Tag: Tony Sampson

Call for papers and artwork deadline to A&SM#5/Sensorium Fri 21st Feb

The deadline for submission to Affect and Social Media#5 and the Sensorium Art Show is fast approaching.

Call for Papers and Artworks Deadline 21st Feb 2020

Affect & Social Media#5/Sensorium

>MORE-THAN>

Stratford, East London: 25-26/06/20

Confirmed Keynotes

Carolyn Pedwell (Kent)

s200_carolyn.pedwell

Tero Karppi (Toronto)

disconnect01

Keynote Panel: Amit S Rai (Queen Mary), Rebecca Coleman (Goldsmiths), Ian Tucker and Darren Ellis (UEL). Chaired by Tony Sampson.

Full details of CfP on the theme of More-Than: https://viralcontagion.blog/asm5-summer-2020/

Logo2More than

Invite to the next In the City seminar at UEL’s USS building on Weds November 6th

The next In the City seminar is at UEL’s USS building on Weds November 6th

The Municipal Commons: Urban governance and the idea of community

After nearly a decade of austerity-led neglect, many local urban communities are struggling to cope with the erosion of important services that help to bring them together. Amid all the gloom, however, there are a few encouraging signs on the horizon. Local authorities like Preston and Newham have engaged with the concept of community wealth building and its aim to produce inclusive and seemingly democratic local economies [1]. Similarly, while under economic pressure to grow student numbers and become global players, universities are also being asked to consider how their research can engage with, and impact on, the places in which they are located [2]. Certainly, in contrast to the metrics intended to gauge the global reach of academic work, these institutions need to further consider their connection to the local community.

This seminar in the CCSR series, In the City, sets out to explore how various ideas of urban community might relate to, or can become realized in, initiatives like community wealth building and the truly civic university. It also asks what kind of role so-called anchor institutions, like the university, might play in revitalizing post-austerity local communities.

Programme

Carys Hughes (UEL) on left governmentality and participatory governance (tbc)

Julian Manley (UCLan) on community and co-operative wealth building: from top-down to rhizomatic-up!

Paul Watt (Birkbeck) on urban community

Keir Milburn (Leicester) on ‘Public-Commons Partnerships’

Tony Sampson (UEL, CERG) introduction and chair

Followed by Q&A and discussion

All seminars 18:00-20:00. Venue: University Square Stratford, 1 Salway Road, Stratford, London E15 1NF. Room US.1.01. All free, all welcome, no advance booking required. Directions and Map:

For further information please email t.d.sampson@uel.ac.uk

[1] See CLES on community wealth building. https://cles.org.uk/tag/community-wealth-building/

[2] See UPP Foundation report Truly Civic: Strengthening the connection between universities and their places. https://upp-foundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Civic-University-Commission-Final-Report.pdf

Video from “Empathies” Conference, 2017 at the University of Basel

Below is the blurb from SLSAeu (European Society of Literature, Science and the Arts) about their 2017 “Empathies” Conference video on Youtube, but there’s a bit of editorial fun going on that is not mentioned.

“Coming to grips with the manifold aspects of empathy. Documentary video with experts interviewed during the SLSAeu Conference “Empathies”, 2017 at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Experts (in chaotic order): Jesse Prinz, Fritz Breithaupt, Carolyn Pedwell, Lori Gruen, Seasmus O’Mahony, Manuela Rossini, Margaret Mcallister, Elisabeth Friis, Laura Otis, Ruth Levin Vorster, Edwin Constable, Tyler Volk, Jessica Ullrich, Pola Dwurnik, Dirk Vanderbeke, Jens Hauser, Susanne Schmetkamp, Andrea Ochsner, Christine Davis, Ian Tucker, Tony Sampson, Markus Wild, Jonathan Crane, Joseph Wood, Anna Malinowska, Bruce Clarke…

 

First Club Critical Theory night confirmed for 17th April

2058877_416575d0

Anyone living in or near Southend-on-Sea in Essex UK might be interested in our first Club Critical Theory night – confirmed for Thurs evening 17th April. We will be upstairs in Southend’s wonderful music venue, The Railway Hotel, near to Southend Central railway station. Our plan is to build a critical space in the centre of this much maligned, neglected, but supposedly revitalised town. It was recently described as the New Brighton in the national press.

Giles Tofield (The Cultural Engine), Andrew Branch and Tony Sampson (UEL) will be discussing the application of Bourdieu and Deleuze to the politics of regeneration in Southend.

More details about the Club Critical Theory night and the blog, Facebook and Twitter presence to follow. But put this date in your diary now…

B&Q

Crowd, Power and Post-democracy in the 21st Century – 3rd instalment

Another interview in the series on Crowd, Power and Post-democracy in the 21st Century from ObsoleteCapitalism & Rizomatika!

After last week’s interview with Saul Newman, here’s Tony Sampson’s interview.

New Media and the Internet – Digital Democracy or Complex Chaos? At Brunel University

New Media and the Internet – Digital Democracy or Complex Chaos?

Starts: Friday 24 May 2013 10:00 am
Ends: Friday 24 May 2013 4:30 pm
 
Event type Seminar
Location Darwin, Hamilton Centre, Brunel University
Booking Required? Yes
Will Networks solve the world’s problems? Answers from the social sciences and beyond

Workshop 1: New Media and the Internet – Digital Democracy or Complex Chaos?

One of the most salient illustrations of networks is of course the Internet. Indeed, the open architecture of the internet has created unprecedented possibilities for informational flows, social connections, user participation and collaboration. Nevertheless, the internet as a decentralised, self-organising system has been questioned. Can a loose connection of individuals come together to solve common problems via a ‘wisdom of the crowd’ or ‘collective intelligence’? Is the Internet illustrative of networks as ‘swarms’ whereby different ‘particles’ of information suddenly gather around a node and assemble themselves in a particular configuration for a task at hand but then quickly disperse? The internet is involved in producing networked subjectivities which require new modes of grasping collective identities and social connnectivity. For instance, being connected does not necessarily lead to a deepening of social relations or a genuine ‘public sphere’ of communication. This workshop critically explores the informational technologies and emergent structures of the internet in relation to the proliferation of ‘participatory’ new media (Web 2.0, Social Media, interactive online platforms).

Organisers: Barrie Axford (Oxford Brookes University); John Roberts (Brunel University); Sanjay Sharma (Brunel University)

Location: Brunel University – Directions http://tinyurl.com/brunel-travel & Campus map: http://tinyurl.com/brunel-map

Room: Darwin, Hamilton Centre

Free event, registration is essential due to limited number of places: Email sanjay.sharma@brunel.ac.uk

Programme

10.00am Refreshments: Tea & Coffee

10.30 Welcome ― Sanjay Sharma (Brunel University, Chair)

10.45 Too Much Connectivity ― Tony Sampson (University of East London)

11.45 Microphysics of Network Power and the Brickwall of Reality: WikiLeaks, Chinese dissidents, anti-austerity protests and the Arab Spring ― Athina Karatzogianni (University of Hull)

12.45pm Lunch & Refreshments

1.45 ‘Third Space’ and Networks: a critical evaluation of everyday blogs ― Scott Wright (Leicester University)

2.45 Social dialogue, crowd-sourcing and user participation in the new media: Benefits and challenges from a researcher’s perspective ― Lampros Stergioulas (Brunel University)

3.45 Refreshments: Tea & Coffee

4.00 Closing Round-table Discussion

 

Speaker Abstracts

Tony Sampson (University of East London)

Too Much Connectivity

A growing number of present-day authors, writing from social science,humanities, network science, economic, and business perspectives, have evoked a past interest in contagion theory by pondering its relevance to the current age. The age of networks, as Hardt and Negri remind us, is synonymous with an age of contagion. Anxieties concerning too much connectivity have indeed become as much a part of internet and web discourse as the many claims made concerning the democratizing power of the network. This is in sharp contrast to the optimism of the early 1990s when cultural theory was quick (too quick perhaps) to point to the emancipating powers of the rhizomatic network. Looking to the social theory of Gabriel Tarde, this talk addresses network contagion by asking three questions: First, what is it that actually spreads on a network? Second, what diagram can be used to grasp the virality of the network age? Third, what, if anything, lies beyond the metaphor of contagion?

Biog

Tony D. Sampson is a London-based theorist, writer and Reader in Digital Media and Communications at the University of East London.His ongoing interest in contagion theory is reflected in his recent publications,including The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture (2009), which he coedited with Jussi Parikka. His latest book, Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2012. Virality Blog: https://viralcontagion.wordpress.com/

 

Athina Karatzogianni (University of Hull)

Microphysics of Network Power and the Brickwall of Reality: WikiLeaks, Chinese dissidents, anti-austerity protests and the Arab Spring

This approach to explaining, analysing and theorising network activism in relation to these examples relies on the cyberconflict framework (Karatzogianni, 2004; 2006; 2009). Relying on a Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophical standpoint, it draws on media, conflict and social movement theories, network analysis and world-systems perspectives to explain how these symptomatic examples of the crisis of the present politico-economic order have become part of the reason for its survival. WikiLeaks’ internal organizational problems, as well as impact on academic debates for several fields such as International Relations is examined (Karatzogianni 2012; Robinson and Karatzogianni, 2012). The impact of social media on the Arab Spring is considered (forthcoming), while the discourse of Chinese dissidents is looked at as a demand on liberalization rather than democratization (forthcoming), which is not helpful for sociopolitical change in China. Finally, technosocial transformations on agency are theorised as playing a critical role at the level at which dissent is expressed against state and capitalism(s) as a social codes (Karatzogianni & Schandorf, 2012). Overall, these examples are used to engage in a critical discussion, as to which are the reasons network resistances and digital activism have failed in forging social and political change and materializing the Revolutionary Virtual to the extent necessary for a postnational global society relying on ethics, civil association, participatory/direct democracy, ecological and digital commons, and not just neo-liberal aesthetics, which promote profit making and unapologetically small-minded individualism propagated by multinational corporations and defended by disguised cultural protectionisms and patriotic statisms.

References

Karatzogianni, A. (forthcoming) “A Cyberconflict Analysis of the Arab Uprisings” The Selected Works of Athina

Karatzogianni Available at: http://works.bepress.com/athina_karatzogianni/14 [Prepared for Youngs, G. (ed.) Digital World: Connectivity, Creativity and Rights, London and New York Routledge, forthcoming 2013].

Karatzogianni, A. (forthcoming) “Dear Premier I Finally Escaped on YouTube”: A Cyberconflict Perspective on Chinese Dissidents’

The Selected Works of Athina Karatzogianni Available at: http://works.bepress.com/athina_karatzogianni/13 Prepared for: Rawnsley, G.D. and Rawnsley, M.Y.T. (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media, London and New York: Routledge

Karatzogianni, A. (2012) ‘WikiLeaks Affects: Ideology, Conflict and the Revolutionary Virtual’, in Karatzogianni, A. and Kunstman, A. (eds) Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: Feelings, Affect and Technological Change. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Biog

Dr Athina Karatzogianni is a Senior Lecturer in New Media and Political Communication, Director of Media Programmes at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Hull. Athina has authored The Politics of Cyberconflict (2006); Power, Conflict and Resistance: Social Movements, Networks and Hierarchies co-author Andrew Robinson (2010); edited Violence and War in Culture and the Media: Five Disciplinary Perspectives (2012); Cyber Conflict and Global Politics (2009) [all with Routledge]; and Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: Feelings, Affect and Technological Change, co-edited with Adi Kuntsman (2012, Palgrave). Athina has also contributed extensively on theorising cyberconflict, and exploring the potential of ICTs and network forms of organization for social movements, resistance and open knowledge production. Current research focuses on agency and resistance in transnational migrant and digital diaspora networks (for the MIG@NET EU FP7 http://www.mignetproject.eu/) and towards the research monograph The Real, The Virtual, and the Imaginary State, forthcoming 2014 with Palgrave. Her work can be downloaded in pre-publication form: http://works.bepress.com/athina_karatzogianni/

