Networked Press Freedom: What does journalistic autonomy mean anymore?
Friday, May 4
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Columbia Journalism School

The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, with Columbia University's Communications PhD program and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, is pleased to present a timely discussion on what press freedom means in an era of digital journalism. Where is this networked press, how can we locate its freedom, what is it trying to be free from, and what is such freedom meant to accomplish?

Mike Ananny, Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, will give a talk based on his new book Networked Press Freedom (MIT Press), in which he sketches the idea of networked press freedom, situates it within historical forces and democratic values, and argues that contemporary press freedom lives in a complex set of intertwined social and technological dynamics that, together, create the meaning and power of journalistic autonomy in the networked press.

Ananny's talk will be followed by a response from Jameel Jaffer, founding director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, and an audience Q&A.

Join the conversation using #NetworkedPress.

Mike Ananny is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, an Affiliated Faculty with USC’s Science, Technology and Society research cluster, and a Fellow with the Columba University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism. He studies the public significance of networked news infrastructures – how they reflect and challenge journalistic and technological values. He has held fellowships and scholarships with Harvard’s Berkman-Klein Center on Internet and Society, Stanford’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, LEGO Corporation, and Interval Research. He was a founding member of Media Lab Europe’s research staff, a postdoc with Microsoft Research’s Social Media Collective, and has worked or consulted for LEGO, Mattel, and Nortel Networks. His PhD is from Stanford University (Communication), SM from the MIT Media Lab (Media Arts & Sciences), and BSc from the University of Toronto (Human Biology & Computer Science).

Jameel Jaffer is the founding director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. He previously served as deputy legal director at the ACLU, where he oversaw the organization’s work on free speech, privacy, technology, national security, and international human rights. He has argued civil liberties cases in multiple appeals courts as well as the U.S. Supreme Court and has testified many times before the U.S. Congress. His recent writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Nation, and the Yale Law Journal Forum. He is an executive editor of Just Security, a national security blog, and his most recent book, The Drone Memos, was published by The New Press in the fall of 2016. Jaffer is a graduate of Williams College, Cambridge University, and Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to Hon. Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then to Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada.

This event is free and open to the public, though registration is required. Please direct any questions to towcenter@columbia.edu.