Past Event

CES Webinar:
“Remembering and Forgetting: Considering Recent EU Policies Towards Digital Media”
with Ira Wagman

This webinar provides an overview of recent data protection initiatives undertaken within the European Union.  Of particular interest will be the “right to be forgotten,” a measure which allows EU citizens to have online personal data corrected or removed if it is deemed to be inaccurate, irrelevant, or outdated.  In his discussion, Wagman will provide a brief history of this measure and highlight some of the arguments in support of and against the measure.  In addition, he will suggest that we might consider the right to be forgotten alongside a suite of initiatives currently being undertaken within the EU to determine how individuals and companies will make use of the incredible memory capacities of digital technologies.  He will conclude by suggesting that the ubiquity of digital technologies across many aspects of social life means that we may need a subtler understanding of what we used to call “media policy.”

Ira Wagman is an Associate Professor, Communication Studies in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University.  He researches, teaches, and writes in the areas of media policy, cultural industries, and the history of communication theory.  He is currently researching media policies in the European Union for a number of writing projects.  His most recent publication pertaining to the European Union, “Forgiving without Forgetting: Contending with Digital Memory,” has been published in Sharrona Pearl, ed. Images, Ethics, Technology (Routledge 2015).