 

Scott Wright (Leicester University)

“Third Space” and Networks: a critical evaluation of everyday blogs

This paper takes forward a new agenda for online deliberation: how political talk emerges in non-political, online “third spaces”. First, the paper will outline the concept of third space (Wright 2012a, b) and engage critically with the concepts of space and networks. Second, it will present a detailed investigation of how people talk about politics on personal, non-political blogs using deliberative criteria to assess whether they constitute a third space. The analysis focuses on 100 randomly selected UK-based bloggers, with quantitative and qualitative content analysis of over 20,000 blog posts and comments, supported by interviews with the bloggers.

Biog

Scott Wright is Senior Lecturer in Political Communication at the University of Leicester. In 2012, he was Mid-Career Fellow of the British Academy, and this grant funded his empirical work on blogging. Scott’s research focuses on the nature of political debate online, covering both government-led forums and everyday conversations. He has previously looked at how website design and moderation affects the nature of online debate. He is currently working on the concepts of third space and of super-participation. His work has been published in a range of leading politics and media journals including: Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, New Media and Society, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, and the Journal of European Public Policy.

Background Reading: Wright, S. (2012) Politics as usual? Revolution, normalization and a new agenda for online deliberation, New Media & Society, 14 (2): 244-261

 

Lampros K. Stergioulas (Brunel University)

Social dialogue, crowd-sourcing and user participation in the new media: Benefits and challenges from a researcher’s perspective

We will explore the potential benefits and the challenges in the use of Web 2.0 social media and interactive social platforms for applications in social dialogue, crowd-sourcing and user participation. Drawing from our experience in current and past research projects, we will discuss conventional as well as more innovative uses of social media, including social/discussion forums, interactive collaborative spaces, blogging and micro-blogging, and we will examine the technical challenges, practical implications and barriers, and the limitations of technology.

Biog

Dr Lampros K. Stergioulas is Reader in the Department of Information Systems and Computing at Brunel University, UK. He is a qualified Chartered Engineer. He has held many national and EU Grants in technology enhanced learning, educational information systems, e-learning, human-centred communications and computing, digital literacy, technology Roadmapping, medical and health informatics, information processing, and intelligent systems. He has been principal investigator, and sometimes overall coordinator, in numerous EU projects, including UNIVERSAL, TIME2LEARN, PROLEARN, BASE2, e-Start, OpenScout, iCOPER, TEL-Map, DYRECT, Open Discovery Space, and HOTEL European research projects. Dr Stergioulas is currently serving as Chair–elect of the SIG3.9 Special Interest Group of IFIP on Digital Literacy and e-Inclusion, and is currently coordinating the EU project TEL-Map on the Future of Technology Enhanced Learning and on impact assessment and Roadmapping of digital technologies.

Background Reading: http://www.ieeetclt.org/issues/july2012/IEEE-LT-July2012.pdfhttp://www.match.ac.uk/downloads/PosterMATCH%20intConf_June%202012_AlexLang.pdf

Public Sphere, Crowd Sentiments and the Brain

A Public Lecture Series at Copenhagen Business School
Sponsored by the Public-Private Research Platform

See event Poster

Recent discussions in both strategic management and critical
management studies have hailed the coming of a new era of
democratized forms of the co-creation of value within business
systems, an era of democratic participation of consumers and
citizens as professional consumers (‘prosumers’) and co-creators
of innovation. Behind this reassessment of value-creation
structures lies the justified frustration with contemporary
forms of capitalism and its lack of attention to social justice
and environmental sustainability. Many contributors to these
debates, like Eric von Hippel, Adam Arvidsson, C. K. Prahalad,
and Russell L. Ackoff, suggest that the restructuring of capitalism
around modes of public deliberation stands a higher chance
of meeting future needs for more sustainable, responsive, flexible,
and globally inclusive forms of economic organizing.
Curiously, these visions rely on the notion of ‘productive publics’
and ‘productive collectives’ in the form of actual and virtual
crowds. The production of an open-access software, the
targeting of a misbehaving corporation through a Facebook
campaign, and the emergence of a crowd-sourced service or
product through the interaction between firms and twitterand
wiki-communities all have in common the assumption that
there exists what James Surowiecki has called the ‘wisdom of
the crowds’.

The remarkable return of ‘the crowd’ and its wise foolishness
is the subject of this public lecture series which aims to bring
together researchers and activist to discuss the themes of
public sphere, crowd behaviour, economic organizing, and recent
advances in neuroeconomic and neuromarketing research.
The lecture series aims at widening the conversation about
how much crowd psychology there is in current neuroeconomic
and neuromarketing research, and what the return of fin-desiècle
crowd psychology means for the ontology, methodology
and axiology of theorizing in contemporary management and
organization research. In the same vein, our guest lecturers
will raise the question whether the rapidly growing interest in
neuroscientific methods in economics, marketing and management
might provide the stimulus for the integration of social
and natural sciences.

Programme

14 March, 12.30-2pm, Porcelaenshaven 18B, Room 3.135
Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy, Copenhagen Business School
‘Neuromarketing: What’s All the Noise About?’
Thomas is Group Leader of the Decision Neuroscience Research
Group at the Department of Marketing and senior researcher at
the Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance. Amongst
his latest publications is ‘Branding the Brain: a Critical Review and
Outlook’, in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

21 March, 3-5pm, Porcelaenshaven 18B, Room S.023
Andrea Mubi-Brighenti, University of Trento
‘Social multiplicities: A Return on the Notion of Individual’
Andrea is a sociologist whose main research threads include space
and society, visibility and social theory. His latest monograph is
Visibility in Social Theory and Social Research (Palgrave Macmillan,
2010). He is co-editor of the ethnography journal Etnografia e
Ricerca Qualitativa and editor of a collection of articles on The Wall
and the City (Professional Dreamers, 2009).

11 April, 3-5pm, Porcelaenshaven 18B, Room 3.135
Tony Sampson, University of East London
‘Putting the Neuro Doctrine to Work’
Tony is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Arts and Digital Industries,
University of East London. Tony researches social contagion
in electronic media, and he is the co-editor (with Jussi Parikka) of
Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies from the Dark
Side of Digital Culture (Hampton Press, 2009). His latest book is
Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks (University of
Minnesota Press, 2012.).

18 April, 3-5pm, Porcelaenshaven 18B, Room 3.135
Tanja Schneider, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
‘Neuroscience beyond the Laboratory: the Commercialization of
Neuroscientific Knowledges and Technologies’
Tanja Schneider is a Research Fellow in Science and Technology
Studies. Her areas of expertise include social studies of markets
and marketing, media and consumer culture as well as the politics
and practices of food governance. Among her latest publications is
‘Technologies of Ironic Revelation: Enacting Consumers in Neuromarkets’
in Consumption, Markets and Culture.

REGISTRATION: publicprivateplatform@cbs.dk

Organizers:
Christian Borch (cbo.lpf@cbs.dk), Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy.
Porcelaenshaven 18B, DK-2000 Frederiksberg.
Thomas Z. Ramsøy (tzr.marktg@cbs.dk), Head of the Decision Neuroscience Research Group at the Department
of Marketing, Solbjerg Plads 3C, DK-2000 Frederiksberg.

Podcast of the Security, Community & Democracy Event

From  [News] CCSR Newsletter

We are pleased to announce that the podcast of the Security, Community &
Democracy event held on 6th February is now available for download. You can
navigate to it from the link on our website culturalstudiesresearch.org or
direct to our feed site here
http://feeds.feedburner.com/UelCcsrOccasionalEventsPodcast where you can also
find podcasts of past CCSR events. Please share widely. We would like to take
this opportunity to extend thanks to our speakers Will Davies, Tony Sampson
and Mark Maguire for an inspiring and thought provoking event.

