Social Media, AI and Politics – An immersive Workshop in Berlin

How do we understand social media and AI as communicators? What have they done 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 hypermediated attention economy?

Join us for this immersive 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 analyze fakes, play games, participate in lectures, do podcasts and get busy with “data”. Participation is free. No travel bursaries will be offered to participants. Lunch, snacks and drinks will be served on all three days of the workshop. 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 workshop is hosted by Center for Digital Dignity, LMU Munich, Germany, and organized 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).

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.