POLIS

Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Culture Secretary, will be joined by Professor Robin Mansell from LSE and media entrepreneur Peter Bazalgette in a panel discussion about the future of Digital Britain. Questions will be welcomed.

This event is kindly sponsored by Mandate Communications. www.yourmandate.com

Please arrive at 6pm for a 6.30pm start. A drinks reception will be held from 7.45pm.

You must RSVP to atten at polis@lse.ac.uk.

Polis is pleased to host this event that seeks to revisit the term 'digital natives' and critically discuss a generation of users that speak the language of new technologies with ease and confidence.

Introduction from Charlie Beckett, POLIS Director

Speakers include:
Professor Sonia Livingstone, Department of Media and Communications, LSE
Professor David Buckingham, Institute of Education
Dr Chris Davies, University of Oxford
Dr Rebekah Willet, "Power relations, play and boredom in teens online interactions," Institute of Education.

Chair: Charlie Beckett, POLIS Director

Ranjana Das, POLIS Silvertone Scholar 2009, will also present her work on the day

Find an inital programme of the event here.

For directions to LSE, click here.  For the location of the New Academic Building (NAB), click here.

The lecture will be from 6 - 8pm followed by a drinks reception sponsored by Ofcom.

If you would like to attend please RSVP to polis@lse.ac.uk.

A representative from Al Jazeera, and a Lieutenant Commander discusses media coverage of the Gaza conflict with Polis.

Speaker: Alan Fisher, Al Jazeera English

Wednesday 25th November, 6.30-8:00pm

For directions to LSE, please click here.

For more information please get in touch with us at polis@lse.ac.uk.

This event will look at the relationship between MTV, 'music' media and morality, looking at the role of Bill Roedy's work using MTV as a international and innovative platform to discuss how media can contribute to internationally important issues such as aids and poverty.

Bill Roedy is chairman and CEO of MTV Networks International and an ambassador for UNAIDS.

The event starts from 630pm until 8pm is free and open to all with no ticket required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis. Any queries, email events@lse.ac.uk| or phone 020 7955 6043.

For directions to the Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building please click here

In partnership with the LSE Arts Programme and the LSE Annual Fund, Polis will hold on event on Tuesday 1st December from 5 to 630pm looking at the reporting of the Rwandan genocide both during and after the atrocities as part of the Polis Media Dialogues on media and identity.

This event will discuss how the media reports post-atrocity Rwanda, and the implications this has in shaping the identity and recovery process of survivors of genocide. Joined by two survivors of the Rwandan genocide, Patrick Iregura  and Serge Rwigamba and Channel 4 News’ World Editor Lindsey Hilsum, this event will reflect on how the story was told before, during and after the brutal events. It will examine the gaps between reality on the ground during times of mass atrocity  and humanitarian crisis, and the public’s perception of it, as gleaned from the media, in the West.

The event is free and open to all with no ticket required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis. Any queries, email polis@lse.ac.uk.

For directions please click here

This year’s Polis Media Dialogues presents a series of weekly lectures delivered by leading figures from the media industry and policy sector around the topical themes of media and identity from their specific professional and expert viewpoints. Lectues will take place from 5 - 6pm.

Tuesday 13th October: Arab Media Panel
Speakers: Fatima El-Issawi, Researcher at Dept of Media and Communications, LSE and freelance journalist; Mohammed Chbaro, Director, London Office, Al Arabiya; Nasser Badry, UK News Editor, Al Jazeera; Ayad Abou Shakra, Editorialist, Asharq al Aswat newspaper. Chaired by Myria Georgiou.

Friday 23rd October: Identity and News - in Conversation with George Alagiah
Speakers: George Alagiah, BBC Presenter Six O'clock News & World News Today on BBC World News. Chaired by Charlie Beckett.

* Please note this lecture will start at 6 for a 6.30 start on Friday 23rd in the Old Theatre, Old Building


Tuesday 27th October: Cosmopolitan Mediascapes: London, Media and Cultural Diversity
Speakers: Sunny Hundal, Asians in the Media, Liberal Conspiracy, Pickled Politics; Jennifer Ogole, CEO of Bang Radio; Henry Bonsu, Colourful Radio; and Munira Mirza, the Mayor of London's Director of Arts and Culture Policy. Chaired by Myria Georgiou.

Tuesday 3rd November: Identity and Search - in Conversation with James Harkin
Speakers: James Harkin, Director of Talks at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Chaired by Charlie Beckett.

Tuesday 10th November: The Unfinished Revolution - Nick Thorpe
Speakers: Nick Thorpe, author of The Unfinished Revolution and BBC Central Europe correspondent
Chaired by Charlie Beckett. 

This is a personal view, from ground level, of a revolution which never quite finished. Of how it re-emerges, in demonstrations and uprisings, on a regular basis. How the demons of the past - of collaboration, of unsatisfied national identity, above all of poverty - continue to haunt the present.

Blood drips on Thorpe’s head as he tries to escape the Romanian secret police, with a dissident's statement hidden in his clothes. Then as the Hungarian government prepares to expel him, he becomes a pawn in the Cold War as the British threaten to retaliate. Through the autumn and winter of 1989, Thorpe hops from revolution to revolution, from Budapest to Prague, Leipzig to East Berlin. And gets to Romania in time for the bloody finale.

But with the victory of democracy, his work was only just beginning. Thorpe guides us through the dramas and traumas of the 1990s, the years of 'jungle capitalism' through a taxi blockade in Hungary, and the miners invasion of Bucharest. He camps with Vaclav Havel - who borrows his sleeping bag. As Yugoslavia collapses, he reports from Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and FUROMacedonia.

The book concludes in 2009, with the impact of the crisis of capitalism, 20 years after the crisis of communism.

Nick Thorpe began reporting from Budapest in February 1986, the first western journalist to be based there. For the BBC, the Independent, and the Observer, he covered the dying years of eastern Europe’s regimes, then the revolutions which toppled them. He witnessed the collapse of Yugoslavia, popular uprisings in Bulgaria and Serbia, the transformation of nonviolent to violent resistance in Kosovo. As the BBC's Central Europe correspondent he continues to report the successes, and the failures of a revolution which never quite reaches its goal.


Tuesday 17th November: Media Research, Development and Identity
Speakers: Gerry Power, Director of Research & Knowledge Management, Research & Learning Group, BBC World Service Trust. Chaired by Myria Georgiou.

Tuesday 24th November: Women and the Media - in Conversation with Zoe Williams
Speakers: Zoe Williams, columnist and feature writer, The Guardian and Catherine Mayer, London Bureau Chief, Time Magazine. Chaired by Myria Georgiou.

** Please note this event will start at 7.30 in NABLG08, New Academic Building, Lincolns Inn Fields, LSE.

Tuesday 1st December: Rwanda and the Media - Survivors and Reporters
Speakers: Patrick Iregura and Serge Rwigamba, survivors of the Rwandan genocide; and Lindsey Hilsum, World Editor, Channel 4 News. Chaired by Charlie Beckett.
Please note this event will finish at 6.30pm

These events are free. You must RSVP if you wish to attend. Lectures will be held at the New Theatre, East Building, Houghton Street, London School of Economics. For directions please click here. 

Contact polis@lse.ac.uk.

Evgeny Morozov is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and runs the magazine's influential and widely-quoted "Net Effect" blog about the Internet's impact on global politics. Click here for the blog.

Morozov is currently a Yahoo! fellow at Georgetown University's E.A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He was a fellow at George Soros's Open Society Institute.

Before moving to the US, Morozov was based in Berlin and Prague, where he was Director of New Media at Transitions Online, a media development NGO active in 29 countries of the former Soviet bloc.

Please find his website, and a link to his blog, here.

The seminar is open to the public but will be of primary interest to students and academics.