Can human solidarity survive social media and what if it can’t?
Hosted by the Department of Media and Communications
In-person and online public event (Old Theatre, Old Building)
Thursday 2 October 2025 6.30pm - 8pm
Drawing on his recent book, The Space of the World, Nick Couldry will reflect on the global space of social communications and interaction that has been constructed over the past three decades through a commercialized internet and digital platforms whose business model depends on extracting data from users and shaping their behaviour to optimize advertising value.
What if those conditions – valid perhaps in narrowly commercial terms – have guaranteed a space of human interaction that is larger, more polarized, more intense, and more toxic than is compatible with human solidarity? A space associated increasingly with toxic forms of political power and risks to the most vulnerable members of society? If so, we need to build a different space of the world, less likely to be toxic and more likely to generate the solidarity and effective cooperation that humanity absolutely needs if it is to have any chance of addressing its huge, shared challenges.
Meet our speakers and chair
Nick Couldry is a sociologist of media and culture, professor emeritus and professorial research fellow at LSE, and a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. He has authored 17 books, including The Mediated Construction of Reality (2016) and Why Voice Matters (2010). His latest books are The Space of the World (2024) and Data Grab (2024). Nick co-founded the Tierra Común network and was awarded the 2025 Dallas Smythe Prize by the Union of Democratic Communications.
Beeban Kidron is a leading voice on children’s rights in the digital environment and a global authority on digital regulation and accountability. She has played a determinative role in establishing standards for online safety and privacy across the world. Baroness Kidron sits as a crossbench peer in the House of Lords. She is an advisor to the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford and Founder of 5Rights Foundation, an international NGO working with and for children for a rights-respecting digital world.
Myria Georgiou (@myriageorgiou) is Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE and Head of the Department of Media and Communications, Professor Georgiou is the author and editor of five books and more than sixty peer reviewed publications. Her work has been published in English, French, Portuguese, Japanese, and Greek. She has also worked as a consultant for a number of regional and international organisations, most importantly the Council of Europe in three different projects.
More about this event
The Department of Media and Communications (@MediaLSE) is a world-leading centre for education and research in communication and media studies at the heart of LSE’s academic community in central London.
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Tamar Gutner is a Professor of International Relations at American University’s School of International Service (SIS), and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development. She is an expert on the performance and effectiveness of international organizations, particularly international financial institutions, and their roles in global and regional governance. Dr. Gutner is the author of The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: China’s Multilateral Experiment (2025), International Organizations in World Politics (2023 and 2016) and Banking on the Environment: Multilateral Development Banks and Their Environmental Performance in Central and Eastern Europe (2002). Her scholarly articles have appeared in journals such as World Development, International Organization, Review of International Organizations, Review of International Political Economy, and Global Environmental Politics.
Professor Gutner previously served as a Council on Foreign Relations fellow at the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office, and her research has been funded by fellowships and grants from The Brookings Institution, MacArthur Foundation, International Studies Association, and American Council of Learned Societies/Social Science Research Council. She is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee.
Professor Gutner holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University.
Gregory T. Chin (PhD, York University) is an Associate Professor of Political Science/Political Economy at York University, Canada, and a Senior Fellow of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University, and of the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. He is Co-Director of the Emerging Global Governance (EGG) Project at Global Policy journal online. He has published widely on the international andc omparative political economy of China, Asia, the BRICS, international money and global finance. Greg worked in the Government of Canada from 2000 to 2007, in Ottawa at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and the Canadian International Development Agency,2000-2003, and as First Secretary at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, 2003-2006.
Álvaro Mendez is the Director of the Global South Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and a Senior Associate Fellow at LSE IDEAS. He is a Full Research Professor at Rey JuanCarlos University in Madrid, working on a project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation that focuses on strategies for internationalisation, innovation, and social responsibility. Prof. Mendez is also an Associate Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), and a Member of the Colombian Council of Foreign Affairs (CORI). He teaches at LSE, Sciences Po Paris, and Fudan University. Ha has won numerous teaching awards, such as the IR Departmental Teaching Prize in recognition of his teaching of International Relations at the LSE, and he has contributed to numerous books as an author, co-author, or editor of numerous books.
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