Sanjana Hattotuwa curating Conference: ‘New Ec(h)o systems: Democracy in the age of SocialMedia’ – Registration Live

Please find the description of the Conference here:

And the Agenda here:

“Stark evidence around the weaponisation of Facebook in South Asia was evident towards the end of 2013. In Sri Lanka, religious extremists were using the platform to seed and spread Islamophobia. Around the same time, religious extremists with precisely the same motivations produced and promoted content inciting genocidal violence in Myanmar. The (ab)use of social media by political entrepreneurs for ideological persuasion and propaganda production shows rapid iteration and innovation in the past decade. However, it was not until 2016’s Presidential Election in the US and the Brexit referendum in the UK that Western media focused on social media’s harmful impact on democracy and social relations. For years before, social media markets in the Global South were Petrie dishes for what in Western societies, and more mature democracies, came to pass. Silicon Valley’s libertarian evangelism to connect everyone rarely considered inadvertent consequences of enabling masspersonal content production at a scale never attempted before.

In the Global South, this ‘growth hacking’ – a term used to describe the aggressive attempts to increase market share – overlapped with the availability of cheaper and more capable smartphones along with more affordable and widespread broadband access. The results were unsurprising. In divided societies, while these developments provided new vectors for civil society advocacy and activism to strengthen democracy, it also resulted in the faster, more pervasive spread of violence. Social media companies are quick to take credit for connecting people. To date, they rarely acknowledge how platforms, products and algorithms not designed to deal with divided societies contribute to and often amplify hate and violence. Big Tech only parenthetically and partially addresses this toxicity. Profit continues to trump ethics, and human rights concerns struggle to compete with commercial interests.”

Read the full description of the Conference here: