Does having more information help us to be more connected? Or does information overload get in the way of real life, abetting sloppy research, creating a media echo chamber, and weakening the institutions of democracy? As faculty, librarians, and citizens around SMU engage new media and digital tools, it becomes important to ask questions such as these.

About the Speaker: Ethan Zuckerman is founder and director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT. 'Civic' trains journalists, political organizers, and artists who harness the power of big data in the name of an open democracy. 'Civic' graduates have built cell-phone apps and maps that help individuals to communicate about bike lanes, poverty, rape, environmental monitoring, and human rights violations. See a list of current projects here: https://www.media.mit.edu/people/ethanz/projects/

Prof. Zuckerman teaches the history of media and big-data journalism at MIT. He is also founder and director of Global Voices, an internet platform that helps bloggers expand media coverage of human rights, democracy, and other issues around the world. He is the author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (W. W. Norton, 2013). Listen to Prof. Zuckerman's TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXPJVwwEmiM