Past Events

The Transformation of News in the Digital Age: an interactive, live conversation between scholars and practitioners

Tuesday July 14, 2009, 3 pm GMT/10 am EST

Organized by the Center for Media and Communication Studies at Central European University and the Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Recent events across the globe underscore the dramatic changes in ways people communicate with each other. Traditional boundaries and cultural mores are tested as new media augment the information landscape and challenge prevailing orthodoxies. Old institutions are threatened as broadcast entities and newspapers lose primacy.  Questions abound about a Twitter generation, a Facebook society and a world in which mobile telephony becomes a more and more significant platform for the diffusion of news.  Are these concerns overblown?  What are some of the implications for existing entities, for governments, for civil society, for media development agencies and funders? 

The interactive session will feature live in conversation James Deane, director of policy for the BBC World Service Trust; Persephone Miel, Senior Advisor, Internews, and a fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University; and practitioners, researchers, and journalists in media development from Bangladesh, Palestine, South Africa, El Salvador and across Central and Eastern Europe.

The online seminar will be streamed live from Budapest at the headquarters of Magyar Telekom with an ongoing, interactive live chat supplementing the live session. 

• National Centre for Radio & Television Studies, Communication University of China
• Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster
• School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong
• Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

A discussion with Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet and Monroe E. Price
September 29, 2009

From the New York Times: Roger Cohen joined The New York Times in 1990. He was a foreign correspondent for more than a decade before becoming acting Foreign Editor on September 11, 2001, and Foreign Editor six months later.  Since 2004 he has written a column for the Times-owned International Herald Tribune, first for the news pages and then, since 2007, for the Op-Ed page. In 2009 he was named a columnist of The New York Times.  Mr. Cohen has written Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo (Random House, 1998), an account of the wars of Yugoslavia's destruction, and Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). He has also cowritten a biography of General Norman Schwarzkopf, In the Eye of the Storm (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1991). 

To read Roger Cohen's recent article on Iran in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, click here.

Discussants: Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, History, University of Pennsylvania and Monroe Price, Director of the Center for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania's Middle East Center.

A discussion with Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
October 14, 2009

Among the many foreign policy challenges President Obama inherited from his predecessor, restoring the credibility of U.S. democracy promotion is one of the most complex.  What have the new president and his foreign policy team done so far on this front?  What opportunities exist for U.S. democracy promotion in a world where democratic retreat is as common as democratic advance? Can a new line on democracy be reconciled with the broader Obama policy of diplomatic reengagement, which entails reaching out to undemocratic regimes, like those in Russia and Iran?

Thomas Carothers is vice president for studies and director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, based in Washington, D.C.  Widely recognized as a leading international authority on democracy promotion, Mr. Carothers has worked on democracy assistance projects for many public and private organizations and carried out extensive field research on democracy-building programs around the world.  He is the author or editor of eight books on democracy and rule of law promotion, including most recently Confronting the Weakest Link: Aiding Political Parties in New Democracies (2006) and Promoting the Rule of Law Abroad: In Search of Knowledge (2006), as well as many articles in prominent journals and newspapers.  He has previously worked as an attorney at Arnold & Porter in Washington and at the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State.  He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the London School of Economics, and Harvard College.

Re-thinking Arab News Media Systems: Between National Environment, Transnational Dimensions and Hybridity

Lunch will be provided on a first-come, first-serve basis. Please RSVP to lmorgan@asc.upenn.edu.
 
Media scholarship has primarily focused on the regional and global dimension of the “satellite revolution” in Arab news, insisting on concepts such as the “pan-Arab public sphere” and “media pan-Arabism.” Taking Egypt as a case study, Valeriani will move from a “purely” pan-Arab perspective to a broader approach that examines the complex relationship between pan-Arab satellite news media and national media systems. Through a discussion of journalists’ representations of their professional community, he investigates how far the coverage and practices of pan-Arab all-news broadcasters have blurred the borders of national media systems, creating new hybrid spaces.
 
Augusto Valeriani (Phd) is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the department of Politics, Institution and History at the University of Bologna (Italy) where he lectures in Mass Media and International Politics.

Applications for 2010 competition now being accepted

The Price International Media Law Moot Court Competition is organized and facilitated by the Programme in Comparative Media Law & Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, part of the university's Faculty of Law, in collaboration with the International Media Lawyers Association (IMLA).

The competition has been held annually since 2008.

For more information and to apply, please visit the PCMLP website.

The purpose of the Price Moot Court Competition is to expand and stimulate an interest in Media Law and Policy among students from law and other disciplines, who will develop expertise in arguing a case before an international bench of judges from different legal systems and backgrounds.

The international nature of this competition encourages students to gain knowledge from legal systems different from their own by carrying out comparative study and research of regional and international standards to cultivate their arguments in both writing and oral forms.

• "Deineka in the Thaw: 'The Artist of Modernity,'" Christina Kiaer (Northwestern University)
• "Cold War Cartoons: Boris Efimov and the fate of Stalinist Culture in the Thaw," Stephen Norris (Miami University)
• "Laughing Matters: Soviets Propaganda Posters in the Thaw,"
• Masha Kowell and Liliana Milkova  (University of Pennsylvania and Oberlin College)

• "Designs of Spring: On the Natural Form of Developed Socialism," Robert Bird (University of Chicago)
• Voluntarism and Coercion in Khrushchev's Communist Party," Edward Cohn (Grinnell College)
• "Warhol in Kazakhstan," Richard Meyer  (University of Southern California)

• Cyber Security in Europe
• Establishing Trust: Attribution, Surveillance and Privacy
• Protecting an Open Society: Information Law and Policy, Liabilities and Incentives
• Comparing responses: State Responses, Models and Policy Transfer

• University of Leeds
• New York University
• Center for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen
• NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence
• Institute for Information Law, Amsterdam

• What are health communication campaigns and when do they work,
• Theories of attention, attitude and behavior change,
• Case studies on anti-smoking and anti-drug campaigns,
• The effects of entertainment narratives, and
• The importance of child development theories for understanding the effects of media on youth.

• National Centre for Radio & Television Studies, Communication University of China,
• Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster
• School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong
• Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

For more information and application details, please visit http://www.summer.ceu.hu/media.

Lunch will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis. Please RSVP to leisenach@asc.upenn.edu by Tuesday, October 10 at 12pm.

This talk explores Internet development in Mainland China and a couple of applications/uses of the Internet in the country in domestic context of its endeavors in reform and opening towards the outside world and the broader, global context of globalization. It will start with a discussion of the Internet in China whitepaper issued by the Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, sharing some of the key words and important points covered and offering some data and graphs to illustrate some aspects of the development. Then it will move on to discuss the use of the Internet in news dissemination along with the development of online media (media websites plus other websites/web pages and blog pages that engage in disseminating news online). Following that it will talk about blogging as a new form of public participation and the extension of public sphere/space in Mainland China. It is my sincere wish that this talk can do its bit in contributing to bringing in a Chinese individual’s understanding of the issue in the Chinese context.

Yonghua Zhang is a professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Communication, School of Film and TV Art & Technology, and Director of the Center for International Communication Studies and Vice Director of the Film, TV and Media Research Institute, Shanghai University.

Walter Armbrust (University of Oxford, Middle East Studies)

The film Ana Mish Ma‘hum (I Am Not With Them, 2007) contrasts sharply with a set of visual codes salient since the early 1970s for depicting (or more to the point, eliding) Islamically marked people and urban places. These conventions were repeated across a broad swathe of audiovisual media, hence my case study applies not just to cinema, but to all visual media more broadly. In the past decade, however, conventions for representing people and locations have been altered significantly, first by the advent of transnational broadcasting, and secondly, by increasingly insistent links to the politics of neoliberalism. Hence my paper examines a tension evident in I Am Not With Them and other similar productions between on one hand, the neoliberalization of Islam, and on the other hand, agendas for infusing Islamic ethics into neoliberalism.

This program is made possible thanks to the generous support of Center for Global Communication Studies, Cinema Studies, Middle East Center, and Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with the Historians of Islamic Art Association.

Network Neutrality: The Real Story

Please RSVP by Tuesday, October 19 at 12pm.

No communications policy issue has generated more attention in recent years than network neutrality, the idea that broadband network operators should not discriminate in their treatment of Internet content or services.  Yet few have produced as much confusion.  With President Obama and his FCC Chairman expressing strong support for network neutrality, why has the issue fallen into a morass of uncertainty? How is the debate likely to play out over the coming months?  And what's really at stake here?  How is the outcome of the current controversy likely to shape the future of the Internet?  

Kevin Werbach, Associate Professor of Legal Studies at Wharton, co-led the review of the FCC for the Obama-Biden Transition Project, and has served as an expert advisor to both the FCC and National Telecommunications & Information Administration in the Obama Administration, as well as FCC Counsel for New Technology Policy in the Clinton Administration.

The United Nations Development Programme, in conjunction with the Institute of Technology and Communication of Erbil in Iraq and the Center for Global Communication Studies, are coordinating a live Skype Seminar on Oct. 26th at 9 a.m. from Annenberg Hall (2020 N. 13th St) at Temple University's School for Communication and Theater entitled  "Integrating Social Media into Journalism: Teaching and Practice."

The Webinar seeks to present methods for integrating new media/social media into curriculum and practice within an Iraqi context. The session will be approximately 90 minutes and will feature a discussion section that allows Temple University professors, as well as students, to ask and answer questions live from Erbil.

The discussants are:

1. Professor Susan Jacobson started her journalism career in the mid-1980s working for The New York Times on an experimental computer news service. She worked in the Internet industry for many years, and teaches many of the new media courses in the department, including Publishing to the Web and Experimental Journalism. Her research interests include the impact of new media on the practice of journalism and journalism education, new narrative forms created by new media, and the development of mobile media.

2. Associate Professor Christopher Harper, co-Director of the Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab worked for more than 20 years in journalism at the Associated Press (Chicago), Newsweek (Chicago, Washington and Beirut),ABC News (Cairo and Rome) and ABC 20/20. He teaches History of Journalism, International Reporting, Journalism and the Law and a variety of reporting courses. His research has focused on digital media, although his current work deals with the baby boomer generation.

3. Assistant Professor Shenid Bhayroo teaches courses in audio-visual newsgathering, broadcast journalism, and journalism and politics. He worked as an investigative journalist for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (public broadcaster) and covered South Africa's Truth & Reconciliation Commission hearings in the 1990s. He has also worked as a freelance journalist, producer, cameraperson, and video editor for foreign media in South Africa. His research focuses on the political economy of media. His current work examines ownership of news and information content and the commodification of online news.

Please RSVP by Tuesday, November 2.

Tens of millions of people today are living part of their life in a virtual world. In places like World of Warcraft, Second Life, and Free Realms, people are making friends, building communities, creating art,and making real money. Business is booming on the virtual frontier, as billions of dollars are paid in exchange for pixels on screens. But sometimes things go wrong. Virtual criminals defraud online communities in pursuit of real-world profits. People feel cheated when their avatars lose virtual property to wrongdoers. Increasingly, they turn to legal systems for solutions. But when your avatar has been robbed, what law is there to assist you?

In Virtual Justice (Yale University Press 2010), Greg Lastowka illustrates the real legal dilemmas posed by virtual worlds. Presenting the most recent lawsuits and controversies, he explains how governments are responding to the chaos on the cyberspace frontier. After an engaging overview of the history and business models of today's virtual worlds, he explores how laws of property, jurisdiction, crime, and copyright are being adapted to pave the path of virtual law.

Greg Lastowka is a Professor at Rutgers School of Law.  He teaches courses in the laws of property and intellectual property. He is an expert on Internet law and his opinions have been quoted in publications such as Nature, The Economist, Scientific American, and the New York Times.  He is a co-director of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law. 

Click here for NPR's On the Media interview with Greg Lastowka.

Lunch will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis. Please RSVP to leisenach@asc.upenn.edu by Wednesday, November 3 at 12pm.

Ermitte St. Jacques is a National Science Foundation Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communication.

She recently received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Florida. Her dissertation research concerns the relationship between the economic integration of Senegalese and Gambian immigrants in Catalonia, Spain and their participation in transnational activities that enable them to maintain multiple social ties with their countries of origin. At CGCS/ASC Ermitte will examine the influence of new media and mobile communication technologies in the maintenance of transnational ties.

Lunch will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis. Please RSVP to leisenach@asc.upenn.edu by Tuesday, November 8 at 12pm.

Lucy M. Abbott is a PhD candidate at the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW) at Durham University, U.K. and will be spending the Fall 2010 semester with CGCS. As part of her PhD training, she studied Arabic at the University of Edinburgh and Kalimat Language Centre in Cairo, Egypt. She holds a BA (Hons) in Modern European Languages and a Master’s in International Relations (Middle East), also from Durham.

Her research focuses on Arab countries’ contemporary experiences of mass media and politics from a theoretical perspective. Her PhD dissertation focuses on the role of transnational Arab satellite television as a non-state actor catalyzing or stifling public debate. Other research interests include critical media studies, cyberpolitics, media regulation and political theory.

Please RSVP by Tuesday, December 7.

Barbara van Schewick is an associate professor of law at Stanford Law School, an associate professor (by courtesy) of electrical engineering at Stanford’s Department of Electrical Engineering, and the faculty director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. Her research focuses on the economic, regulatory, and strategic implications of communication networks. In particular, she explores how changes in the architecture of computer networks affect the economic environment for innovation and competition on the Internet, and how the law should react to these changes. This work has made her a leading expert on the issue of network neutrality. In 2007, van Schewick was one of three academics who, together with public interest groups, filed the petition that started the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality inquiry into Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer protocols. She has testified on issues of Internet architecture and network neutrality before the FCC in en banc hearings and official workshops. Her book Internet Architecture and Innovation was published by MIT Press this summer.

The Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Fondation Hirondelle, Internews Network, and the United States Institute of Peace are pleased to announce a gathering of experts to design guidelines for Evaluating the Impact of Media Interventions in Conflict Countries.

The meeting will take place at the Caux Conference Center near Geneva, Switzerland from December 13 — 17, 2010. This will be an unprecedented effort — convening the world’s leading methodologists, funders, and implementers for 5 days of intensive collaboration — in response to the growing demands from funders for monitoring and evaluation data.

For more information please click here.

A Discussion of Tim Wu’s The Master Switch led by Joe Turow and Peter Decherney

The first two meetings of the Internet and Media Policy lunchtime series will be devoted to an informal discussion of Tim Wu’s book, The Master Switch. The book surveys the history of American telecommunications and media industries. The discussion will focus on Wu’s methodology, his use of history, and his recommendations for the future.

On January 13th, we will discuss the chapters on the telephone system and the film and television industries (parts 1-4).

Faculty and graduate students from Penn and surrounding schools are encouraged to attend. Please RSVP and read the relevant chapters before each meeting. Lunch will be provided on a first come, first served basis.

A Discussion of Tim Wu’s The Master Switch led by Joe Turow and Peter Decherney

The first two meetings of the Internet and Media Policy lunchtime series will be devoted to an informal discussion of Tim Wu’s book, The Master Switch. The book surveys the history of American telecommunications and media industries. The discussion will focus on Wu’s methodology, his use of history, and his recommendations for the future.

On the 20th, we will discuss the chapters on the internet (part 5). The book is widely available, and we will have section 5 available as a PDF on request.

Faculty and graduate students from Penn and surrounding schools are encouraged to attend. Please RSVP and read the relevant chapters before each meeting. Lunch will be provided on a first come, first served basis.

Visiting Scholar Discussion with Guoming Yu: The New Trend of Communication Studies in China

The talk will give a brief introduction of current trends in communication studies in China, including monitoring public opinions on the Internet, access and use of media, and media development indices. Professor Yu will also discuss the various methods he uses to to collect and analyse data including a system platform for monitoring public opinions, MRI experiments and other platforms.

Professor Guoming Yu is Vice Dean of the Journalism and Communication School of Renmin University of China and director of the Public Opinion Studies Center of Renmin University. The Center does opinion research and polling in academic areas, and under Professor Yu’s direction has completed hundreds of projects for main-stream media and governments.

Coffee and snacks will be provided.  Please RSVP by Friday, February 4 at 12pm.

Visiting Scholar Lunchtime Discussion with Manuel Puppis:
The Political Communication of Regulatory Agencies: Between Legitimacy Management and New Governance

Following liberalization, regulatory agencies have become key actors of policy-making in broadcasting and telecommunications across Europe. Despite the fact that political communication is an integral part of politics, previous political communication and communication policy research largely ignored the communication of these regulators. On the one hand, communication can be conceptualized as a means to obtain organizational legitimacy. In the view of new sociological institutionalism, regulators’ communication is at the same time influenced by institutional environments (e.g. mediatization) and a strategic devise used to manipulate perceptions of a regulator’s activities and performance. On the other hand, communication can be viewed as a new form of governance. Communicating with the regulated industries is then seen as an alternative to command and control regulation.

Dr. Manuel Puppis is a senior research and teaching associate and the managing director of the division “Media & Politics” at the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research (IPMZ), University of Zurich, Switzerland. He will be visiting CGCS as a Short Term Visiting Scholar in January and February 2011. Puppis holds a PhD in Communication Science and an M.A. in Communication Science (major subject), Political Science and Economic and Social History (minor subjects) from the University of Zurich.

Coffee and snacks will be provided.  Please RSVP by Friday, February 11 at 12pm.

As Seen on TV: Depicting India in the Pakistani Media

Huma Yusuf is a Pakistani journalist and currently the Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C.

The New Media Series is hosted by the Center for the Advanced Study of India.

Please RSVP by Tuesday, February 15.

"I Am the Fourth Estate". Leaderism and mediatization of politics: the case of Italy

Cavaliere will take a different look at the Italian industry of media; the story of its development can also be read as an example of what happens when market force is not constrained by any kind of regulation. The current highly concentrated market, where there is essentially one private competitor to the public broadcaster, has shaped the Italian information landscape in a unique way when compared to the American or European equivalents.   

In the endless debate on freedom of speech, political information, scarcity of frequencies and pluralism, the case of Italy can tell us something about how much ownership matters in biasing the news and driving the thoughts of a whole society. 

Paolo Cavaliere is a joint visiting scholar at Penn Law School and CGCS.  He earned a PhD in International Law and Economics at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. As a Teaching Fellow, he has taught Public Law, Italian and European Constitutional Law, Media Law, Regional Law and Constitutional Justice. He also holds a law degree from the University of Pavia and an LLM in Public Law from University College, London.
 
Please RSVP by Friday, March 11 at noon. Lunch will be provided on a first come, first served basis.

Post Piracy: Creativity and Cinephilia Beyond Access in India and China

Lawrence Liang is the Co-founder of the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore and a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University.

The New Media Series is hosted by the Center for the Advanced Study of India.

Please RSVP by Tuesday, March 15 at noon.

Milton Wolf Seminar 2011

Picking Up the Pieces:  Fragmented Sovereignties and Emerging Information Flows

March 23-25, 2011 
Vienna, Austria

The Diplomatic Academy Vienna in partnership with the Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania will host a seminar from March 23-25, 2011 in Vienna, Austria, organized by the American Austrian Foundation. The seminar will bring together a diverse group of individuals representing multiple perspectives and nationalities.  Panelists include distinguished print and television journalists, media development practitioners, diplomats, and academics.

The seminar is organized around the theme: Picking Up the Pieces:  Fragmented Sovereignties and Emerging Information Flows.  The purpose of the seminar is three-fold:

(1)   To identify how different actors attempt to influence the domestic media and communications landscapes of closed and transitional states in service of diplomatic and/or development goals

(2)   To investigate the implications of rapid changes in the available communication technologies for these efforts, and

(3)   To bring together students, scholars and practitioners from around the world to participate in seminars and break out sessions designed to identify current problems and possible solutions to the challenges raised by these activities.

For more information please visit the 2011 Milton Wolf Seminar website.

Registration is now available for the 2011 competition.
Registration Deadline: November 12, 2010.

For more information and to apply, please visit the PCMLP website.

The Price International Media Law Moot Court Competition is organized and facilitated by the Programme in Comparative Media Law & Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, part of the university's Faculty of Law, in collaboration with the International Media Lawyers Association (IMLA).

The competition has been held annually since 2008.

The purpose of the Price Moot Court Competition is to expand and stimulate an interest in Media Law and Policy among students from law and other disciplines, who will develop expertise in arguing a case before an international bench of judges from different legal systems and backgrounds.

The international nature of this competition encourages students to gain knowledge from legal systems different from their own by carrying out comparative study and research of regional and international standards to cultivate their arguments in both writing and oral forms.

India's Free Media: Fact and Fiction

Raju Narisetti is Managing Editor at The Washington Post, and previously established The Mint newspaper in India.

The New Media Series is hosted by the Center for the Advanced Study of India.

Please RSVP.

The writing of culture: media and mediations in the digital context

Lunch will be provided on a first come, first served basis.  Please RSVP by Monday, April 18.

Since the early works of Professors Emmanuël Souchier and Yves Jeanneret on “screen writings” and computer display taken as texts, numerous researchers in French universities have developed a critical approach to new media, including the digital ideologies they rely on, the socio-technical considerations they raise, and the cultural impacts they involve.

Following this school of thought, my research focuses on questioning the role of texts in digital media, in order to understand how these media are currently rewriting culture, and how they come to transform our relations to inherited mediations. Indeed, we have to take into account that computers are developed and coded. Any kind of software implies a writing of code and a structuring of the device, relying on a project, a conception of the world. Thus, studying digital media makes it necessary to question the transformations of social mediations and cultural traditions. Computer scientists, program developers and industry workers in the sector of online marketing tend to become the new cast of scribes, and to define the central mediations of culture today. The debates and criticisms about “social networking sites” are a good example of such a metamorphosis, because they transform the way social relations are written.

In my presentation I will focus on a few concepts in semiotics we are using to analyze the ways web pages and, more generally, electronic objects are written and interpreted. I will particularly describe the fields I’m currently working on in this context. “Tagclouds”, rankings, and top user lists, among other objects, are all familiar, “ordinary” forms that can be studied and understood as central places in meaning-making processes and in the development of digital ideologies.

Etienne Candel is in charge of the Digital Media Communication Master’s Program and research development at CELSA (the Graduate School of Journalism and Communication – Sorbonne University, France). His research focuses on the links between digital innovations and cultural transformations. 

The Center for Media and Communication Studies (CMCS) at Central European University (CEU) is pleased to announce its 2011 course at the CEU Summer University, co-organized with Internews Network and the Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

The course, "Communication Policy Advocacy, Technology, and Online Freedom of Expression: a Toolkit for Media Development," will take place on June 20 - July 1, 2011, in Budapest.

Applications from all over the world are encouraged. The deadline for applications is March 20, 2011.

Additional information is available at http://www.summer.ceu.hu/communication.

This workshop is an intensive 3-day working group for a select group of individuals from the MENA region who have demonstrated potential to be active participants in influencing and shaping media policies and institutions. This group will be joined by international experts, including lawyers, practitioners and political scientists, with experience in media transitions in other locales. It is intended to help participants think about the challenges and opportunities they will face in the months ahead, including what directions and strategies for change should be considered and implemented.

The workshop will be held at Central European University[...]

Please join online editor and advocate Chiranuch (Jiew) Premchaiporn for an update on activism and freedom of expression in Thailand. Premchaiporn is well known for her work in AIDS advocacy and internet journalism. 

We will gather Philadelphia AIDS activists, community journalists, academics and freedom of expression advocates to learn more from Jiew about the current situation in Thailand, and compare experiences with her about our struggles  on similar issues in Philadelphia. 

Background on Chiranuch (Jiew) Premchaiporn:

Premchaiporn was arrested and faces up to 50 years in jail  for cybercrime,"  because she operates an open publishing website named Prachatai, which translates as "Free People."  

After a story about the royal family, an anonymous comment was made  disparaging the King of Thailand, and in Thailand this is a very serious crime. Jiew did not make the remark, but is being held responsible for it because she is the operator of the website on which it appeared. Learn more about her case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, NY Times, and Free Speech Radio News.

Premchaiporn has also been a hero in the struggle to win global access to life saving AIDS medications, and has collaborated with members of Philadelphia ACT-UP on this campaign. 

We hope you can join us to meet this inspirational woman,  who has put brought world-wide focus on Thailand's movements for social change. 

For more information or to RSVP, please email (lsh@asc.upenn.edu) 

Annenberg-Oxford Summer Institute Website

Application Deadline: April 1
Please send application by email to CGCS

The Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania and the Programme for Comparative Media Law and Policy at the University of Oxford (PCMLP) are pleased to announce the 13th annual Annenberg-Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute, to be held from July 4 - 15, 2011 at the University of Oxford.

The annual Summer Institute brings together young scholars and regulators to discuss important recent trends in technology, international politics and development and its influence on media policy.  Students come from around the world; countries represented at previous Summer Institutes include Jordan, Italy, Thailand, Kenya, China, Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria and Russia, among others.

This year the Summer Institute will also focus on media governance and strategic communication in conflict and post-conflict environments including Sudan, Somalia and Bosnia.  At the same time, the successful curriculum that has been the foundation of the Summer Institute over the years will continue, with sessions covering topics such as media and economic/social development, freedom of information, internet regulation and convergence. Part of the course will be devoted to new developments in comparative approaches to regulation, looking at Ofcom in the UK and other agencies, including examples from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

For more information please visit the Annenberg-Oxford Summer Institute Website.

The Annenberg School for Communication, the Graduate School of Education at Penn and Renmin University of China are co-sponsoring a seminar on media and children in changing societies. The seminar will be held at Renmin University, Beijing, China from July 6 – 12, 2011. 

The seminar is designed to develop and enhance opportunities for international and interdisciplinary teaching and research, focusing on efforts to understand the role of the media— including videogames, television, and mobile telephony—in the life of the developing child.  Bringing together faculty from universities across China with international faculty, researchers, and other experts in the field of children and media, the seminar will work towards the development of longer-term collaboration and research projects between Chinese and international scholars.

The seminar will consider the topic from a variety of academic perspectives, including communication and journalism; psychology; education; sociology; social work; political science; and health/medicine.

Specifically, the seminar will: 

• Examine theories and empirical research on the positive and negative effects of media on children, families, and school education;
• Discuss research methods in the study of media and children;
• Explore the ways in which new media technologies have changed how we think about the role of media in children’s lives;
• Identify the unique challenges and opportunities of studying children and media in the context of China;
• Consider important populations of children on which to focus (e.g., left-at-home; rural immigrants); and
• Catalyze research on children and media between Chinese and international scholars and encourage comparative research and future collaborations.

The World Bank Institute’s Governance Practice, the World Bank’s Communication for Governance and Accountability Program (CommGAP), the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California are pleased to announce the 2011 pilot of the Executive Course in Communication and Governance Reform.  The course is designed for communication professionals in Africa and the Middle East who want to build critical competencies in providing implementation support to change agents and reform leaders throughout government and civil society. 

The ten-day program will equip participants with knowledge about the most recent advances in communication and proven techniques in reform implementation.  The program’s inter-disciplinary approach and regional focus will serve as the foundation for building expert networks of in-country communication practitioners and professionals. Participants will develop core competencies essential to bringing about real change, leading to development results in a wide range of sectors. Participants will acquire critical skills in four key areas:

1. Interpreting governance diagnostics and political economy analyses
2. Crafting multi-stakeholder coalition building strategies and tactics to support reform
3. Providing implementation support to governance reform
4. Applying monitoring and evaluation frameworks 

WHO SHOULD APPLY?

The course is intended for senior communication professionals in the public and private sectors, including communication directors and advisors in government, senior development practitioners engaged in communication work, and managers and executives of public affairs, public relations, and advertising firms.

Successful applicants will possess:

• Minimum 10 to 15 years of professional experience in communication, public affairs or relevant field 

• Masters degree or equivalent in communication, public affairs, political science or related field

• Fluency in spoken and written English

Full tuition scholarships, including travel support and accommodations, will be provided to successful applicants.*

TO APPLY: Please visit: www.worldbank.org/commgap 

Application Deadline: April 29, 2011

This workshop brings together key thinkers and practitioners who work at the intersection of digital and urban design, making and remaking and are distributed across different cities in the United States, Europe and China. The main goal of the workshop is to provide a space for mutual engagement, and to build opportunities for future collaboration. The workshop will also contain a practical component where participants are engaged through a hands-on design brainstorming session.

To visit the Transfabric Website and blog, click here

Join us for a roundtable discussion on media law in Egypt and Tunisia after the Arab Spring. As the two countries prepare for elections in the fall, media assistance stakeholders are analyzing how reforms will affect the legal enabling environment for independent media. A recent report by the Center for International Media Assistance, Media and the Law: An Overview of Legal Issues and Challenges, finds that the legal conditions under which news media operate are crucial factors to the sector’s success. A liberal and empowering legal regime can enable the growth of media and allow them to fulfill their function as watchdog of democratic society without fear of legal sanction, thus helping to make governments more accountable. What current laws, regulations, and practices affect journalists in Egypt and Tunisia? What legislation is being drafted to replace or supplement them, and how will it have an impact on independent media? How can local civil society organizations, donors, implementers, and policymakers use this transition to negotiate meaningful change in the legal enabling environment?

For more information about the event and to RSVP please click here

Never before have the media played a more integral role in conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction. At the same time, funding agencies and policymaking bodies have greater expectations for demonstrating impact and efficacy in conflict management.

To meet these growing needs, media development practitioners, donors, international broadcasters and methodologists have collectively authored the “Caux Guiding Principles,” a USIP PeaceWorks forthcoming in December 2011.  The “Principles” aim to improve monitoring and evaluation of media interventions in conflict zones.  Such media interventions can consist of promoting a particular message through the media or projects geared towards building the capacity of media organizations themselves.

On September 9, 2011 the authors of the “Caux Guiding Principles" will present their findings.Media in Conflict: The Evaluation Imperative will feature speakers and panel presentations recommending ways to harness the power of the media for conflict prevention and peacebuilding, and a keynote address by David Ensor, director of Voice of America and former director of Communications and Public Diplomacy at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.This event is jointly organized by the United States Broadcasting Board of Governors; the Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania; Fondation Hirondelle; Internews Network; and the United States Institute of Peace.  

To RSVP please click here!

To watch the live webcast beginning at 9:00 am EST on September 9th, please click here

When Nikita Khrushchev visited Hollywood in 1959 only to be scandalized by a group of scantily clad actresses, his message was blunt: Soviet culture would soon consign capitalist mass culture, epitomized by Hollywood, to the dustbin of history. The USSR had surged full force into the modern media age after World War II, building cultural infrastructures--and audiences--that were among the world's largest. Yet success brought complex and unintended consequences.  The postwar era saw the Soviets’ new media empire transformed from within to produce something dynamic and volatile: a new Soviet culture increasingly similar to that of its self-defined capitalist enemy. By the 1970s, the Soviet media empire, stretching far beyond its founders' wildest dreams, was busily undermining the very promise of a unique Soviet culture—and visibly losing the cultural cold war. Moscow Prime Time is the first book to untangle the paradoxes of Soviet success and failure in the postwar media age.

Kristin Roth-Ey is Lecturer in Modern Russian History at University College London. Her research interests focus on the intersection of cultural, social, and political dynamics in the post-WWII era. She received her Ph.D. in History from Princeton University.

Thursday, September 15: Discussion with the author
6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
Location: College Hall 219, University of Pennsylvania

Participants should have read two chapters from the book in advance of the workshop. If you are interested in attending, please contact Laura Schwartz-Henderson for the readings.

Friday, September 16: Annenberg Lunchtime Colloquium
12:00-1:30 p.m.
Location: Annenberg  Room 500
Lunch will be provided beginning at 11:45am.

To RSVP and for more information on these events, please contact Laura Schwartz-Henderson.

CGCS’s Afghanistan program (AMDEP) will close its first year of activities with a media law moot court competition in Kabul, Afghanistan. Teams from five universities across Afghanistan (Alberony University, Balkh University, Herat University, Kabul University and Nangarhar University) will participate. A moot court competition provides students the opportunity to gain and develop practical legal skill sets, increase their analytic aptitude, build their confidence in public speaking, and interact with academic staff, practitioners and judges. For more information about the other moot court competitions that CGCS and its partners organize, please visit the PCMLP website.

We are delighted to announce the launch of Penn’s first Seminar Series on Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D)*

Presenter: Dan Wagner, UNESCO Chair in Learning and Literacy, Professor and Director, International Education and Development Program, and Director, International Literacy Institute, GSE

Title of talk: “ICT and Literacy for the Very Poor: A decade of work”

Abstract:

In many developing countries, over the past decade, the atmospherics concerning information and communications technologies (ICTs) has undergone a dramatic change: from (1) “are you crazy?” to (2) “well, let's see what pieces might work for us,” to (3) “ICTs are the answer.” Even for the poorest countries, the benefits of ICT are now (in 2011) seen as relatively well-suited for coping with the problems of literacy and basic education (and other sectors), and for enhancing the socio-economic consequences for the lives of the users. The reasons for this are varied, and still debated, along with the types of solutions proposed to date. Various examples will be discussed, including the author’s work over the past decade in India and South Africa.

 Introduction of the Seminar Series by Joseph Sun, Vice Dean, SEAS

 ABOUT THE SERIES

The Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) Seminar Series is a new interdisciplinary venture at Penn to bring together researchers, students, and leaders from all sectors who are interested in better understanding the role that ICTs play in international development, and the impact that they have on impoverished and under-resourced communities. The Series will bring together noted researchers, practitioners, and policy makers in the ICT4D field, and will provide a venue for the Penn community to explore this important area of work.

 Please RSVP to Laura Schwartz-Henderson (lsh@asc.upenn.edu) by Wednesday, September 27.

 For more information about the series, please visit the ICT4D website

ICT4D Seminar Series Faculty Core Group: Emily Hannum (Assoc Professor Sociology & Education, GR Chair Sociology),  John Jemmott (Kenneth B. Clark Professor, ASC), Monroe E. Price (Director, Center for Global Communication Studies, ASC), Carrie Kovarik (Asst Professor Dermatology, Dermatopathology, and Infectious Diseases, SOM), Joseph Sun (Vice Dean, SEAS), Dan Wagner (UNESCO Chair & Professor GSE)

 PhD Student Coordinators: Deepti Chittamuru (ASC, lead contact), Katie Murphy (GSE), David Conrad (ASC)

---

* The ICT4D Seminar is supported by the Provost’s Interdisciplinary Initiatives Fund, the Annenberg School for Communication, the Graduate School of Education/International Educational Development Program, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Programmatic support is provided by Annenberg's Center for Global Communication Studies.

Title: Myths of Information Technology for International Development

By: Kentaro Toyama, Visiting Researcher, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley

 Abstract: The past decade has seen incredible interest in applying information and communication technologies for international development, an endeavor often abbreviated "ICT4D." Can mobile phones be used to improve rural healthcare? How do you design user interfaces for an illiterate migrant worker? What value is technology to a farmer earning $1 a day? Interventionist ICT4D projects seek to answer these kinds of questions, but the excitement has also generated a lot of hype about the power of technology to solve the deep problems of poverty. In this talk, I will (1) present several myths of ICT4D that persist despite evidence to the contrary, (2) offer a theory of "technology as amplifier" which explains the gap between rhetoric and reality, and (3) provide recommendations for successful ICT4D interventions. My hope is to temper the brash claims of technology with realism about its true potential.

About the Speaker: Dr. Kentaro Toyama (hyperlink to: www.kentarotoyama.org) is a visiting researcher in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. He is working on a book that argues that increasing wisdom should be the primary focus of global development. Toyama co-founded Microsoft Research India, where he started an interdisciplinary research group to understand how electronic technology could support the socio-economic development of the world’s impoverished communities.  The group's projects - including Digital Green, MultiPoint, and Text-Free UI - have been seminal in ICT4D research. Prior to his time in India, he did computer vision and multimedia research at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, USA and Cambridge, UK, and taught mathematics at Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana. Toyama graduated from Yale with a PhD in Computer Science and from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in Physics.

 ABOUT THE SERIES: The Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) Seminar Series is a new interdisciplinary venture at Penn to bring together researchers, students, and leaders from all sectors who are interested in better understanding the role that ICTs play in international development, and the impact that they have on impoverished and under-resourced communities. The Series will bring together noted researchers, practitioners, and policy makers in the ICT4D field, and will provide a venue for the Penn community to explore this important area of work.

To RSVP, please email Laura Schwartz-Henderson (hyperlink to lsh@asc.upenn.edu)

For more information about the series, please visit the ICT4D website

 ICT4D Seminar Series Faculty Core Group: Emily Hannum (Assoc Professor Sociology & Education, GR Chair Sociology),  John Jemmott (Kenneth B. Clark Professor, ASC), Monroe E. Price (Director, Center for Global Communication Studies, ASC), Carrie Kovarik (Asst Professor Dermatology, Dermatopathology, and Infectious Diseases, SOM), Joseph Sun (Vice Dean, SEAS), Dan Wagner (UNESCO Chair & Professor GSE)

 PhD Student Coordinators: Deepti Chittamuru (ASC, lead contact), Katie Murphy (GSE), David Conrad (ASC)

---

* The ICT4D Seminar is supported by the Provost’s Interdisciplinary Initiatives Fund, the Annenberg School for Communication, the Graduate School of Education/International Educational Development Program, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Programmatic support is provided by Annenberg's Center for Global Communication Studies.

Since the devastating 7.0 earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2011, Internews Network has been working with local Haitian media and humanitarian aid agencies to get critical information directly to the people who need it most. Internew's initiative in Haiti is a cross-cluster service that brings together experts in outreach and communications and humanitarians in a collective effort to improve a two-way communication flow between the humanitarian community and affected populations.  The program provides a coordinated service to maximize aid effectiveness and disseminate information, using radio and local media to explain food distribution systems, publicize vaccination campaigns, and provide information for displaced people with HIV/AIDS. 

Core to the project is a major research component that seeks public opinion about information needs that would help Haitians rebuild their lives, avoid getting sick from infectious diseases, and understand and be informed about the various reconstruction efforts underway. 

On October 17, we will host the project’s director of research and a group of Haitian researchers, trained in social science research methods, who have been conducting surveys, focus groups and other research throughout Haiti as part of an effort to assist with humanitarian media efforts.

Please join us for a lunchtime presentation and discussion with the Internews-Haiti representatives and the Penn community.

 To RSVP please contact lsh@asc.upenn.edu

The Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) Seminar Series presents:

Phone-based Tools for Community Health Workers

It is increasingly possible to apply computer innovation to improve aspects of health care delivery in low-income countries. In this talk, Neal Lesh will provide an overview of some recent efforts in ‘eHealth’ and ‘mHealth’ and discuss his experiences with implementing CommCare, a phone based tool for Community Health Workers that has been used over the last four years in sub-Saharan Africa and India.   Dr. Lesh will provide an overview of the tool, discuss challenges, lessons learned, and some recent successes.     

About the Speaker: Neal Lesh is the Chief Strategy Officer of Dimagi, Inc, an award-winning, socially-conscious technology company that helps organizations deliver quality health care to urban and rural communities across the world. He received a PhD in computer science from the University of Washington in 1998 and a Master in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.  From 2005-2009, he lived in East and Southern Africa, working on information systems for projects including large-scale AIDS treatment programs, rural hospitals, and research projects.  His primary focus now is on the CommCare project, a phone-based tool for use by community health works in low-income countries.

About the Series: The Information Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) Seminar Series is a new interdisciplinary venture at Penn to bring together researchers, students, and leaders from all sectors who are interested in better understanding the role that ICTs play in international development, and the impact that they have on impoverished and under-resourced communities. The Series will bring together noted researchers, practitioners, and policy makers in the ICT4D field, and will provide a venue for the Penn community to explore this important area of work. The ICT4D Seminar is supported by the Provost’s Interdisciplinary Initiatives Fund, the Annenberg School for Communication, the Graduate School of Education/International Educational Development Program, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Programmatic support is provided by the Annenberg Center for Global Communication Studies.

 Please RSVP to Laura Schwartz-Henderson at lsh@asc.upenn.edu

 For more info, contact: Deepti Chittamuru at dchittamuru@asc.upenn.edu or visit http://www.asc.upenn.edu/ict4datpenn/  

This event brings together activists, scholars, and students to appraise global experiences of media reform. Over the last two decades we have witnessed intense deregulation of media policy around the world. Recognizing the importance of plural and diverse media to a well functioning and accountable democracy, communities across the Americas have been fighting for local media representation and access to media production, challenging the consolidation of media in the United States and Latin America.  

In the United States, the work of media activists over the past ten years has finally started to bear fruit. On January 4th, President Obama signed the bipartisan Local Community Radio Act, making possible thousands of new community radio stations. On July 7th, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected the FCC’s attempt to further deregulate media ownership. Meanwhile, in Argentina, after decades of struggle, the government has passed new legislation to challenge the corporate consolidation of media; and in Venezuela, grassroots media activists have aligned with the controversial government of Hugo Chávez to expand legislation and funding structures to sustain community media projects.

Bringing together academics and activists whose work focuses on changing media policy and practices in these contexts, this event will highlight the efforts to gain access to communications systems in times of information deprivation and crisis. Panelists will address media policy, justice, activism, state involvement in media systems, and the meaning of a free press in the Americas.

Panelists:
       
Eric Klinenberg is Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, and Media, Culture, and Communications at New York University, and editor of the journal Public Culture.   Klinenberg's first book, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, won six scholarly and literary prizes.  Professor Klinenberg's second book, Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media, offers insight into the increasingly consolidated media landscape and the political and grassroots fight to regain control of America’s media. 

April Glaser is an undergraduate student at Temple University majoring in Philosophy. Glaser was instrumental in the creation of Radio Free Nashville, a low power community radio station in the backyard of her home in Tennessee (documented in Professor Klinenberg’s book Fighting for Air). Glaser moved to Philadelphia in 2006 to work with the Prometheus Radio Project where she organized public testimony for the FCC Public Hearings about Media Consolidation in 2006-2007 nationwide.  Her organizing efforts with Prometheus’ national campaign helped propel the passage of the 2011 Local Community Radio Act, which expands the low power FM radio service for noncommercial community groups.

Damián Loreti is Vice Dean of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and holds the UNESCO-AUGM Chair in Freedom of Expression, Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of La Plata, Argentina. Loreti is a prominent lawyer and intellectual who has served as legal counselor to the Argentine Federation of Press Workers. He also serves as the legal counselor at PERIODISTAS (Association for the Defense of the Independent Journalism). He was instrumental in the decades-long struggle to pass media reform legislation in 2009 to deconsolidate ownership of Argentina’s media.

Jesús Suárez is Director of Catia TVe, Venezuela's oldest and most prominent community television station. For the past decade Suárez has been organizing in the low-income barrios of Caracas to teach television production skills and advocate for the importance of local control over media outlets. 

Pete Tridish was a member of the founding collective of Radio Mutiny, 91.3 FM in Philadelphia, and a founder of the Prometheus Radio Project. He participated in the rulemaking that led up to the adoption of LPFM, and 10 years of further rulemaking that followed. Tridish fought against consolidation of media ownership, and was involved in the lawsuit Prometheus vs. the FCC, which stopped the FCC from weakening media ownership rules. He also worked to pass the Local Community Radio Act, which will allow for thousands of new community radio stations across the country. 

Co-Moderator: Dan Denvir is a staff writer for the Philadelphia CityPaper. 

Co-Moderator: Naomi Schiller is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Temple University. Over the past decade, she has done research on media and politics in Venezuela. She is currently completing her book manuscript, Televising the Revolution: Community Media, the State, and Popular Politics in Venezuela based on ethnographic research with community television producers in Caracas. 

Abstract: “Maker culture” has become a dominant label for creative communities that embrace a Do-It-Yourself (D.I.Y.) approach to independent technological development. The movement leverages traditions of craftsmanship with open source culture to promote experimentation through tinkering, the bricolage of old and new and a questioning of the current status quo in global technology production. 

In this talk, Lindtner traces through ethnographic detail how these values of tinkering, open source and hands-on technology production are taken up and mobilized in a hacker and co-working space in Shanghai, China.  She explores how the theme of maker and D.I.Y. technology production is often seen as a translocal phenomenon and rendered as a progressive and “cool” force in Chinese modernization. Lindtner’s research focuses on the complex and entangled paths of material and semiotic production around maker culture that emerge at the frictions of modernization discourse, foreign investments and transnational migration. She illustrates how the hacker and co-working space in Shanghai employs the framework of D.I.Y. making and sharing of technology to position itself as a participant in Chinese Internet counterculture and as strategically aligned with free culture and open innovation projects in the U.S. She interrogates what models of global citizenship are embedded in the discourses and practices of maker culture and the forms of governmentality that are inscribed in constructions of a technologically savvy, self-creating and transnational citizen.

About the Speaker: Silvia Lindtner is a PhD Candidate in the department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. Her dissertation research focuses on cultural processes of technology production within the context of urban China. Over the last five years, Lindtner has conducted ethnographic research with Chinese youth, IT professionals and a collective of electronic hackers, freelance designers, new media artists and bloggers, exploring how these various social groups design and use digital technologies to position themselves in the changing urban, social and political environment of China's cities today. Her work investigates the role digital media play for imaginations of Chinese modernity and translocal ideas of open innovation, free culture, creativity and D.I.Y. technology production. Currently, in part supported by a Chinese government scholarship, Lindtner is completing her thesis on “Multi-Sited Design: Translocal D.I.Y., Hacker and Internet Counter Culture in Urban China.”

Please RSVP to Laura Schwartz-Henderson

Israel’s Army Radio (Galei Tzahal) has been broadcasting for sixty years with programming aimed at the civilian population. From a marginal station playing just a few hours a day, it has become a major broadcasting organization that operates two full radio channels and provides news and political coverage. It is also considered one of the most influential training grounds for journalists and media figures in Israel. Using extensive archive materials and in-depth interviews with the station's commanders, Soffer examinse how military broadcasts—ostensibly foreign to the democratic experience—have become a symbol of pluralism, journalistic freedom, and (in some historical periods) the cultural avant-garde in Israel. He also analyzes how the station has adapted to changes in the developing Israeli media.

Oren Soffer is a senior lecturer at the Open University of Israel, and is currently a visiting scholar at MIT's Comparative Media Studies program. Oren earned his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2002. In the same year, he was accepted as a member of the Israeli Bar Association after completing his legal studies at Tel Aviv University. Oren has served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, taught as a visiting scholar at Rutgers University and held a lecturer position at Manchester University (U.K).

His research interests include the socio-political and technological history of Hebrew mass communication. In recent years, Oren has also been engaged in the study of new media, using historical analysis to better understand and theorize new textual and social phenomena. His current study in this area deals with comparative and theoretical conceptualization of language in the digital era (SMS/CMC languages).

“Transcultural Television Formats and their Audiences:  A Comparative Study on the Appropriation of the Top Model-Format in Different Cultural Contexts”

By Miriam Stehling (Leuphana University Lueneburg)

Abstract:  In this talk, Miriam will present first findings from her Ph.D. research project on global reality television formats and their audiences in different cultural contexts. In particular, the project is concerned with the question of how the narrative of the "gendered enterprising self” is reproduced in the Top Model-format, and how it is appropriated and negotiated by young female viewers in Germany and the USA. Drawing on the theoretical framework of governmentality by Michel Foucault and the theoretical concept of transculturality, empirical audience research is used to understand the worldwide success of the Top Model-format and its negotiation in the everyday life of viewers. Through the method of focus groups, the study shows that viewers appropriate and negotiate the television text in their specific cultural and social contexts, while at the same time transcultural patterns of appropriation and negotiation strategies and processes which are shared across different cultural contexts become evident.

About the Speaker: Miriam Stehling is research fellow and PhD student at the Institute of Communications and Media Culture at the Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Germany. Miriam holds an M.A. in Cultural Studies with specializations in Business Administration, Language & Communications as well as Media & Public Relations from the Leuphana University of Lueneburg. She was Erasmus exchange student at the Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona in 2006/07 and completed an internship at the German Embassy in Washington D.C. in 2008. She teaches classes at the Leuphana University of Lueneburg in the field of media commmunications and media culture and has published articles and presented papers on the topics of global reality television formats, transcultural research and the female enterprising self in reality tv (in German: "Die ‚Unternehmerin ihrer selbst‘ im Reality TV: Geschlechtsspezifische Anrufungen und Aushandlungen in Germany’s next Topmodel“).

Abstract: How do we design appropriate and accessible information systems to serve the needs of poor, indigenous, remote and otherwise marginalized communities in the developing and developed world? What is the impact that new kinds of data and communications tools can have for improving transparency and trust in governance, aid and philanthropy? Dr. Parikh and his research group have recently developed Awaaz.De, a phone-based voice message board allowing small farmers in India to ask and answer agricultural questions. Using any phone, farmers navigate a voice interface to record questions, obtain answers from experts, and to listen to and answer the questions of others. This system has been deployed in Gujarat, India for over two years, consistently receiving hundreds of calls a week. Another project, LocalGround, is investigating the use of paper maps for collecting local geo-spatial knowledge. Users annotate paper maps using colored markers and stamps. These annotations are automatically extracted using a combination of simple computer vision and crowd-sourcing techniques.Local Ground was recently used by teenagers from Richmond, California for planning of a public park in their community, presenting their ideas to the mayor's office.

In this talk, Dr. Parikh will explore several themes, including a) the design of cheap, "low-fidelity" interaction techniques allowing new populations to interact with and author content; b) the importance of "bottom-up" data for planning and evaluating development projects; and c) how "crowd data processing", interleaving automated and human-driven steps, can bridge the gap between (a) and (b).

About the Speaker: Dr. Tapan Parikh is an Assistant Professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. Tapan's research interests include human-computer interaction (HCI), mobile computing, speech UIs and information systems for microfinance, smallholder agriculture and global health. For the past 10+ years, Tapan has been designing, developing and deploying information systems in the rural developing world - initially in India, and now also in Latin America and Africa. Tapan and his students have started several technology companies serving rural communities and the development sector. He holds a Sc.B. degree in Molecular Modeling with Honors from Brown University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Washington, where he won the William Chan award for his Ph.D. dissertation. Tapan was named Technology Review magazine's Humanitarian of the Year in 2007, and Esquire magazine called him one of the "Best and Brightest" in 2008.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) Seminar Series is a new interdisciplinary venture at Penn to bring together researchers, students, and leaders from all sectors who are interested in better understanding the role that ICTs play in international development, and the impact that they have on impoverished and under-resourced communities. The Series will bring together noted researchers, practitioners, and policy makers in the ICT4D field, and will provide a venue for the Penn community to explore this important area of work.

To RSVP, please email Laura Schwartz-Henderson (hyperlink to lsh@asc.upenn.edu)

For more information about the series, please visit the ICT4D website

 ICT4D Seminar Series Faculty Core Group: Emily Hannum (Assoc Professor Sociology & Education, GR Chair Sociology),  John Jemmott (Kenneth B. Clark Professor, ASC), Monroe E. Price (Director, Center for Global Communication Studies, ASC), Carrie Kovarik (Asst Professor Dermatology, Dermatopathology, and Infectious Diseases, SOM), Joseph Sun (Vice Dean, SEAS), Dan Wagner (UNESCO Chair & Professor GSE)

 PhD Student Coordinators: Deepti Chittamuru (ASC), Katie Murphy (GSE), David Conrad (ASC)

---

* The ICT4D Seminar is supported by the Provost’s Interdisciplinary Initiatives Fund, the Annenberg School for Communication, the Graduate School of Education/International Educational Development Program, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Programmatic support is provided by Annenberg's Center for Global Communication Studies.

• The contemporary political and industrial context in which films are produced, distributed, and consumed in Iran and the ways in which formal and informal censorship structures and practices impact the industry;Film as both a formal and informal information conduit in closed or censored societies;
• Cinematic circulation and flows among and between the Iranian Diaspora and Iranians in Iran;
• The role of Iranian cinema as public diplomacy and public debate surrounding film in Iran;
• The political economy of film in Iran, including piracy and do-it-yourself (DIY) cinematic production such as YouTube;
• The role of cinema vis à vis television: subject migration, professional migration, content regulation

 
To register for this conference, please send an email to irancinema(at)asc.upenn.edu

About the conference:

This event is sponsored by the Iran Media Program at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania with support from the Free University of Berlin and George Washington University. 


For more information, please visit http://www.ici-berlin.org/event/414/ 

December 19-20, 2011
India International Centre, Delhi
Organized by the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy (PCMLP) at the University of Oxford; the National Law University, Delhi; the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata; and the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

The two-day symposium will explore international and comparative perspectives on current issues of topical significance to media policy makers in India and abroad. This event will combine both theory and practice, while bringing together a group of top scholars, lawyers and regulators from the international community with a similarly excellent set of speakers from India. Continuing last year’s tradition of focusing on media and new technologies, the symposium will address and discuss regulation of the Internet, media and public order, law, and self-regulation and responsibilities of media entities.

Registration is free but spaces are limited.  For more information and to register, please visit the symposium's website. 

We are delighted to once again hold the symposium in conjunction with the Oxford-India Media Law Moot Court Competition, which serves as regional rounds for the Price Moot Court Programme.  

Our society was founded on the principle that individuals grant governments the authority to create and enforce laws that protect and uphold their fundamental rights. But while this authority over policy creation used to rest with the rich and powerful by default, today the Internet has tipped the scales in favor of empowering individuals to make informed decisions for themselves and hold governments accountable.  

In many cases, the power of this medium makes governments uncomfortable -- and it's not always the ones one might think. Moreover, with intermediaries playing a curatorial role in providing access to information, citizens now have two different sets of policies to consider. What should governments and companies do to ensure they reflect the best interests of their users and constituents? Do they have a responsibility to do so, and are responsibilities for public and private entities different? During this seminar, Dorothy Chou will discuss how transparency reporting can provide modern checks and balances in the information age, and what that actually means in practice.

Dorothy Chou is a Senior Policy Analyst and leads Google's policy efforts to increase transparency, and serves as the policy lead for the Google Transparency Report. She manages the day-to-day operations of the Central Public Policy team at Google's headquarters, and handles government relations for Google's Crisis Response/Disaster Relief projects as well as the Data Liberation Front

This is the first event in the Center for Global Communication Studies Spring 2012 Seminar Series

In this talk, Babak Rahimi will discuss the role of new media, in particular the Internet, in the Iranian Green Movement, a political protest movement that emerged after the contested 2009 presidential elections in Iran. 

During the Seminar, Dr. Rahimi will show the intricate relationship between political activism and cyberspace, and how political movements sustain or (re)invent themselves online in close connection with offline activism. Dr. Rahimi argues that cyberprotests, particularly in the case of the Iranian Green Movement, involve the creative configuration of complex “performative networks” that essentially interact through meaning-laden performances that carve out shifting spaces of dissent. For political movements, especially under authoritarian rule, new media presents an alternative social space wherein conceptions of self and other, resistance and power shape distinct bonds of interactivity, social bonds that open up new ways of doing politics, new ways of imagining the political. From Neda Agha-Sultan’s video clip to February 14^th (2011) demonstrations, mostly organized on Facebook and other social networking sites, Dr. Rahimi will explore various online political activities and ultimately identify new media as a distinct public site that entails transgressive modes of communication. 

Babak Rahimi is the 2012-2013 Post Doctoral Research Fellow for CGCS’ Iran Media Program. Dr. Rahimi is an Assistant Professor in the Program for the Study of Religion at UC San Diego’s Department of Literature. He received a Ph.D from the European University Institute, Florence, Italy, in October 2004. Rahimi has also studied at the University of Nottingham, where he obtained a M.A. in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, and London School of Economics and Political Science, where he was a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Anthropology, 2000-2001. Rahimi has written numerous articles on culture, religion and politics and regularly writes on contemporary Iraqi and Iranian politics. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the national endowment for the Humanities and Jean Monnet Fellowship at the European University Institute, and was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, Washington DC and a visiting scholar at the Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Rahimi’s current research project is on the relationship between digital culture, politics and religion in post-revolutionary Iran.

This event is part of the Spring 2012 CGCS Seminar Series, “Internet Policy Formation: Global Actors, Global Outcomes”. It is co-sponsored by the Middle East Center at Penn

As corporations and countries square off for control of the Internet, the likely losers are us, unless we act to protect our freedoms.

Facebook, Flickr, Research in Motion, Yahoo, Ericsson, and Google: What do they have in common? They are technology companies that, while drawing the rhetoric of cyberutopianism, are nonetheless willing—even keen—to undermine the freedom of their users whenever it suits them. Many nations are no better: China, Russia, Iran, and even the United States spy on their citizens, crush free expression, and otherwise import all of government’s worst habits into the digital frontier.

In Consent of the Networked, Internet policy specialist Rebecca MacKinnon argues passionately and convincingly that it is time for us to claim respect and protection for our rights and freedoms before they are sold, legislated, programmed, and engineered away. As the Arab Spring has shown, it is possible to demand what’s ours. But we must start now—time is running out.

Rebecca MacKinnon is Cofounder of Global Voices Online and a Fellow at the New America Foundation. MacKinnon is frequently interviewed by major media, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, National Public Radio, BBC, and other news outlets. She lives in Washington, DC.

This event is being presented by the Spring 2012 CGCS Seminar Series, “Internet Policy Formation: Global Actors, Global Outcomes”

Chinki Sinha is a journalist based in New Delhi. She worked for The Indian Express and covered a range of issues including primary education and the Right of All Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. She finished her Master’s in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University, and worked at the Utica Observer-Dispatch, a mid-size newspaper in New York state. There, she covered education and minority communities, including refugees and issues of integration in schools for people in exile.

During her years in the U.S., Ms. Sinha also wrote on Islamic schools in the post 9/11 world. She moved to India in 2008 to work at The Indian Express and traveled extensively to rural areas to report on school education and other issues. Ms. Sinha is interested in social rights and their implementation, and access to opportunities for the poor. She has also written on a range of other issues like the identity project being implemented in India, and focuses on narrative form to cover such issues. At The Indian Express, Ms. Sinha wrote about the issues of the Urdu medium schools and the minority community’s struggles to access higher education opportunities. Additionally, she covered the travesty that nursery school admissions have become in the national capital where issues of access arise with the point system that private and unaided schools have manipulated to keep the children belonging to the lower income groups out of the schools.

This event is co-sponsored by CASI and the Annenberg School's Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS)

For more information, click here.

On January 18, the world watched as more than 7,000 websites, including internet giants such as Google, Wikipedia, and Reddit, coordinated service blackouts, online protests, and petition-signing campaigns in order to galvanize public opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act (PIPA)--legislation proposed to expand the scope of U.S. law surrounding online infringement of copyrighted intellectual property. Supporters of the legislation argued that SOPA and PIPA would guard against copyright infringement on the internet, thus protecting various content-related industries and jobs. Opponents of the legislation asserted that provisions in both SOPA and PIPA would create liabilities for U.S.-based internet startups and entrepreneurs, stifle the growth of the internet industry, and threaten the First Amendment rights of internet users by moving the web towards unprecedented levels of censorship and government control.

Largely in response to these protests, both SOPA and PIPA were shelved in the House and the Senate. Despite this temporary resolution, the major issue underlying both SOPA and PIPA still remains: How can legislators and policymakers frame internet policy so that it protects intellectual property while ensuring that it does not violate the First Amendment and hinder growth and innovation in the internet industry?

Please join us for a panel discussion on the future of internet politics, policy, and digital copyright legislation, hosted by the Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication. The discussion will include Craig Aaron, President and CEO of Free Press; Kartik Hosanagar, Associate Professor of Internet Commerce at the Wharton School; Stanley Pierre-Louis, Vice President and Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property and Content Protection at Viacom Inc; Eric K. Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at the Wharton School; and Sascha Meinrath, Director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative. The discussion will be moderated by Monroe Price, Director of CGCS at Annenberg.

 To RSVP, please email Laura Schwartz-Henderson

This event is being presented by the Spring 2012 CGCS Seminar Series, “Internet Policy Formation: Global Actors, Global Outcomes”

Abstract: One of the greatest challenges in developing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for global development is that 41% of the population in the least developed countries is non-literate and even the literate among the poor are only novice users of technology. I will describe work we have done over the past 6 years in Text-Free User Interfaces. Text-Free UIs are design principles and recommendations for computer-human interfaces that would allow a first-time, non-literate person, on first contact with a PC or a mobile phone, to immediately realize useful interaction with minimal or no external assistance. Through an ethnographic design and iterative prototyping process and rigorous user evaluations, involving more than 700 hours of field work and 570 study participants from low-income, low-literate communities across India, the Philippines and South Africa, we established design principles that could apply to UIs for non-literate groups new to ICTs.

Bio: Indrani Medhi is an Associate Researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets Group at Microsoft Research India in Bangalore. Her research interest is in the area of Ethnographic UI Design and Technology for Socio-Economic Development. Her current work has been in UIs for Novice and Low-Literate Users. She has a Masters degree in Design from Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Currently, she is also a 4^th year Ph.D. student at the Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT Bombay), India. In 2010, Indrani was listed in the MIT Technology Review's TR35 list of "outstanding innovators" under the age of 35 and featured in the list of "50 Smartest People in Technology" in 2010 by Fortune magazine.

Milton Wolf Seminar 2012

Transitions Transformed: Ideas of Information and Democracy post-2011

March 26-28, 2012
Diplomatic Academy of Vienna

The 2012 Milton Wolf Seminar will investigate the evolving relationship between media and democratic transition in light of the shifting structure and dynamics of the international communication system. Using case studies such as Hungary, Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Tunisia, the 2012 Milton Wolf Seminar will investigate the evolving relationship between media and democratic transition in light of rapid technological change and the shifting structure and dynamics of the international communication system.  Distinguished panelists and participants will include those working for state and multi-lateral organizations, journalists, media development practitioners, academics, polling professionals, and a select group of highly engaged graduate students interested in the seminar themes.

