Social Media, AI and Society – An Immersive Workshop

🤔 HOW DO WE UNDERSTAND OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA + AI? What are emerging digital technologies doing to our social and political life? How do we untether ourselves and reflect on what binds us to social media and AI—each day and every instance—of this hyper-mediated attention economy?

🤿 JOIN US FOR A 3-DAY WORKSHOP WHERE WE WILL DEEP DIVE INTO ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS OF OUR TIME. The workshop features masterclasses, learning seminars, interactive games, and collaborative exercises—to together think through AI and social media. You will create and analyse fakes, play games, participate in lectures, record podcasts and get busy with “data”.

😋 PARTICIPATION IS FREE: Lunch, snacks and drinks will be served on all three days of the workshop.

🌴 DATE: Wed 13, Thurs 14, Fri 15 May 2026

📍 LOCATION: Goldsmiths University

🃏THE SCHEDULE: Full schedule will be released after registration. Each day will run approx 10-5pm at Goldsmiths. On Thursday 14th, we will walk to Badger Badger (games cafe) on Deptford High Street to play a new TTRP card game where you take on the role of a social media founder. Lunch and drinks will be provided at BB.

📝 WORKSHOPS AS RESEARCH: With the participants’ consent, selected discussions and interactive sessions conducted during the workshop can contribute to the facilitators’ ethnographic research on media, technology and society. The consent form will be handed out on the first day of the workshop. Participation is voluntary. All information will be treated confidentially.

🇩🇪 THE HOSTS: The workshop is hosted by Center for Digital Dignity, LMU Munich, Germany, and organised as part of the European Research Council Project, SMALLPLATFORMS, Facilitators: Sahana Udupa (Principal Investigator), Ira Solomatina, Job Mwaura, Craig Ryder and Neelabh Gupta (Postdoctoral Researchers), and Bastian Buitkamp (Research Associate).

🤖 THE PROJECT: SMALLPLATFORMS (“Beyond the Big Tech: Contentious Speech on Small Platforms”) is a 5-year project (2025-2029) funded by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant. It explores small social media platforms in a cross-cultural context, through fieldwork in Germany, India, Kenya and the UK. Using a critical cultural model, the project explores whether and in what way forms of contentious speech are associated with practices on small platforms and how they differ from dynamics on big platforms. For more information, see https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101122348.