Getting ready for #smwcph, Social Media Week in Copenhagen

Dear all,
The Social Media Week in Copenhagen is about to start and I will be involved in two very interesting and also very different events on Tuesday and Thursday, the 18th and 20th.
Since there is a chance that new visitors will stumble across the blog, I want to welcome you warmly by providing some background information on my recent projects, research and teaching to give you a better sense of the content behind the short and condensed presentations.  

Social Media and International Development - Communication for Social Change in the Digital Age

The abstract does not adequately reflect what Roskilde University researcher Lene Bull Christiansen, start-up entrepreneur Jakob Vahr Svennignsen and me are going to talk about. Essentially, we are introducing our GoComm (#GoComm) initiative for the Öresund region.
A recent event in Copenhagen sparked some initial reflections on the challenges of Technology for Development (T4D) that GoComm can hopefully explore in more detail.

So what is GoComm about?

The GoComm project brings together the global expertise of two partner universities in the Öresund region to connect better with local initiatives, organisations and individuals on innovative international development ideas, concepts or projects. Malmö University’s School of Arts and Communication and Roskilde University’s Department of Communication, Business and Information Technologies have been active in international communication for development research, teaching and advisory projects for many years. Focusing on communication, development and media studies both universities have build up a global network of partners, including UN organizations and universities in all five continents.
Since 2008 Malmö University and Roskilde University have started to cooperate closely in the Öresund region in their jointly managed Örecomm Centre for Communication and Glocal Change. The GoComm initiative will focus on bringing global expertise and local Danish and Swedish development initiatives into contact to ensure knowledge sharing as well as creating a critical and constructive forum for dialogue. These dialogues will look beyond traditional development cooperation models and link academia to emerging ideas from the public and private sphere, including (social) entrepreneurs, start-up companies, volunteer efforts and new hybrid models of global engagement.
Communication for Development at a Crossroads –The Challenge of Social Movements

The second event is part of the UN's social media week activities. The program at UN City looks really interesting and all events will be live-streamed as well. 
Thomas Tufte, Tobias Denskus and Norbert Wildermuth have all agreed to present their latest research regarding role and use of social media amongst social movements, within civil society and amongst established organisations, i.e. the UN. New media developments and massive civic engagement using the social media are sparking new dynamics and new challenges into the way communication for development is conceived and performed.
I will present my research on development blogging, Twitter and the UN MDG Summit and fresh insights from a recent project on TED development talks that is not available online yet!

 I also want to take this opportunity to share a few recent presentations from my exciting 'day job' as Senior Lecturer in Communication for Development at Malmö University. They are academic presentations on development theory, peacebuilding policy-making as well as a slightly less academic one on social media from a recent seminar at Sida in Stockholm.
They are part of our courses for the online, part-time MA in Communication for Development and hopefully convey some excitement teachers and students experience about critical thinking, analysing development from theoretical, historical and communicative backgrounds and working on the future of Communication for Development (C4D)! 

 From social media to social change? Insights into digital development trends


Discourses, representations, organisations – discursive policy-making and the rise and rise of liberal peacebuilding

Seven decades of development? A short introduction to some of the big concepts of post-war development theory


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