The Media, Conflict and Democratisation project (MeCoDEM) will on November 18, 2016 hold a workshop in Brussels, Belgium entitled, “Social Media, Conflict and Democracy: Utopian Visions, Dystopian Futures and Pragmatic Policies”. The workshop will take place in the morning at the Press Club Brussels and is expected to appeal to social media experts, journalists, scholars, activists, policy-makers, technologists, NGOs and think tanks.
Participants at the event will tackle questions on the role of social media during times of conflict in connection to democratic participation and peace building as well as challenges such as the use of social media in forming extremist networks.
One of the keynote speakers expected at the event is Wael Abbas, world-renowned Egyptian blogger and activist famous for his outspoken tweets tackling key issues in Egypt.
Other speakers representing three large-scale, transnational EU-funded projects — MeCoDEM, INFOCORE and VOX-Pol – will be showcasing research done in areas related to ICTs, (violent) conflict, democracy and security.
Each of the talks and presentation of research at the event will be followed by open discussion and debate on the topics in contemporary political communication that involves a lot of stakeholders from policy makers, to technologists and from activists to regular social media users.
Persons interested in participating at the workshop can register online via the form available on the workshop’s official web page at http://mecodem/ictconflict. The event location and a more detailed schedule are available on the site.
