Dear Digital Minster Audrey Tang,
My name is Andy Zhao. I’m a Ph.D. student of information science at Cornell University. I’m reaching out to you on behalf of the organizer of “Technology, Media & Democracy” (https://www.techmediademocracy.nyc/) to invite you as a guest speaker for our virtual session.
Technology, Media & Democracy is a unique collaboration between five major New York City Universities: Columbia, Cornell Tech, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, The New School, and NYU. The special graduate course brings together students with backgrounds in engineering, computer science, design, journalism and other relevant disciplines to answer thorny question at the intersection of tech, media and democracy, such as:
- How does the information ecosystem contribute to the health of representative democracies such as the United States?
- How do we move towards communities that are equipped with the knowledge and deliberation mechanisms required to address the challenges that face us?
- How does the relationship between technology platforms, media, governments and citizens determine which voices get heard?
We immerse the students in the current thinking on the problems, and then we work on prototyping and thinking about solutions.
Some of the speakers this semester include Kara Swisher, Ali Velshi, Katherine Maher, Jameel Jaffer, Donie O’Sullivan, Daniel Dale, Claire Wardle, Marietje Shaake, Karen Kornbluh, Julia Angwin, Charlie Warzel, and Roger McNamee.
Those talks are all online now and each session lasts from 60 min to 90 min. The audience is a gathering of ~100 students from across these campuses, and the faculty members at each school. We might be opening it to the public as a webinar, too – after we seek the speakers’ explicit approval, of course.
If you’re willing to be our guest speaker, we have two virtual sessions that may fit you perfectly, and you can choose any of them as you want:
(1) Session 10: A Better Public Sphere
Apr 12th 7pm EST / Apr 13th 7am Taiwan time
(2) Session 13: Geopolitics of Information and Democracy: Global Perspective
May 3rd 7pm EST / May 4th 7am Taiwan time
(I calculated the time incorrectly in my previous request because of daylight saving time in the US…)
If you want to directly reach out to us or have questions, please feel free to email us at [email protected] (Andy Zhao) or [email protected] (Mor Naaman). It’s our greatest honor to have you as our speaker. I would really appreciate your consideration and time.
Sincerely,
Andy Zhao
Information Science at Cornell University