improve, and positively influence the ways in which digital systems shape our
ability to gather together. Now that the internet undergirds everything from
the arts to voting systems, we need to better understand how our physical,
digital, and liminal spaces shape our ability to assemble. Online data,
surveillance technology, and omnipresent connected devices mean that we have
effectively digitized our physical spaces. Data is now captured on everything
from our activities at work, school, and worship, to protests, civic and
charitable events. How does this reality change what we do, where we do it,
with whom, and how do we protect our physical/digital spaces for assembly?
Our hypothesis about the need for more research on digital assembly can best
explained as an analogy: Digital platforms are to mis/dis-information as
connected devices everywhere are to assembly suppression. The question is how
can civil society, scholars, and policy makers protect our ability to freely
assemble?
Link to join:
https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/research/digital-civil-socidriety-lab/digital-assembly-research-network/
We are launching the DARN with an email listserv that will enable global
participation and have low connectivity requirements. We invite you to join by
visiting this
webpage,(https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/research/digital-civil-socidriety-lab/digital-assembly-research-network/)
which has more information and a registration link. Feel free to share this
invitation or the webpage with policy, advocacy, research, technology, civil
society, or legal colleagues. We are inspired by the potential of this network
to share critical knowledge, catalyze new questions and efforts to answer them,
build cross-disciplinary inquiry, foster relationships between scholars,
activists, and policy makers and perhaps much more.
We’re delighted to invite you to join us and to help bring this network come
together. Where it goes, what’s possible, what we learn will be up to the
group. I do hope you will join us. Feel free to reach out directly with any
questions (<email obscured>)