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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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The Subversion of Big Data. Cultures, Discourses and Practices of Big Data in Social Movements Contexts

This seminar is part ot the Social Movements and Media Technologies: Present Challenges and Future Developments Seminar Series, designed to tackle and critically understand one of the crucial societal changes of our times: the relationship between political participation and media technologies.

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The goal of this  seminar is to address the concept of big data as a contested terrain of imagination and practice which is understood in different ways by economic and political powers on the one hand and political activists on the other. This seminar focuses on these discursive tensions by exploring activists practices and beliefs about big data. In particular, we aim at deconstructing the concept of big data from an activist perspective and at discussing how social movement actors related to big data. More specifically, we explore big data in three different panels: a) activists’ data cultures and big data b) activists’ discourses on big data; and c) activists’ practices involving big data.

The Social Movements and Media Technologies: Present Challenges and Future Developments Seminar Series is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and jointly organised by the Centre for Global Media and Democracy (CGMD) at Goldsmiths University of London and the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS), Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence.

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