Call for Papers: Leaking affects and mediated spaces

Call for Papers: Leaking affects and mediated spaces for the Fourth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies
1-3 July 2013 at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Session: Leaking affects and mediated spaces.

Session organisers: Darren Ellis, John Cromby, Lewis Goodings, Tony Sampson and Ian Tucker

We seem to possess the ability to move and to be greatly moved by our daily interactions with increasingly complex forms of electronic media. We are soaked in the seepage of affective information about others (other humans, other beings, other spaces) and continually leak similar stuff about ourselves, both intentionally and unintentionally, and often somewhere in-between the two. For example, signified affective states are issued through the often mundane emoticons ():), kisses (x), and curses (f**k); and our pleasures and pursuits can be captured by sophisticated algorithms that track internet activity. Perhaps digitised space has opened the way to new realms of affective contagions, transactions, communications and doings. To what extent then do we get a sense of the affect-trails that we leave behind and those that we pick up? What kinds of senses are involved and how might we experience them on a day to day basis? Indeed what are the possibilities and limitations of sharing, imparting and capturing affects across this electronic ether? Is there a flattening of affect or is something qualitatively different occurring? Central to these questions are notions of distribution and spatial expression, and the need to understand the affective nature (or not) of the relations and connections between bodies and technologies that form our everyday territories. The sessions that make up this proposal seek to explore these issues in a number of theoretical and empirical ways, with interest in (although not limited to) areas such as surveillance, social media and embodiment.

Key Questions: How do we understand the multiple and fluid ways that affect becomes distributed across and through bodies, technologies and spaces? How is affect marked out and made visible in mediated online spaces? Is affect still a useful way for configuring the expression of intensive processes spatially?

Paper proposals are invited focusing on (although are not limited to):

Surveillance

Social Media

Embodiment

Digital and non-digital topology

Body-technology relations

Novel empirical approaches to studies of affect

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words to Darren Ellis (D.Ellis@uel.ac.uk) before the 20th of January 2013

Confirmed Viral Events for 2012/13

  • There are a number of confirmed events related to Virality that might be of interest to readers of this blog.

    Following the academic launch of Virality at Goldsmiths College in October and the launch party with Mute Magazine in Limehouse last Friday (more on that collaboration soon in another post), I will be joining Jussi Parikka at the School of Arts and Humanities (Culture, Media and Creative Industries) Kings College, London on the 20th March (this new date is penciled in replacing the Feb 6th) for our “Anomalies, Archaeology and Contagion” talk and discussion followed by a wine reception for both Virality and Jussi’s What is Media Archaeology?

    There’s an interesting event at the University of East London (School of Arts and Digital Industries) in Feb where I’m planning to do a piece on “Viral Love and the Underground Man.” The “Love Slam” event is on the 14th Feb 6-9pm.

    As part of an ongoing series of collaborations with artists and musicians I’ve been working with the “crowd” artist Dean Todd on a performance piece for Virality which will be exhibited at the “Bookworks” show between April 8-19th, also at the University of East London.

    On April 11th 2013 I will visit the Copenhagen Business School to do a talk called “Putting the Neuron Doctrine to Work.” This is for an invite to a public lecture series called “Public Sphere, Crowd Sentiments and the Brain.”

    I have a provisional working title for a confirmed invite to the Department of Sociology and Communications at Brunel University on May 24th. “Too Much Connectivity” will form part of the “New Media and the Internet: Digital Democracy or Complex Chaos?” series of workshops.

    Between July 1-3rd we (Darren Ellis, John Cromby, Lewis Goodings, Tony Sampson, and Ian Tuckerare) are off to the Fourth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands to run a couple of seminars called “Leaking Affects and Mediated Spaces.”

    Finally, there are a few other events in the pipeline including a contribution to an exhibit at the Berlin Transmediale Festival in Jan-Feb 2013, and a series of workshops at the University of Bern in Switzerland on the subject of the Immunologic. More details to follow.