RE:activism Conference: Budapest, October 14-15, 2005

RE:activism: Re-drawing the boundaries of activism in a new media environment

which is to take place in

Budapest, October 14-15, 2005

Re:activism conference addresses what role social activism can play in the broad process in which emerging new media technologies transform existing structures of cultural, economic and political power. The conference offers eight panels, each of them representing an important approach from which the transformative potential of new media can be meaningfully addressed (...)

The aim of RE:activism conference is to bring together various people with various backgrounds, interests and projects, still, all immersed in the field of activism and digital media. RE:activism will serve not only as an academic conference, but as a large-scale social event enabling academics and practitioners, eastern and western, European and North-American, groups and individuals, to engage in communication and to establish further cooperation.

+ Conference website here

+ On the first day, we gather to discuss the new dynamics of culture production.

Digital networks allow the large scale cooperation of individuals with diverse motivational backgrounds. This cooperation often results in globally competitive ideas, (software) products, (social) services. The productive activities of ad-hoc activist or expert networks on the Net can best be theorised by a new approach in political economy exploring the structure and dynamics of peer production networks. Since the emergence of peer networks transforms the established institutions of the production of memory and cultural canon, a panel session will be devoted to new forms of grassroot journalism and open archiving. Another important challenge for the status quo of culture production is the fast development of digital techniques allowing new forms for remix and detournement, in a word, culture jamming. Finally, a special panel will explore how various social, economic, and legal agents of regulation in a post-Westphalian world order can react to all these processes.

+ State intervention and Regulatory Issues in the Information Age

Methodological nationalism, as Ulrich Beck uses the term, signifies the confusion and perplexity not only of social scientists conducting comparative analyses in the post-Wesphalian setting, but also of national policy-makers, international regulatory bodies and transnational (commercial, political) organisations. Questions related to legitimacy, transparency and responsibility are crucial for those who like to contemplate over the future of democratic political systems. (...)

Panel leaders:
Henry Perritt (Chicago-Kent College of Law)
Jonathan Zittrain (Berkman Center for Internet & Society)

Confirmed panel participants:
Martin Cloonan (University of Glasgow)
Milton Mueller (Syracuse University,School of Information Studies)
William Drake (UN Working Group on Internet Governance)
Gábor Halmai (Eötvös Lorand University)

Paper presenters:

Arne Hintz: Activist Media in Global Governance: Inputs and outputs of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)

maxigas: Freenet: Child Pornography and Anarchy?

John Wilson: The Multi-stakeholder Approach in Information and Communication Policies: Broadband Britian interventions

Robert Horvitz: The Role of Licensing in an Era of Convergence

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