge. A creative collaboration based on an LSE research project.

Data-driven Responses to COVID-19: opportunities and limitations

Thursday 15 October 2020, 1pm - 2.15pm

With many activities moving online, there is growing pressure to implement a range of data–driven responses as “obvious” solutions to various COVID–19 concerns. These range from contact tracing to address the spread of the disease, through the use of AI in the dashboards that allocate health resources to identifying and supporting vulnerable individuals.

Speakers include: Dr Seeta Peña Gangadharan.

Parenting for a Digital Future: how hopes and fears about technology shape children's lives

Thursday 24 September 2020, 4pm - 5.30pm

In the decades it takes to bring up a child, parents face challenges that are both helped and hindered by the fact that they are living through a period of unprecedented digital innovation. Join us for this event to launch Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross' new book, Parenting for a Digital Future.

Speakers include: Professor Sonia Livingstone and Dr Alicia Blum-Ross.

Digital Technologies in the Lives of Children and Young People

Friday 18 September 2020, 3pm - 4.15pm

The lives of children in Europe are becoming digital by default. Information and communication technologies are valued for the opportunities they afford to young generations for participation, skill development, learning and future employability. But how are children and young people engaging with digital technologies? What are the impacts of digital technologies on children’s and young people’s health, lifestyles, well-being, safety and security?

Chair: Professor Sonia Livingstone.

LSE Research Showcase

Saturday 7 March 2020, 12pm - 4pm

Ground Floor and Mezzanine Area, New Academic Building

Hosted by LSE Festival: Shape the World

Children’s data and privacy online: growing up in a digital age

Do you know how your data is shared and used? Or how to protect your privacy online? If your child asks you about their data, would you know how to guide them? Over the past year, we’ve been talking to children, parents and educators about online data and privacy. We found that children are becoming aware of the commercial uses of their data and they care about their privacy, but there are important gaps in their digital skills. Children often turn to their parents and teachers for guidance, but adults also struggle to understand the complex digital environment and to know how to advise children. We developed a toolkit to promote understanding and empower your family or classroom to protect your privacy online.

Presenter: Dr Mariya Stoilova, Department of Media and Communications.

Researchers of the Future

Saturday 7 March 2020, 1pm - 4pm

Hosted by LSE Festival: Shape the World

How do people make decisions, like deciding whether to protest for climate change, what to spend money on, or whether to cheat on a test? LSE is home to a lot of research that tries to understand human behaviour and decisions like these. Some of this research is specifically about young people. Come learn more about it and also give your input into what researchers should be studying and how. Our Behavioural Lab will be set up with hands-on demonstrations and activities from several faculty members. You can try activities from previous and current research, see the space, and talk with researchers about this type of science.

Speakers include: Shakuntala Banaji, associate professor of media and communications at the LSE. Her recent publications include the LSE report WhatsApp Vigilantes: An exploration of citizen reception and circulation of WhatsApp misinformation linked to mob violence in India.

Imagining our Futures

Saturday 7 March 2020, 6.30pm - 8pm

Hosted by LSE Festival: Shape the World

If you could do one thing to change the world, what would that be? What do LSE academics think we should start, stop and continue doing? Join us as we explore how people can shape the world with their actions.

Simidele Dosekun is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Her research centres African women to explore questions of gender, race, subjectivity, and power in a global context. Her work has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, Feminism and Psychology, Qualitative Inquiry, and Feminist Africa, among others. Before joining the department, she was a lecturer in media and cultural studies at the University of Sussex. She received her PhD in gender and cultural studies from King’s College London.

Slowing the Smart City by Alison Powell.

Thursday 5 March 2020, 12.30pm - 2.00pm 

FAW 9.05 9th Floor, Fawcett House, Clement's Inn, WC2A 2AZ

Propaganda and Democratic Resistance

Wednesday 4 March 2020, 7.30pm - 8.30pm

Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building

Hosted by LSE Festival: Shape the World

Speakers include: Shakuntala Banaji, associate professor of media and communications at the LSE. Her recent publications include the LSE report WhatsApp Vigilantes: An exploration of citizen reception and circulation of WhatsApp misinformation linked to mob violence in India.

Hosted by LSE Festival: Shape the World

Complexity, hybridity, liminality: Challenges of researching contemporary promotional cultures workshop. 

Friday 21 Februrary 2020 

The workshop is a full day of discussion and deliberation  out the ways in which current consultation processes about copyright could evolve to be more inclusive.

45 people are planning on attending, from a range of industries and including members of the public.

The conference addresses the challenges of researching the complex, hybrid and liminal nature of promotion in a range of ways, and it’s co-sponsored by the ECREA Organisational and Strategic Communication section; the Department of Media and Communications, LSE; and the Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester.

Dr Lee Edwards will be speaking at the conference. 

The Department of Media and Communications take part in the Lisbon Winter School. 

January 7-11 2020

Events in which the Department are participating in include: 

- Compulsory Continuous Connectedness: Liveness and Senses of Uncertainty in Mainstream Social Media by Ludmila Lupinacci, PHD researcher in the Department. 

- Science and Expertise under Fire: Political Control, Online Harassment and Freedom of Expression chaired by Sarah Banet-Weiser

- Media, Precarity and Uncertainty Room: chaired by Sonia Livingstone. 

- Debunking Fear: Ordinary Testimony and Emotional Evidence in the Mediation of Crime and Policing Kat Higgins, PHD researcher in the Department. 

“We’re all Told not to Put our Eggs in One Basket”: The Extension of Neoliberal Worker Subject in the Online Video Industry Zoë Glatt, PHD researcher in the Department.

- Media, Migration and Misogyny chaired by  Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser. 

- Does Journalism Have a Future? Keynote by  Victor Pickard, Visiting Professor in the Department.

- Professor Sonia LIvingstone is also giving a keynote. 

- Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser is also on the steeering committee and serves as a convenor. 

Media and Communications in Action Talks 2019: Week eight: Alice Piterova

Tuesday 10 December 2019, 5pm - 6pm, Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House. Free to all, no registration required. 

Piterova is Head of Data Product at AI for Good where she specialises on such fields as artificial intelligence, innovation and digital transformation, big data and tech for good. 

Media and Communications in Action Talks 2019: Week seven: Champa Patel 

Tuesday 3 December 2019, 5pm - 6pm, Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House. Free to all, no registration required. 

Patel is Head of the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House.

Media and Communications in Action Talks 2019: Week six: Sherry Collins and Swarzy Macaly. 

Tuesday 26 November 2019, 5pm - 6pm, Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House. Free to all, no registration required. 

Collins is the founder, editor and creative director of The Pitch Fanzine. A movement to challenge inequality, discrimination and the lack of diversity in the creative industry, whilst simultaneously showcasing outstanding contemporary talent in its publication Pitch.

Swarzy Macaly is a radio presenter at KISS FM with her own show on KISS Fresh every Monday to Thursday from 11pm-Midnight, and Saturdays from 11am-3pm. Swarzy is also the official young voice of BBC Sounds, a contributor to Dotun Adebayo’s BBC Radio 5 Live show every third Sunday of the month, and hosts many events with various brands including o2 Go Think Big, DICE, and LevileTV.

'It's Time to Change Everything': Media and Communications and the Return of Global Uprisings in 2019

Thursday 21 November 2019, 4.30pm, Silverstone Room, Pethick-Lawrence House

Speakers: Omar Al-Ghazzi (LSE), Bingchun Meng (LSE), César Jiménez-Martínez (Cardiff University)

Will the UK be the "Safest" Place in the World to Go Online? (And do we want it to be?)

Tuesday 19 November 2019, 6.30pm - 8pm. SHEIKH ZAYED THEATRE, NEW ACADEMIC BUILDING. This event is free and open to all with no ticket or pre-registration required.

Chair: Professor Sonia Livingstone

Speakers: Professor Madeleine de Cock Buning, Professor Robin Mansell, Dr Victor Pickard

Media and Communications in Action Talks 2019: Week six: Rachel Jupp. 

Tuesday 19 November 2019, 5pm - 6pm, Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House. Free to all, no registration required. 

Rachel Jupp is Editor for the flagship BBC investigations programme, Panorama. First broadcast in 1953, Panorama is the world’s longest current affairs programme. Appointed to the role in 2016, she was previously Head of Home News at Channel 4 News and Deputy Editor for the BBC’s current affairs programme, Newsnight.

Polis to present the Journalism AI report at Hackers London. [Off campus event]

Monday 18 November 2020, 6.30pm at Google London, 1-13 St Giles High Street,London WC2H 8AG.

The Report, shares the experiences of seventy plus news organisations on A.I and their thoughts on strategy, ethics, editorial, and the future of news.

Find out more

To register to attend click here

Media and Communications in Action Talks 2019: Week five: Sarfraz Manzoor. 

Tuesday 12 November 2020, 5pm - 6pm, Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House. Free to all, no registration required. 

Manzoor is a British journalist, documentary maker, and broadcaster. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian, presenter of documentaries on BBC Radio 4, and a cultural commentator who appears on programmes such as Newsnight Review and Saturday Review.

The  succesful 2019 film Blinded by the Light was written by Sarfraz Manzoor and is based on his memoir.

Media and Communications in Action Talks 2019: Week five: Lucy Thomas. 

Tuesday, 29th October, 5-6, Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House. Free to all, no registration required. 

Lucy Thomas is a senior director at global communications firm Edelman, which advises businesses on politics and communication. She was deputy director of Britain Stronger in Europe, the Remain campaign for the UK to stay within the European Union, and is a former BBC producer. Previous roles include Deputy Director of Business for New Europe and Head of Communications for the World Dementia Envoy & Council.

Youth Citizenship in Brexit Britain: Challenges and Opportunities by Dr Sam Mejias.

Tuesday 29th October. 

12pm- 1pm

FAW 9.04, Fawcett House.

Media and Communications in Action Talks 2019: Week four: Sereena Abbassi. 

Tuesday 22nd October, 5-6, Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House. Free to all, no registration required. 

Abbassi  is the Worldwide Head of Culture & Inclusion at M&C Saatchi Group.

Report launch and discussion: WhatsApp Vigilantes: An exploration of citizen reception and circulation of WhatsApp misinformation linked to mob violence in India

Thursday 17th October 2019, 18.00 – 19.30. Thai Theatre, New Academic Building (NAB)

Shakuntala Banaji and Ram Bhat with Anushi Agarwal, Nihal Passanha and Mukti Sadhana Pravin

Chaired by Dr. Omar Al-Ghazzi

Professor Sonia Livingstone gives a keynote  at the Child Friendly Cities Summit, Cologne. (October 2019). [off campus event]

Her talk is entitled: Children online: risks and opportunities. 

Find out more about the Summit. 

Media and Communications in Action Talks 2019: Week three Emma Barnett.

Tuesday 15th October, 5-6, Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House. Free to all, no registration required. 

Barnett is an  an award-winning broadcaster and journalist. By day, she presents The Emma Barnett Show on BBC Radio 5 Live in which she interviews key figures shaping our times, from the Prime Minister to those who would very much like to be.

City of refuge or digital order? A cross-European story of migration and the city by Professor Myria Georgiou. Talk at the University of Leeds. [off campus event]

This talk explores how the city becomes a space of connection and disconnection, and of solidarity and struggle in the context of migration.

Thursday 10 October 2019- 1:30 to 2:30pm

Hosted by the School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds. 

Media and Communications in Action Talks 2019: Week two: Jamie Angus. 

Tuesday 8th October, 5-6, Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House. Free to all, no registration required. 

Angus is the Director of BBC World Service Group.

Goldstone screening and discussion. 

Thursday 3rd of October, 17-1930, 7.01A- Penthick-Lawrence House. 

Dr Banaji, Associate  Professor and  Director for MSc Media, Communication and Development  will facilitate a discussion after the screening of Goldstone as part of Decolonising LSE Week.

Goldstone grapples with the politics of representing the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. 

The discussion will focus on the politics of representation when it comes to oppressed groups. 

Combatting Inequality: tackling unfairness in wealth, jobs and care

Monday 07 October 2019 6:30pm to 8:30pm. Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building.

Chaired by Professor Ellen Helsper: 

Speakers: 

- Professor Mike Savage,Professor Beverley Skegg, Professor David Soskice

Media and Communications in Action Talks 2019: week one: Finola McDonnell.

Tuesday 1st October, 17-1930, Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building, Lincolns Inn Fields.

McDonnell is Chief Communications and Marketing Officer at the Financial Times.

No Go World: how fear is redrawing our maps and infecting our politics

Monday 10 June 2019

Speakers: Dr Ruben Andersson, Professor Myria Georgiou and Professor Erik Berglof (Chair)

LSE Migration Symposium:  

Politics of bordering: subjectivities, technologies, media

Friday 7 June 2019

Speakers: Nicola Mai, Georgie Wemyss, Lukasz Szulc, Tijana Stolic, Kevin Smets, Maria Kyriakidou, Myria Georgiou, Lilie Chouliaraki

Fantasies and injuries of motherhood and work

Tuesday 26 March 2019

Speakers:  Baroness Ariane de Rothschild, Rosalind Gill, Shani Orgad, Sarah Banet-Weiser (Chair)

‘Even When I Fall’: Q&A screening with the filmmakers

Wednesday, March 20th

Speakers:  Sky Neal (pictured), Kate McLarnon, Winnie M Li, Dr. Sumi Madhok (chair).

On Loop and in the Crossfade: The Music of Here and There

Thursday 14th March 2019

Speakers: Josh Kun, Duval Timothy (pictured), Sarah Banet-Weiser (chair)

The Price of Black Motherhood

Monday 11 March 2019

Speakers: Professor Kate Baldwin, Shani Orgad (Chair)

Are We Heading Towards a Digital Dystopia?

Tuesday 26 February 2019

Speakers: Sam Byers, Alison Powell (pictured), Orla Lynskey, Charlie Beckett (chair).

Media Representations of Domestic Violence 

Thursday 7 February 2019

Speakers: Penny East, Nathalie McDermott, Zing Tsjeng, Sadie Wearing (Chair)

Who Owns The News? – Report Launch Event: The Future of National News Agencies in Europe

Wednesday 6 February 2019

Speakers: Christine Buhagiar, Madhav Chinnappa, Terhi Rantanen, Henrik Örnebring, Sarah Banet-Weiser (Chair)

Fighting misinformation: the launch of the LSE Truth, Trust and Technology Commission report

Tuesday 20 November 2018

Speakers: Polly Curtis, Sonia Livingstone, Damian Tambini, Charlie Beckett (Chair)

Changing cultures of witnessing: paintings, selfies, hashtags

Tuesday 30 October 2018

Speakers: Lilie Chouliaraki, Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Barbie Zelizer (pictured), Sarah Banet-Weiser (Chair)

We, the people: political, media and popular discourses of ‘us’ and ‘them’

Friday 26 and Saturday 27 October 2018

Keynotes: Michael Cox, Michał Krzyżanowski, Francisco Panizza, Yannis Stavrakakis

News media in Western Europe: populism and politics

Monday 1 October 2018

Speakers: Amy S. Mitchell (pictured); Charlie Beckett (Chair)

Choosing to be smart: algorithms, AI, and avoiding the inevitability of unequal futures

Thursday 20 September 2018

Speakers: Seeta Peña Gangadharan (pictured), Seda Gürses, Barry Lynn, Bev Skeggs (Chair)

Book launch: Postcolonial Imaginaries, Post-socialist Realities: Media, agency and modernity in India and China

Wednesday 13 June 2018

Speakers: Shakuntala Banaji, Bingchun Meng, David Buckingham, Harriet Evans

Digital Dominance: the power of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple

Tuesday 12 June 2018

Speakers: Paddy Barwise, Sonia Livingstone, Martin Moore, Damian Tambini

Constructing Active Citizenship with European Youth

Thursday 31 May 2018

Speakers: Shakuntala Banaji, Beth Foster-Ogg, Katy Herrington, Mete Coban, Sam Mejias

The Marketplace of Attention

Thursday 10 May 2018

Speakers: James G. Webster, Kim Christian Schrøder, Nick Couldry

Trump and The Media

Thursday 3 May 2018

Speakers: Pablo J. Boczkowski, Chris W. Anderson, Gina Neff, Charlie Beckett

Restoring Trust: how do we tackle the crisis in public information?

Wednesday 2 May 2018

Speakers: James Ball, Charlie Beckett, Damian Collins MP, Sophie Gaston, Sonia Livingstone

Writing Fiction to Dramatise Inequality

Wednesday 21 February 2018

Speakers: Louise Doughty, Nicola Lacey, Winnie M. Li, Shani Orgad

The Vision of Empowerment: Popular feminism and popular misogyny

Tuesday 27 February 2018

Speakers: Sarah Banet-Weiser; Shani Orgad, Robin Mansell

Post-Truth: Why we have reached peak bullshit and what we can do about it

Wednesday 18 October 2017

Speaker: Evan Davis, Charlie Beckett

Inequality in China: emotional costs and political risks

Friday 29 September 2017

Speakers: Wanning Sun, Bingchun Meng

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