Alfred University Bergren Forum to explore social media

The Thursday, April 12 Alfred University Bergren Forum will feature “We the People: How Social Networking is Democratizing the Media,” a presentation by Alexander Howard, Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media. The program begins at 12:10 p.m. in Nevins Theater, Powell Campus Center and is open to the public free of charge.

In this talk, O’Reilly Media’s Washington Correspondent will talk about the technology driving the changes around the globe— and what to expect next.

The presentation will concentrate on how advancements in technology and media are evolving the perceptions of the government and the media in the eyes of the public.

“In the 1990s, the Internet changed communication and commerce forever,” said Howard. “A decade later, the Web 2.0 revolution created a new disruption, enabling hundreds of millions of citizens to publish, share, mix, comment, and upload media to a more dynamic online environment.

“In 2012, we’re now living in the era of big data, where mobile devices and a real-time Web are dramatically shifting the dynamic between governments and the governed,” he continued. “Two-way communication, enabled by new, highly accessible and scalable Web technologies, is generally called ‘social media.’ In the years since the first social networks went online, the disruption has spread to government, creating shifts in power structures as large as those enabled by the introduction of the printing press centuries ago.”

Howard reports on technology, open government, and online civics for O’Reilly.

In addition to corresponding for O’Reilly, he writes for the Huffington Post and Govfresh and has contributed to Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, Forbes, the National Journal, CBS News’ What’s Trending, Govloop, Governing People, the Association for Computer Manufacturing, and the Atlantic, among others. Quite a few people know him as “@digiphile” from his use of Twitter.

Howard is a frequent speaker and moderator at O’Reilly Media conferences and many other events in Washington and beyond, including the Web 2.0 Summit and Expo, the U.S. National Archives, D.C. Week, Social Media Week, SXSWi, Strata, GOSCON, AMP Summit, Tech@State, and the State of the Net.  He has also spoken at the American Academy for Arts and Sciences, NIST, Club de Madrid, Cato Institute, the National Archives and the Social Security Agency.

In 2011, he was a visiting faculty member at the Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Fla. He is a graduate of Colby College, Waterville, Maine.

The Bergren Forum, sponsored by the Alfred Division of Human studies and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, meets Thursdays during each academic semester when classes are in session at the University. Participants are encouraged to bring a lunch: coffee and tea will be available.