I am giving a talk today at Le Web ’11 in Paris. It is part of the Ignite session which means that I am doing a quick 5-minute presentation with automatically advancing 15 second slides. I will combine sociological theories with observations from location based services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook places. The whole thing will be streamed live here.
The reason for me, a sociology professor, being at Le Web is that I research the type of creative cultures that flourish in places like these. I am interested in the positive energies, as well as in maintaining a critical perspective on things like monetization, surveillance and power relations relating to social media. My main area of expertise is in the field of activism (in its broadest sense) and digital media.
At Umeå University, we have a research program called “Media Places” based in our interdisciplinary and internationally connected HUMlab. The program includes sociologists, literature scholars, developers, historians, archeologists, linguists, language scholars and communication studies people. We are very interested in doing fun things with people outside of academia. Get in touch with me via http://simonlindgren.com/simon or Twitter (@simon_lindgren).
