2015 I.T. Littleton Seminar

Zeynep Tufekci, Assistant Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at UNC, will present on the theme "Social Interaction, especially as it relates to the library's role in building and sustaining communities, documenting diverse participation in social engagement and social media." The seminar will be held between 3-4 p.m. in the James B. Hunt Jr. Library Auditorium, followed by a reception in Duke Energy Hall at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library.

Tufecki is an assistant professor in the School of Information and Library Science at UNC where she teaches courses such as "Social Movements and New Media" and "Social Media and Society: A Theoretical and Empirical Overview." She is also a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University and a faculty associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She has been a contributor to Medium, The Atlantic and Digital Media and Learning Central on media and technology issues. She has described her research interests as "the social impacts of technology, theorizing the web, gender, research methods, inequality and social media." Tufecki has been a frequent speaker at conferences including Theorizing the Web 2013, TEDGlobal 2014, Personal Democracy Forum 2014, BRITE 2012, and the Niels Bohr Conference 2013.  Earlier this year, she was named one of the 100 Most Influential Tech People On Twitter by the Business Insider. Tufekci has recently been honored as inaugural 2015 Andrew Carnegie Fellows by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The link describes her work (and thus our lecture) as focused on the "social impacts of technology and how digital and computational technology interact with social, political and cultural dynamics."

The I.T. Littleton Seminar is presented by the NCSU Librarians' Association. The annual event, funded by an endowment established in 1987 to explore key issues in the development of academic libraries and to honor former Library Director Littleton, is free and open to the public.