Sinan Aral, “Social Influence and The Dynamics of Online Reputation”

MIT Media Lab, Room 633 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA

MIT Sloan's Sinan Aral will argue that a new science of online identity could help guide our business, platform design, and social policy decisions in light of the rising importance of online reputation and social influence.

Ecological Criticism in the Age of the Database

MIT Building 56, Room 114 Access via 21 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA

Sean Cubitt asserts the value of anecdotal evidence against the rise of statistics, but at the same time wants to confront the difficulties in bringing about an encounter between readers (human or otherwise) and the mass image constructed by social media and search giants.

Cloud Policy: Anatomy of a Regulatory Crisis

MIT Building 56, Room 114 Access via 21 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA

Jennifer Holt examines the legal and cultural crises surrounding the regulation of data in “the cloud.” The complex landscape of laws and policies governing digital data are currently rife with unresolvable conflicts. The challenges of distributing and protecting digital data in a policy landscape that is simultaneously local, national, and global have created problems that often defy legal paradigms, national boundaries, and traditional geographies of control.