Public Lecture Announcement
The Internet and Social Media in Jordan’s Information Age
Dr. Geoffrey Hughes
ACOR National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow
& Fellow, Anthropology Department, London School of Economics
Wednesday 20 September 2017 at 6:00 pm
To be followed by a reception
About the Lecture:
Jordan’s media landscape has changed dramatically in the past twenty years as first satellite television and then the Internet and social media have vastly increased the reach and diversity of available information within the Kingdom. Drawing on interviews with journalists, legal experts, activists, and community leaders, Hughes discusses how these technologies bring with them new forms of order and discipline, forms that are far more diffuse and wide-ranging than those that came before. Drawing on a range of case studies involving Jordanians from diverse walks of life, he presents some of the ambivalent ways in which these technologies constrain and empower various social actors. He suggests that the future of these technologies in Jordan and throughout the region will depend as much on the development of informal social norms as they will on formal legislation.
About the Lecturer:
Dr. Geoffrey Hughes is a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at ACOR and a fellow in the Anthropology Department at the London School of Economics. His research explores how Jordanians use new technologies for large-scale population management to remake themselves and their communities. He has previously published in journals like American Ethnologist, Anthropological Quarterly, and Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute on topics ranging from the information infrastructure of Jordan’s Sharia Courts to World Bank squatter settlement standardization programs and Islamic training courses for newlyweds.