The program is being organized by the American Austrian Foundation and undertaken under the academic leadership of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna.

For more information about Milton Wolf 2012 and the 2012 Distinguished Student Delegate Scholarship progam, please click here.

With more than 600 registered television channels, India boasts the world’s third largest TV market (after China and the United States). A large percentage of these are “breaking news” channels that broadcast “urgent” news stories throughout the day. A great many channels are increasing this breaking news programming in order to tap into a larger viewership. In this way, these news channels have become “hyperactive”—sensationalizing issues, distorting facts, and manufacturing news. The result is a chaotic world of television news, blurring the lines between what is real and what is imaginary.

In this talk, Chinki Sinha will discuss two recent episodes of hyperactivism she has covered as a journalist in India: the September 2010 coverage of a hypothesized deluge in Delhi that led to widespread panic in the region, and the recent "Anna Hazare movement," where a 73-year-old man’s fast to create pressure for what he termed as a peoples' version of the pending anti-corruption bill received enormous journalistic attention and partisanship, turning him into a wildly popular hero.  

Chinki Sinha is a journalist based in New Delhi. She worked for The Indian Express from 2008 until 2011. She holds a Master’s in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University, and has worked at the Utica Observer-Dispatch. Ms. Sinha is currently a visiting scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India. While at Penn, she will be working on issues of access to education and social rights for the poor, in particular looking at the 2009 Right to Education Act in the context of lower-income groups.

Abstract: This seminar explores some of the taken for granted assumptions about the use of Information and Communication Technologies for Development, focusing particularly on the interests that gave rise both to the concept and to the activities delivered in its name. It argues that all too often ICT4D initiatives have failed to deliver on the real needs of poor people and marginalised communities, and that ICTs have to date frequently actually tended to increase inequalities at a range of scales rather than reduce them. Having established the divisive character of such technologies, the seminar will then examine ways through which such technologies might indeed be used creatively and disruptively to change the balances of power that underlie such inequalities, drawing particularly on research in Africa and Asia undertaken over the last decade. It concludes by arguing that while the market may provide for the majority, states have a crucial role to play in ensuring that the benefits of ICTs can indeed be experienced by everyone in any given society, and that multi-stakeholder partnerships have a particularly important role in achieving this.

About the Speaker: Tim Unwin (born 1955) is Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (http://www.cto.int), Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK ( http://cscuk.dfid.gov.uk), UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, and Emeritus Professor of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. From 2001-2004 he led the UK Prime Minister’s Imfundo: Partnership for IT in Education initiative based within the Department for International Development, and from 2007-2011 he was Director and then Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum’s Partnerships for Education initiative with UNESCO. He was previously Head of the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London (1999–2001), and has also served as Honorary Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) (1995-1997). He has written or edited 15 books, and more than 200 papers and other publications, including "Wine and the Vine" (Routledge, 1991), "The Place of Geography" (Longman, 1992), as well as his edited "Atlas of World Development" (Wiley, 1994) and "European Geography" (Longman, 1998). His recent research has concentrated on information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), focusing especially on the use of ICTs to support people with disabilities, and to empower out of school youth. In 2011, he spent three months in China teaching and undertaking research on the use of mobile devices for learning by farmers in Gansu and people with disabilities in Beijing. His latest collaborative book, entitled simply ICT4D, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. He is a Fellow of Education Impact and Honorary Professor at Lanzhou University, China.

http://unwin.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/timunwin
http://www.ictd.org.uk

For more information about the ICT4D@Penn Seminar Series, please click here

Abstract: This seminar explores some of the taken for granted assumptions about the use of Information and Communication Technologies for Development, focusing particularly on the interests that gave rise both to the concept and to the activities delivered in its name. It argues that all too often ICT4D initiatives have failed to deliver on the real needs of poor people and marginalised communities, and that ICTs have to date frequently actually tended to increase inequalities at a range of scales rather than reduce them. Having established the divisive character of such technologies, the seminar will then examine ways through which such technologies might indeed be used creatively and disruptively to change the balances of power that underlie such inequalities, drawing particularly on research in Africa and Asia undertaken over the last decade. It concludes by arguing that while the market may provide for the majority, states have a crucial role to play in ensuring that the benefits of ICTs can indeed be experienced by everyone in any given society, and that multi-stakeholder partnerships have a particularly important role in achieving this.

About the Speaker: Tim Unwin (born 1955) is Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (http://www.cto.int), Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK ( http://cscuk.dfid.gov.uk), UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, and Emeritus Professor of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. From 2001-2004 he led the UK Prime Minister’s Imfundo: Partnership for IT in Education initiative based within the Department for International Development, and from 2007-2011 he was Director and then Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum’s Partnerships for Education initiative with UNESCO. He was previously Head of the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London (1999–2001), and has also served as Honorary Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) (1995-1997). He has written or edited 15 books, and more than 200 papers and other publications, including "Wine and the Vine" (Routledge, 1991), "The Place of Geography" (Longman, 1992), as well as his edited "Atlas of World Development" (Wiley, 1994) and "European Geography" (Longman, 1998). His recent research has concentrated on information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), focusing especially on the use of ICTs to support people with disabilities, and to empower out of school youth. In 2011, he spent three months in China teaching and undertaking research on the use of mobile devices for learning by farmers in Gansu and people with disabilities in Beijing. His latest collaborative book, entitled simply ICT4D, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. He is a Fellow of Education Impact and Honorary Professor at Lanzhou University, China.

http://unwin.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/timunwin
http://www.ictd.org.uk

It has become clear that technology makes a real difference to education only under certain conditions, and the problem has become to identify not just what works, but what makes what works work. The usual constraints on adoption of innovations are operative, but education is a very special case involving a resilient ecology on which innovations brought from the outside are seldom able to leave a significant mark. The key then perhaps is to work from the inside, to colonize pre-existing tools and practices and reroute them towards educational goals.

In formal school systems of advanced countries, this is a complex process which, though extensively studied and experimented, eludes our understanding. Things look more hopeful in the case of out-of-school education in developing countries. Still, we cannot assume that any old bright idea is going to work: we must try and assess its chances beforehand. So basic research is necessary, but so is translational research. Medicine may have some lessons in this regard.

Daniel Andler's group, allied to a major publisher of traditional educational material, has drafted a project to use mobile phones in francophone Africa to teach French where people live and work. Dr. Andler will describe the project and use it as an illustration of a colonizing strategy which shows promise elsewhere, focusing on why it might work if it does work.

Daniel Andler is a logician and philosopher of science specializing in the foundations of cognitive science. A professor of philosophy at Sorbonne, he has been active in the construction of cognitive science in France, and created the Department of Cognitive Studies at École normale supérieure in Paris. An experienced teacher of mathematics, then philosophy, he got interested in the question of what cognitive science could bring to education and to the use of technology for educational purposes. In 2006 he founded Compas, an interdisciplinary think-tank, where this question is explored in the wider philosophical, political, economical and cultural context of educational change in the global society.

http://andler.dec.ens.fr/

http://www.groupe-compas.net/

*Please note location change

Throughout the developing world, inadequate access to physicians, subspecialty care, and medical information resources are serious problems that telemedicine can help address. The new field of mobile telemedicine allows medical consultations to be submitted via mobile phone (mHealth), enabling health care to reach rural areas, where cell phone coverage extends beyond computer networks. The mhealth program that we have established in Botswana will be highlighted, including the use of mobile phones for cervical cancer screening, dermatology, radiology, and oral medicine consultation, and well as for medical education. Methods for sustainability and local ownership will be discussed.

Carrie L. Kovarik, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Dermatology, Dermatopathology, and Infectious Diseases at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Kovarik has a special interest in tropical, infectious, and HIV-related dermatology. Dr. Kovarik is the Head of Dermatology, as well as Telemedicine and Informatics, for the Botswana-UPenn Partnership. She is also the primary dermatology consultant for the Baylor International Pediatrics AIDS Initiative (BIPAI) in Africa. Dr. Kovarik has created an African teledermatology consult service (africa.telederm.org) which is a collaborative effort between BIPAI, the American Academy of Dermatology, twelve African countries, and several other institutions. Recently, the teledermatology website/application has been translated into Spanish, and programs are underway to expand teledermatology services in Mexico and Central America. Dr. Kovarik has also been working to expand telemedicine services in Africa and Central America through the use of cellular phones. Dr. Kovarik has started an initiative in global health at the University of Pennsylvania, and she is the Director of the Penn Dermatology Global Health Program. Dr. Kovarik is also the Chair of the Residents' International Grant Work Group within the AAD and received funding to send over 60 senior dermatology residents in 2008-2012 to participate in 4-6 week rotations on the dermatology consult service in Botswana.