Hi all, Just letting you know about the fantastic lineup of speakers we have this term for the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy's (PCMLP) Global Media Policy Seminar Series! Jointly hosted by the University of Oxford and the University of Johannesburg. Please register using the links below: *Dr Elinor Carmi (University of Liverpool)*Date: Tuesday, Feb 23rd, 16:00 UTC Title: "From the back end to the front end: Producing the surveillance adtech ecosystem" Register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/oxford-uj-global-media-policy-seminar-series-... <https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/oxford-uj-global-media-policy-seminar-series-elinor-carmi-tickets-138607475691> Abstract: In this presentation I'll talk about my new book - Media Distortions (open access). The book examines the power behind producing deviant media categories. It shows the politics behind categories we take for granted such as spam and noise, and what it means to our broader understanding of, and engagement with media. Drawing on repositories of legal, technical and archival sources, the book amplifies three stories about the construction and negotiation of the ‘deviant’ in media. In this talk I'll focus on the second story: the early 2000s, specifically the web metric standardization in the European Union showing how the digital advertising industry constructed what is legitimate communication, while making spam illegal. By lobbying EU legislators and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the digital advertising industry and tech companies standardized the category of spam around any ‘problematic’ behaviour threatening their business. This required configuring spaces and people on the web, establishing the foundations for the surveillance adtech ecosystem we experience today. *Dr Fiona Shen-Bayh (The College of William and Mary)* Date: Wednesday, March 3rd, 16:00 UTC Title: "Framing the International Criminal Court: Tracking Sentiment in African News Media" Register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/oxford-uj-global-media-policy-seminar-series-... Abstract: his paper examines how African elites affect perceptions of international justice as illegitimate, unfair, and corrupt. We argue that forums such as the African Union (AU) can have ripple effects on how international justice is discussed among the general population, in some cases, changing the literal terms of debate. To test this argument, we use an original web-scraped corpus of over 142,000 articles from African news sources and leverage novel text-as-data approaches to track how the International Criminal Court (ICC) is discussed in local media. Using a word embedding analysis, our findings reveal that the content of ICC news coverage varies over time and in response to major developments of the AU, wherein elite efforts to discredit the ICC were subsequently reflected in more negative news coverage. Our findings underscore the complex, nuanced relationship between elite and popular perceptions of international justice and suggest new mechanisms by which elite discourse is filtered down to domestic audiences. *Prof Rob Kitchin (Maynooth University)*Date: Tuesday, March 3rd, 16:00 UTC Title: "Collective Strategies for Slow Computing" Register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/oxford-uj-global-media-policy-seminar-series-... Abstract: Digital technologies should be making life easier. And to a large degree they do, transforming everyday tasks of work, consumption, communication, travel and play. But they are also accelerating and fragmenting our lives affecting our well-being and exposing us to extensive data extraction and profiling that helps determine our life chances. Is it then possible to experience the benefits of computing, but to do so in a way that asserts individual and collective autonomy over our time and data? This talk seeks to answer this question by exploring collective strategies and actions to achieve slow computing, and the policy and legal interventions required, with the analysis framed within an ethics of digital care rooted in concepts of data justice and time and data sovereignty. Best, Kira *Dr Kira Allmann* Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Media Law & Policy Centre for Socio-Legal Studies University of Oxford