Media & Journalism

The crisis of the public sphere (and objectivity?), which has been evident for some time now, and the open hostility towards “mainstream media" will be part of our focus, as will the success stories from (investigative) journalism, great moments in international cooperation and collaborative framing of data traces and narratives. How are we dealing with each other in social discourses and in the comment sections? How do you prepare yourself for technological developments that keep making it harder to differentiate between what is real and what is fake? Is it a contradiction that robots can cover sports for us perfectly well, yet we are especially dependent on reporters and commentators to categorise and classify current events for us? What experiments and projects should you keep an eye on?

In this track we want to hear about the state of digital media freedom, the changing nature of public spheres, the effects of fake news, the changing media landscapes and the evolution of social media, about video platforms and other forms of online expression and entertainment. We invite media professionals, journalists, bloggers, storytellers, and citizen journalism projects of all kinds to share their insights, research and experiences. We’d love to see contributions from investigative journalists presenting their findings, from hashtag campaign initiators, from social media analysts and influencers.