Frontiers of Science in Social Media: Studying Digital Democracy with Automation, Experiments, and Ethics – A Marcus Wallenberg Symposium

Published 2 March 2020

The rise of extremist politicians, disinformation, and hate speech all relate to widespread social media use. But how do researchers study the impact of social media on democracy? This international symposium brings together leading social media scholars to share their approaches to answering this question. The presentations focus on the cutting-edge methods used to study the intersection of social media and politics.

 

The morning session explores how techniques borrowed from the computer sciences, such as text mining and machine learning, open up new pathways for data collection, visualization, and analysis. This session will focus on how social media analytics can be used to study elections and the public conversations around them. The afternoon session investigates the democratic implications of artificial intelligence, by drawing into question how automated decision-making influences society and how we study it.

When: 21 April 2020, 9-17

Location: Lilla Salen AF-Borgen, Sandgatan 2, Lund

Registration: The conference is free of charge* and open to students and staff at Lund university as well as to attendees from industry, public sector and the general public. However, please register no later than 17 april at: http://ai.lu.se/events/registration-20-04-21

Confirmed speakers include:

  • Anja Bechmann (Aarhus University)
  • Robert Bond (Ohio State University)
  • Sanne Kruikemeier (University of Amsterdam)
  • Salla-Maaria Laaksonen (University of Helsinki)
  • Marc Ziegele (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf)

More speakers will be added in short.

Contact

*The symposium is supported by: