Raed Jarrar participate in seminar about social networks and human rights. From the Arab Spring to Spain's May 15 Movement

Type of activity: seminar
Dates: 30, 31 March and 1 April 2012
Time: Friday, 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, 11a.m.
Place: Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200
Admission: free admission. Space is limited
Organised by: Diagonal. Periódico quincenal de actualidad crítica
The new technologies and the social networks are giving rise to a completely new media panorama and are serving as tools for the condemnation of human rights violations and news censorship. These networks, moreover, are helping coalesce and also disseminate various forms of social mobilization. From the war in Iraq to Wikileaks, from the Arab uprising to Spain's May 15th, Internet has made the producers and the consumers of information become one and the same. The ideas of issuer and receiver are now on the list of obsolete concepts. But the networks themselves are not social platforms; they can be tools for guaranteeing the dissemination of information and for condemning human rights violations, although this is not always the case.

The arrival of Internet has brought about major changes in information paradigms and in how we understand communications. The old schemes that have been promoted over the years by communication theorists are now in critical condition. The development of the Web 2.0 has enhanced collaboration, interoperability and user-focused design. This principle of interaction has facilitated the growth of Web communities, social applications and networks, interactive videos, wikis and blogs.
Despite the positive features of this new situation, Internet also has weaknesses. As Journalists without Frontiers reports, "Internet makes traditional censorship methods ineffective, but it is important to keep in mind that some regimes make use of these resources for spying on dissidents, especially through Facebook and Twitter, and for infiltrating their networks".
However, the semantic web, or Internet 3.0, then arrives on the scene as a tool for activism, for promoting the right to information and, by extension, for working towards the defence of human rights as laid down in international treaties, conventions and declarations.
Examples such as the May 15 movement or the Arab Spring show the important role that social networks can play as communication and social mobilization tools for a wide array of groups, associations and political/social forces opposed to the system and to dictatorial regimes.
This seminar aims to explore and analyse this new reality, a reality very different from the issuer/receiver dialectic and which means instead that anybody can participate actively in the defence and promotion of basic human rights through these social networks. What is the role of the media in this new setting? And the role of citizens? Is the freedom of information now more vulnerable than before, or, on the contrary, is it stronger than ever?

Program
The new media paradigm: changes in the correlation of forces between the traditional media and the alternative media 
Friday, March 30
6 p.m.
Participants: Olga Rodríguez, Raed Jarrar and María Ptqk

The new technologies as tools with which to guarantees the right to information in the uprisings in the region south of the Mediterranean 
Saturday, March 31 
11 a.m.
Participants: Sirin Adlbi, Basel Ramsis and Santiago Alba Rico

The role of the social networks in European mobilizations: Is the Arab Spring coming to Europe? 
Saturday, March 31 
5 p.m.
Participants: DRY Barcelona, Juventud Sin Futuro and Tina Voreadi

From technological colonization to technological sovereignty and emancipation 
Sunday, April 1 
11 a.m.
Participants: Hacktivistas, Leila Nachawati and Alexandra Haché

Participants
Santiago Alba Rico. Spanish writer, essayist and philosopher. The author of various texts about topics related to philosophy, anthropology and politics, he also works as an editor for various journals and media outfits.
Sirin Adlibi. Expert in the social movements of Arab and Muslim women, Islamic feminism, and gender and Islam, among other subjects. She is a doctoral student in the International Mediterranean Studies program at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and her dissertation is entitled Coloniality, women and Islam: construction and deconstruction of the Moroccan woman.
Democracia Real Ya! Barcelona. Spanish social movement that works to co-ordinate common and global actions by associations, groups and citizen mobilizations through the use of the Internet and social networks, in order to combat structural inequalities within the system.
Juventud Sin Futuro An organisation created in February of 2011 at the initiative of different student groups in Madrid with the aim of fighting against the precariousness affecting young people in the Spain of today. 
Raed Jarrar. Iraq-born architect, blogger and political-analyst now living in the United States. He started his first blog in 2002 to show the world a different vision of Iraqui civilians during the U.S. invasion of that country, thus becoming one of the very first bloggers in Iraq and the region. 
Alexandra Haché is a sociologist, a doctor of social economy and research on ICT for the common good. She recently completed a postdoctoral position in which she researched for policy making in the field of social inclusion and ICT. She also worked on the impact of the social web in civil society and its potential for self-organization and social innovation.
Hacktivistas. An activist network that arose from the community created at hacklabs and hackmeetings on the Iberian peninsula, in an effort to co-ordinate actions at the global level, debate strategies, share resources and synchronise movements of creation and resistance, in order to move closer towards a free society based on free technologies. 
Leila Nachawati. International co-ordinator of AERCO (Spanish Association for Online Community Managers), she herself is also a blogger and activist working in defence of human rights, with special interest in the Middle East and North Africa. She contributes to media such as Periodismo Humano, Global Voices Advocacy and Al-Jazeera.
María Ptqk. Independent cultural producer and researcher, she works as a consultant for the post-graduate Digital Publishing program at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and collaborates with various media. She is currently part of the team in charge of Gender Art Maps, a project being carried out for the European Cultural Foundation. 
Basel Ramsis. Egyptian filmmaker, professor of documentary filmmaking and activist. He is the author of documentaries such as The Other Side...An approach to Lavapiés (2001) and Swings (2007), about the situation of women in Palestine. He participated in the mobilizations taking place in Tahrir Square in Cairo. 
Olga Rodríguez. Spanish journalist and writer specialised in the Middle East, she has won numerous awards for her work on Iraq and Gaza in 2003 and 2006.
Tina Voreadi. Greek activist who divides her time between Barcelona and Thessaloniki. She works in areas such as post-modern critique, the politics of representation, film discourse, visual anthropology and feminism.

إرسال تعليق

أحدث أقدم