BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//MediaWell - ECPv6.6.4.2//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://mediawell.ssrc.org
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for MediaWell
REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H
X-Robots-Tag:noindex
X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:Europe/Madrid
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:+0100
TZOFFSETTO:+0200
TZNAME:CEST
DTSTART:20260329T010000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:+0200
TZOFFSETTO:+0100
TZNAME:CET
DTSTART:20261025T010000
END:STANDARD
TZID:Europe/Berlin
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:+0100
TZOFFSETTO:+0200
TZNAME:CEST
DTSTART:20260329T010000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:+0200
TZOFFSETTO:+0100
TZNAME:CET
DTSTART:20261025T010000
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Madrid:20260921T000000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Madrid:20260925T235959
DTSTAMP:20261013T093511
CREATED:20260702T153311Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260702T153552Z
UID:516626-1789948800-1790380799@mediawell.ssrc.org
SUMMARY:INMA Media Innovation Week
DESCRIPTION:INMA’s Media Innovation Week returns to Madrid in September 2026 — uniting Europe’s most ambitious media leaders at the intersection of data\, product\, audience\, and revenue. \nMadrid will convene the people setting the pace for Europe’s news industry. Alongside established voices\, you’ll hear from the innovators building what comes next — the creators rewriting engagement\, the product minds driving habit\, and the commercial architects opening new revenue pathways. It’s a programme infused with fresh thinking and next-generation leadership\, designed to surface the ideas that will shape European media for years to come. \nExperience the strategies powering Spain’s top newsrooms\, explore breakthrough audience growth playbooks\, and connect with the people transforming European media: \nEuropean news media conference: INMA’s signature European conference is the broadest\, fastest\, and most practical look at how to grow and transform at the intersection of media and tech. \nTwo-day Madrid study tour: Visit the newsrooms and innovation labs of Spain’s leading media companies\, gaining first-hand insights into their strategies for audience growth and revenue diversification. What they are doing to grow audience\, brand\, reader and advertising revenue. We’ll visit Prisa Media (El Pais)\, Unidad Editorial (el Mundo)\, Vocento\, ElDiario\, Mediaset\, and RTVE. \nThe very best of Madrid: Beyond the conference\, immerse yourself in Madrid’s legendary hospitality. From tapas tours in historic neighbourhoods to exclusive evenings at iconic venues\, INMA will open doors to the best of Spanish culture and networking opportunities. \nClick here to learn more and register to attend.
URL:https://mediawell.ssrc.org/event/inma-media-innovation-week/
LOCATION:Hotel Riu Plaza España\, Gran Vía\, 84\, Centro\, Madrid\, 28013\, Spain
CATEGORIES:Conference
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20260922T000000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20260925T235959
DTSTAMP:20261013T093511
CREATED:20260413T205244Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260413T205259Z
UID:516031-1790035200-1790380799@mediawell.ssrc.org
SUMMARY:CRC Critical Data Autumn School 2026 | Synthetic Social Media: Studying Platform-Embedded AI
DESCRIPTION:Social media platforms are increasingly shaped by the integration of generative AI alongside long-standing analytical and predictive models. Today’s algorithmic systems are moving from the background infrastructure to the forefront of digital social life – intervening in the content feeds as conversational agents like xAI’s Grok\, reshaping identity through synthetic likenesses of OpenAI’s Sora-2\, and expanding the social ecosystem itself through projects like Butterflies AI and Moltbook\, where autonomous AI agents operate in coexistence with (or independently of) human users. As these developments rapidly outpace existing research frameworks\, the need for mixed critical methodologies grows more urgent. \nSynthetic social media research takes as its starting point the recognition that platforms shaped by generative AI are not simply data-processing systems but cultural environments organized through algorithms\, interfaces\, and shared ways of feeling and knowing. Analytically\, the attribute “synthetic” implies more than artificial arrangements of collective agency. Rather than treating AI as a radical rupture\, it situates generative systems within broader arrangements of human-machine co-creation that amplify specific imaginaries\, values\, and concerns. Methodologically\, it foregrounds ambiguities in how AI platforms recalibrate meaning and how users develop a practical “feel” for algorithmic systems while negotiating their constraints. \nCritical digital methods have responded to these developments by treating chatbots and generative systems as part of the research design as well as objects of inquiry in their own right. Synthetic text\, images\, and sounds are no longer exceptional artifacts but common platform vernaculars\, sustained by entangled practices of prompting\, remixing\, and circulation. Within platform studies\, interface methods\, visual digital methods\, and emerging forms of synthetic ethnography\, AI systems have been repurposed for formatting\, summarization\, annotation\, labeling\, and the generation of synthetic data\, while being interrogated for how they shape knowledge production. This work has foregrounded questions of method: Are we merely studying AI slop\, distracted by the automated excess of content stripped of context and meaning\, or are we witnessing the redefinition of social media itself along with its affordances and cultures of use? \nThe 2026 Autumn School edition of the CRC “Media of Cooperation” tackles this question by focusing on generative AI as an infrastructural\, cultural\, and regulated component of social media platforms across three intersecting dimensions: At the cultural level of everyday use\, it refers to the routinized practices of prompting or interacting with platform-embedded generative systems through multimodal inputs. Infrastructurally\, it signals a shift in agency\, as platforms keep multiplying affordances that nudge us into co-producing synthetic outputs. Finally\, it foregrounds research techniques for probing AI models in their entanglements with the platform governance and moderation regimes. \nAgainst this background\, we invite participants to submit short contributions inspired by\, though not limited to\, one of the following “how to” prompts: \n\nHow to repurpose AI personas as research personas\nHow to rethink walkthrough methods in light of platforms’ generative affordances\nHow to approach cultural biases conditioned by AI systems and prompt cultures\nHow to study AI moderation as platform policy in action\nHow to explore platform agency and its steering ideologies\nHow to integrate screenshots as a method for capturing synthetic situations\nHow to account for the ambiguities emerging from human-machine co-creation\nHow to develop non-extractive approaches to researching AI platforms\n\nParticipants are invited to submit a short abstract (maximum 500 words excluding references) outlining how their work relates to the event’s theme. Presentations should raise questions or provocations rather than present finished research. Accepted abstracts will be grouped into thematic sessions and discussed in a collaborative\, dialogue-focused format. \nSubmit your proposal by 30. April 2026 \nNotification of acceptance by 15 May 2026 \nRegistration by 15 June 2026 \nThe event opens with a one-day conference and moves into hands-on workshops and project work. Accepted abstracts will be grouped into thematic sessions curated by the organising team. Presenters will be connected via email ahead of time to coordinate their contributions. The first day is about presentations and discussions. The next three days are dedicated to exploring and developing methods – hands-on! We invite you to join a team of interdisciplinary scholars and data designers in probing new methodological combinations. Each of our project teams will present a research question alongside a specific method to be collaboratively explored. Please bring your laptops. The project titles will be announced soon. The event is free of charge\, though attendees are responsible for arranging and covering their travel and accommodation in Siegen.
URL:https://mediawell.ssrc.org/event/crc-critical-data-autumn-school-synthetic-social-media-studying-platform-embedded-ai-2026/
LOCATION:University Siegen\, Herrengarten 3\, Siegen\, 57072\, Germany
CATEGORIES:Conference
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR