‘Reimagine the Internet’ Conference to Take Place in May

Civic Logic by Fiammetta Ghedini Riva
‘Civic Logic’ by Fiammetta Ghedini Riva

The soon-to-be-launched UMass Amherst Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure, and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, will host a conference, “Reimagine the Internet,” about the possibilities for developing a new, healthier vision for the internet of the future.

The free virtual conference takes place May 10 – 14. It is sponsored by the School of Public Policy.

Ethan Zuckerman, associate professor at the School of Public Policy, the department of communication and the College of Information and Computer Sciences, will speak at the conference’s kick-off panel, “Pioneering Alternative Models for Community on the Internet” — a primary focus of the Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure, which he will lead. Zuckerman, who is currently a visiting research scholar at the Knight Institute, will moderate additional panels, along with Katy Glenn Bass and Alex Abdo of the Knight Institute.

“Our goal is to expand the conversation about the problems and potentials of social media by showcasing the work of innovative projects from around the world,” said Zuckerman. “The virtual format gives us the opportunity to take inspirations from Bahrain to Australia and to center voices from beyond Silicon Valley.”

Sessions will be presented as live webinars and archived online for future viewing.

Panel topics include:

  • Misinformation, Disinformation and Media Literacy in a Less-centralized Social Media Universe
  • Interoperability and Alternative Social Media
  • Lessons from Experiments in Local Community-Building
  • Deplatforming and Innovation
  • New Directions in Social Media Research

The conference will feature media scholars and practitioners, including professor Jonathan Corpus Ong of the department of communication, Bahraini civil rights activist and blogger Esra’a Al Shafei, Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Daphne Keller of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society and Wikimedia Foundation CEO Katherine Maher.