LECTURE

September 18 @12:30 in Faculty Lounge

4th Floor, Rutgers University Law School

217 N. 5th Street, Camden, NJ

This TALK explores several cases in which governments have tried to control domestic information flows for political advantage.   China, Egypt, Denmark and the United States each implement control—through law, technology, subsidy and force—over domestic Internet space.  Using different methods and understandings of “control,” each seeks to maintain sovereignty over information flows.  Publics within these states increasingly view multifaceted efforts at information control as legitimate.  This talk will focus on the meaning of, and movement towards, information sovereignty.

Shawn Powers is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Georgia State University. His research specializes in international political communication with particular attention to the geopolitics of information and technology policy. Dr. Powers is a faculty affiliate of GSU’s Transcultural Violence and Conflict initiative and co-leads its British Council and U.S. Institute of Peace funded project on Civic Approaches to Religious Conflict. He is also an associate director at the Center for International Media Education and serves on the Board of Advisors for the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.