The Arab Spring of 2011 demonstrated the liberalizing role that new communications technology can play under certain circumstances, but did not eliminate suspicions that constraining contextual factors can hinder the development of open information orders. The historical and socio-cultural settings of individual countries must be thoroughly analysed when attempting to explain how authoritarian regimes deal with new communications technologies. While information orders are often characterized by resilience, they are not immune to the destabilizing risks associated with flows of information. How such orders are challenged by use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), actors in civil society and, in turn, how authoritarian regimes seek to contain information flows and social media networking are important for understanding the interplay between national-authoritarian and global-anarchic environments.
The purpose of this seminar – a pilot venture within a planned new research programme at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs – is to discuss increasing transnational links and communication networks between the global and the national, as well as the competition and cooperation between business, state and societal interests that they bring. How do these various interests and linkages impact on different authoritarian political systems in diverse national contexts such as the Middle East and East and Southeast Asia? How does state power react to new social media and communications technology that may empower civil society? To what extent are Internet censorship, lawmaking, media ownership, propaganda, and surveillance effective tools for authoritarian regimes and the nominally democratic in managing processes of globalization, democratization, and democracy?
Date: Thursday 9 February, 2012
Time: 13.30 – 15.30 (registration from 13.15)
Location: The Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Drottning Kristinas väg 37, Stockholm
Seminar fee: Free
The event is fully booked. Click on the following link if you wish to be on the waiting list (you will be notified 8 February at the latest if you are able to attend the seminar): http://www.ui.positionett.se/tillfalle.php?id=955
Participants:
Evgeny Morozov, Visiting Scholar, Stanford University and author. The Net Delusion: The role of Western technology companies in enabling electronic surveillance in authoritarian states.
Kristina Riegert, Professor, Stockholm University. Before the Revolutionary Moment: Lebanese and Egyptian Bloggers.
Johan Lagerkvist, Senior Research Fellow, Swedish Institute of International Affairs.
Social media businesses in China: Upsetting or setting up the party-state?
Alexandra Segerberg, Researcher, PhD, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University. Logic of Connective Action.
Johan Eriksson, Director of Research, Swedish Institute of International Affairs. Discussant.
The seminar will be moderated by Jan Joel Andersson, Senior Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs.