Centre for the Study of Social Systems
School of Social Sciences
CSSS Colloquium
Sangeet Kumar
(Associate Professor, Department of Communication, Denison University, USA)
Will be presenting a paper on
The Cultural Power of Conventions on the Global Web
Date & Time: April 19th, 2018 (Thursday), 3.00 pm
Venue: Convention Centre - Room No: 108
Abstract: The global adoption and growth of the Internet and the subsequent rise of digital media cultures has spawned an ever-widening field of scholarship about the ways in which it is transforming all aspects of the human condition. Like all media technologies before it, the rise of the global web has been accompanied both by morbid prognostications about its damaging consequences as well celebratory narratives about a cyber-utopia of seamless communication, frictionless global solidarity and participatory democracy. This presentation will navigate these conversations in order to consider the nature of cultural power on the global web. As a media technology with a novel architecture of a distributed network, the effects of the global adoption of the web have arguably been unprecedented both in its speed and scale as well as in the wide-ranging aspects of social life it has transformed. The architecture that makes its effects so elusive and enduring also poses challenges for critical scholars interested in understanding the nature of power on the global digital network. Through analyzing specific case studies in the realm of knowledge, subjectivity and sovereignty, the goal is to showcase how the web has emerged arguably as the most effective instrument of global cultural power historically. In probing the consequence of that power, this presentation will try to imagine what a truly representative global digital network would look like.
Bio: Sangeet Kumar is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Denison University, USA. His current research interests focus on the dynamics of power and agency on digital platforms to understand how their affordances shape and constrain the evolution of culture and new modalities of power. His recent research has appeared in journals such as Information, Communication and Society, International Journal of Communication, Popular Communication, and Global Media and Communication among others. He is currently finishing his book project tentatively titled The Digital Frontier that seeks to understand the operation of global cultural power on the Internet.
