Register Today For Digital Media at the Crossroads on 9/22
On Thursday, September 22, 2011 Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy will speak on how marketers track online and digital footprints, threats to privacy and dramatic changes in the delivery of news, information and entertainment.
Digital Media at the Crossroads: Content & Control in the Internet Era will be presented at:
- 12 - 2 p.m. at the Congregational Church in Burlington at the 6th Annual Nonprofit Luncheon (co-sponsored with United Way of Chittenden County). $15 in Advance/$20 at the door.
Register here: http://6thannualnpolunch.eventbrite.com/
- 7 - 9 p.m. at Champlain College's Alumni Auditorium (co-sponsored with local free speech organizations including VCAM, RETN, ACLU, Vermont Commons, Vermont State Library Association, Vermont School Library Association and more...) Register here: http://mymediavt.net/
Chester explores the latest developments in technologically advanced personalized data targeting, the role of the leading online marketing companies, new approaches to policy, its impact on diverse and progressive media content, and implications for the future of democracy and human rights.
Jeff Chester is the Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington, DC based organization dedicated to “fostering democratic expression and consumer protection in the digital media era.” He has been referred to by Bill Moyers as the “Paul Revere for the media reform movement.” He brings 20 years of media reform activism and experience from his work promoting the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act to his naming in 2011 as the “Domestic Privacy Champion” by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Learn more about the event here: http://mymediavt.net/
Presented with United Way of Chittenden County, VCAM, RETN & Channel 17/ Town Meeting Television in partnership with CCTV Center for Media & Democracy, ACLU-Vermont, Champlain College/Emergent Media Center, Vermont Library Association, Vermont School Library Association, and UVM Libraries. Media Sponsors include: Seven Days, The Radiator, Front Porch Forum, Vermont Commons, and Big Heavy World
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by Lauren-Glenn Davitian
“An ever-expanding, ubiquitous, and powerful commercial system of digital surveillance has stealthily become part of our daily lives. Watching and assessing our travels, purchases, finances, health, communications wherever we are and wherever we go. Today, citizens have to fear from both the intrusive power wielded by government and large private corporations.” - Jeff Chester
The Brave New World is here. Marketers are tracking your every on-line move and it is time to learn how to protect yourself and your digital future. Largely still invisible, dramatic changes will transform how we receive our news, information and entertainment. While the political debate has focused on protecting our personal privacy from digital data collection, we need to understand the growing, global interactive marketing apparatus that uses our digital “profiles” to determine how we are sold financial products, prescription drugs and even politicians.
Real-time data collection--signaling our economic worth, race, geography and habits of mind will determine what information we receive and who receives it. We all will be given invisible digital "Scarlet Letters" that will signal who and where we are to powerful media companies and advertisers. For many Americans not seen as worthy, we will face new forms of discrimination.
These far-reaching approaches integrate advanced data collection techniques with applications that influence unconscious behavior. All of the leading digital marketing companies and many global advertisers are now using forms of neuromarketing, designed to bypass conscious decision-making, including Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. US companies are also in the forefront of exporting technologies and a business model--known as real-time bidding--where users are bought and sold in milliseconds. Such practices are now found in both the EU and in Asia, including regimes with human rights violations. What impact does this new era of marketing have our lives? What responsibility do we as Americans have for the exporting of technologies of surveillance?
Jeff Chester’s presentation will explore the latest developments in technologically advanced personalized data targeting, the role of the leading online marketing companies, new approaches to policy, its impact on diverse and progressive media content, and implications for the future of democracy and human rights. Learn more about the event here: http://www.MyMediaVT.net