Contagion: Social media, reality mining and new species of contagion
The second workshop for the Contagion project (funded by Bridging the Gaps) explored the questions: How are social media and ubiquitous computing changing the coordinates and spaces of contagion? What methods can be used to mine reality and to understand the new responses of social networks to information?
| A Research Services research event | |
|---|---|
| Date | 14 May 2013 |
| Time | 11:30 to 16:30 |
| Place | Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies |
| Provider | Research Services |
| Organizer | Lois Spence |
Event details
Presentations
University of Exeter staff can download the presentations from the workshop.
Contagion
In the last decades there have been heightened attempts to theorise, model and manage the risks of social, financial and biological contagion (Peckham 2013). While the metaphor is widely used, the rules for defining contagions are no longer clear. If contagion emerged as a concern with intimate sexual contact in the 16th Century, and was translated into fear of urban crowds in the 19th Century, and to unease with globalisation in the 20th Century, the 21st Century is coming to terms with the changing coordinates of those contacts, new proximities and distances, new kinds of mediation, aggregation and link-breaking, new vocabularies for affective politics, and a concern with the movement of movement itself (Thrift 2011). As a result, there's a need to develop resources for understanding how contemporary contagions work and a need to critically evaluate the limits and consequences of analogizing biological, financial and communication processes under the rubric of contagion.
Workshop 2
In Workshop 2, we will explore the questions: How are social media and ubiquitous computing changing the coordinates and spaces of contagion? What methods can be used to mine reality and to understand the new responses of social networks to information?
Agenda
11.30 Arrival, coffee and tea
11.45 From virality to neuroculture
Dr Tony D. Sampson (Arts and Digital Industries, University of East London)
12.15 An empirical approach for modelling dynamic contact networks
Dr Eiko Yoneki (Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge)
13.00 Lunch
14.00 The pharmacology of attentive media
Dr Sam Kinsley (Geography, University of Exeter)
14.30 Social media, community-based organisations, and attention work
Dr Matthew Wilson (Geography, University of Kentucky)
15.00 Introducing the DOLLY project: spatialising social media
Dr Matthew Zook (Geography, University of Kentucky)
15.30 Discussion
16.30 Close of workshop
Next workshop
Our third workshop: Finance, contagion and complex systems, will be held in June/ July.
Location:
Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies
