Networked Silences: Algorithms and meaning-making in times of climate change - panel debate

Welcome to a public panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities that digital ubiquity and the advancing datafication of society bring to environmental communication. The event is organised by AI Lund and Mistra Environmental Communication and is part of the research symposium Networked Silences. 

Those who seek to understand environmental harms — climate crisis, biodiversity loss, etc. — or finding responses to them, are increasingly doing so in a digital media environment. Here, social media, search engines, recommender systems and generative AI technologies not only help to make things known, but also to obscure them, place sustainable practises outside cultural norms and create ignorance and doubt about legitimate environmental concerns. This includes information disorders and disinformation, but also other forms of ignorance, some of which may be necessary. 

This panel discussion explores the challenges and opportunities of environmental communication in the digital age. What factors and dynamics obscure public knowledge about and responses to environmental harm? And what can be done to address and mitigate them? How can environmental harms be made visible in digital spaces? Are certain silences inevitable or desirable? To explore these and other difficult questions, we have invited a panel of researchers, artists and communication professionals. 

The panel debate is part of the two-day research symposium Networked Silences: Algorithms and meaning-making in times of climate change.