Phonethica is going to have a presentation of the project at RE:Activism, an international conference which is to take place in Budapest, October 14-15. 2005.

RE:Activism: Re-drawing the Boundaries of Activism in a new media environment

The problematics

The emergence of the internet and other information technologies gave birth to a plethora of new social and communicative activities. Cheap, decentralized and horizontal communication channels have been exploited by a wide spectrum of actors from antiglobalization activists and users of file-sharing networks to creative commons licensees and locative guerilla artists. As new media technologies have triggered various forms of activities, the New Left hopes about emancipatory social agency have also been resuscitated. In spite of the undeniable democratic potential inscribed in new information and communication technologies, there seems to be little agreement as to what consequences new media bring on existing structures of cultural, economic and political power.

The analysts and activists envisioning a more democratic, equitable and culturally diverse society have maintained high hopes concerning the progressive potential of new media. Meanwhile, skeptical voices can also be heard: research focus has been reoriented towards threats and uncertainties concerned with new technologies. Many analysts have addressed various aspects of the commercialization of new media, the possibilities of digital surveillance and states’ and corporations’ constant efforts to limit, by means of regulation, the liberatory potential of new technologies.

Given the above hopes and disappointments, only one thing seems to be evident: new ICT-s have opened up a broad field on which established and emerging institutions, forces of change and representatives of a more consensual order engage in a very complex web of interactions with no predictable outcome.

The main lines of discussion

The organizers are particularly interested in the following problems:

• How the boundaries separating center (accepted/valuable) and periphery (illicit/worthless) are redrawn through the negotiations of new media actors, be they individual music consumers, expert groups, creative commons licensees, social movements, nation states or corporate representatives?

• Does the enabling potential of new technologies trigger, in reality, new forms of social and communicative activities? What turns new media enabled activities into “activism”? What does activism mean in the context of new media?

• Under what conditions do unusual uses of new media induce social change and subvert old structures of the production and the distribution of loyalties, identities, culture and knowledge?

Participants of the conference are invited to explore the promises and limitations of new media along the above broad themes of “center/periphery”, “activism” and “change”. RE:activism offers eight panels, each of them representing an important approach from which the transformative potential of new media can be meaningfully addressed.

The panels

We invite academic participants to present papers and take part in round table discussions with activists in one of the following panels:

• Political economy of peer production networks

• State intervention and regulatory issues in the Information Age

• Digital culture jamming

• Digitalized memory: new forms of archiving and journalism

• Civic uses of new media technologies

• New media and global civil society

• New media and democratic elections

• New media activism and the urban fabric

The structure of the conference

The two-day conference will be organized around altogether eight topics. Each day we have a morning session of keynote lecture by a lead researcher, and we have four panel sessions of academic discourse, where distinguished researchers can present their work. Then we have four panel sessions for discussion in the afternoon, where academic researchers, activists and artists can share their thoughts, values, findings and proposals with each other. In the evenings activists and artists will present their projects.



The participants

The conference RE:activism serves as a large scale, international social and academic event which brings together academics, activists and artists to explore and discuss some of the most important aspects of transforming cultural and political practices in the context of new media.

Confirmed participants

Michael X Delli Carpini (Annenberg School for Communication), Alexander H. Trechsel (European University Institute), Wainer Lusoli (University of Salford), Douglas Kellner (UCLA), Saskia Sassen (University of Chicago), Dr Richard Barbrook (School of Media, Arts & Design, University of Westminster), Boda Zsolt (Institute of Political Science, Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Laura Forlano (NYC Wireless), Giles Lane (Proboscis.org), Michael Keith (Boston College), Rick Prelinger (Prelinger Archives), Barbie Zelizer (Annenberg School for Communication), Kembrew McLeod (University of Iowa), Andy Bichlbaum (rtmark.org), Marcell Mars (Multimedijalni institut), Sebastian Luetgert (textz.com / piratecinema.org), Joanne Richardson (subsol.c3.hu), Nicholas Jankowski (University of Nijmegen), Vámosi Gyula (Roma Information Project), Christian Sandvig (University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign), Henry Perritt (Chicago-Kent College of Law), Jonathan Zittrain (Berkman Center for Internet & Society), Martin Cloonan (University of Glasgow), Dr. Milton Mueller (Syracuse University,School of Information Studies), Yochai Benkler (Yale Law School), Magnus Bergquist (Göteborg University), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia.org), William Drake (UN Working Group on Internet Governance), Nalini P. Kotamraju (Berkeley), Heidi Karst (The International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience), Dominique Cardon (CENT), Allen Gunn (Aspiration Tech), Alain Touraine (EHESS)

Date and location

October 13-15, 2005

Central European University, Nádor str. 8., Budapest, Hungary