Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity and Self-Branding in Web 2.0

Tuesday, March 29, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St., Cambridge, MA

In the mid-2000s, journalists and businesspeople heralded “Web 2.0” technologies such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook as signs of a new participatory era that would democratize journalism, entertainment, and politics. By the decade’s end, this idealism had been replaced by a gold-rush mentality focusing on status and promotion. While the rhetoric of Web 2.0 as democratic and revolutionary persists, I will contend that a primary use of social media is to boost user status and popularity, maintaining hierarchy rather than diminishing it. This talk focuses on three status-seeking techniques that emerged with social media: micro-celebrity, self-branding, and life-streaming. I examine interactions between social media and social life in the San Francisco “tech scene” to show that Web 2.0 has become a key aspect of social hierarchy in technologically mediated communities. Alice Marwick is a postdoctoral researcher in social media at Microsoft Research New England and a research affiliate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. Her work looks at online identity and consumer culture through lenses of privacy, surveillance, consumption, and celebrity. Alice has a PhD from the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, a MA from the University of Washington and a BA from Wellesley College. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group

Wednesday, March 30, 6:00pm Yale Law School

The "Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group" is a forum for fellows and affiliates of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, Yale Law School Information Society Project, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University to discuss their ongoing research. This month's presenters will include: Charlie DeTar of MIT on "Research, Service, and Ethics in contested spaces: How definitions can go wrong"; Seeta Peña Gangadharan of Yale on "Data integration and segregation: Profiling the poor online"; and Sasha Costanza-Chock of the Berkman Center Fellow & MIT Center for Future Civic Media. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Rethink Music Conference

April 25-27, Boston, MA. Hosted and organized by the Berklee College of Music.

The Berklee College of Music, in association with Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Harvard Business School, will host the Rethink Music conference which will examine the business and rights challenges facing the music industry in the digital era and formulate solutions to promote the creation and distribution of new music and other creative works. Registration is now open. more information on our website>

Lessig and Zittrain Take On…the Kill Switch

In recent months citizens of the Middle East and North Africa have experienced widespread shutdowns of internet access, coinciding with revolutions to overthrow national leadership. The seeming ease with which the Internet has been silenced in Libya, Egypt, and other countries has raised questions about ethical issues behind an Internet “Kill Switch,” the idea of a single point of access by which any nation’s leadership could shutdown their internet access. In the United States, debate over so-called “Kill Switch” legislation has focused on the free speech aspect. If it were technologically possible to shutdown internet access singlehandedly who is to say that power wouldn’t be exploited as it has been abroad? But on the other side of the coin is the question of cyber security. With so much commerce, communication, and security dependent on a loose and non-standardized network infrastructure, it could actually make sense to have an easy way to quarantine a bug or massive cyber attack. Today, hosts Lawrence Lessig and Jonathan Zittrain are joined by Andrew McLaughlin — a former Berkman Fellow and White House Deputy Chief Technology Office — and Brett Solomon — Executive Director of Access, a global movement promoting digital freedom. Together with an audience Lessig and Zittrain take on the Kill Switch. Watch the video or download the audio