Public seminar on social media for social purposes

November 14 the team behind the research project Responsible Business in the Blogosphere (RBB) had arranged a public seminar with the title ‘Social Media for Social Purposes’. A closed workshop preceded the public seminar, where participants could get feedback on their current working papers.

 

For the public seminar the RBB team had been so fortunate to get internationally recognized communications and media scholars from the US and Australia to speak about the role of digital media transforming civic action.

 

Professor Lance Bennett, University of Washington, opened the public seminar and spoke about the ways protest groups had organized demonstrations through social media and how the new ways of social media were changing the way people engaged in politics. The following keynote speaker was Professor Zizi Papacharissi, University of Illinois in Chicago, who presented her current research on how people communicate through twitter and hashtags. The last keynote speaker was Associate Professor Jennifer Bartlett from QUT Business School in Australia. She spoke about how social media's role in public rural issues in Australia had evolved.