The first keynote at the IAMCR 2019 conference is by Javier Gomá, whose theme is human dignity. He suggests that dignity is the most revolutionary concept of the 20th century. It has become a widespread concept that animates many modern causes, from unionism through feminism to emerging new political ideologies, and is crucial to many current debates about the role and impact of new technologies, yet remains ignored by many recent philosophical works.

For the last stage of my travels I’ve arrived at the IAMCR 2019 conference in Madrid, where I’m starting with a session of journalism. The first presenter is Yu-Peng Lin, whose focus is the role of Facebook in news production and distribution in Taiwan.

Within the next month or two, Polity Press will publish my new book Are Filter Bubbles Real?, which critically evaluates the ‘filter bubble’ as well as ‘echo chamber’ concepts that have been blamed for much of the current communicative and political dysfunction around the world. The book takes a sceptical view, and shows how these ill-conceived metaphors are actively distracting us from more important questions that are related not to the role of search engines and social media platforms and their algorithms in channelling our information and communication streams, but to the fundamental drivers of a growing societal and ideological polarisation that is now felt across many developed and developing nations around the world.

In the lead-up to the book’s launch, I have already begun to present some of its main arguments in a number of venues around the world. In addition to my recent presentation at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies in Duisburg in April, an invited plenary presentation at the African Digital Media Research Methods Symposium at Rhodes University, Makhanda, at the end of this week, and a paper at the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) conference in Madrid in July, I’ve also had the opportunity to give an invited talk at the Digital Humanities Research Group at Western Sydney University on 22 May 2019, and the colleagues there have now posted a video of my talk on YouTube.

So, if you’d like a preview of the main themes in the book, here it is:

The next session at Web Science 2016 begins with Niko Tsakalakis, whose focus is on electronic identity. eIDs are a set of identifiers that set us apart from other people, and these can take a number of forms from software to hardware identifiers and biometric data. Such eIDs are now enshrined in a number of regulations at national levels, and also enable cross-border transactions across Europe.

The final Web Science 2016 keynote for today is by Daniel Olmedilla, whose work at Facebook is to police the ads being posted on the site. Ads are the only part of Facebook where inherently unsolicited content is pushed to users, so the quality of those ads is crucial – users will want relevant and engaging content, while advertisers need to see a return on investment. Facebook itself must ensure that its business remains scalable and sustainable.

Key problem categories are legally prohibited content (e.g. ads for illegal drugs); shocking and scary content; sexually suggestive material; violent and confronting content; offensive before-and-after images; ads with inappropriate language; and images containing a large amount of text.