Nik Gowing - Visiting Speaker
Nik Gowing, Presenter for BBC World, gave a guest lecture on Monday 16th November 2009, at 5.30 pm in Keynes Lecture Theatre 6.
Title of lecture: Skyful of Lies and Black Swans: who controls shifting information power in sudden crises?
Nik Gowing, main presenter for BBC World News, will present details of his new peer-reviewed analysis of how in moments of major, unexpected crisis the institutions of power - whether political, governmental, military or corporate – face a new, acute vulnerability of both their influence and effectiveness.
Nik's study for the Reuters Institute at Oxford University analyses the new fragility and brittleness of those institutions, and the profound impact upon them from a fast proliferating and almost ubiquitous breed of ‘information doers’. Empowered by current, cheap lightweight, ‘go anywhere’ technologies available to all, they have an unprecedented mass ability to bear witness. The result is a new matrix of real-time information flows and transparency that challenges mercilessly the inadequacy of the structures of power to respond both with effective impact and in a timely way.
Abroad the recent protests in Iran and China and in the UK the G 20 protests last April are merely the latest confirmation of the phenomenon Nik has identified. Exponential technological changes are redefining, broadening and fragmenting the media landscape in dramatic ways.This is affecting both long standing assumptions about the nature of the media in a crisis and the nature of power because the effectiveness of existing structures and their relations with the public is perceived as inadequate.
The relentless and unforgiving trend towards an ever greater information transparency is subverting the effectiveness of traditional structures of power. It also calls into question institutional assumptions that as organs of power they will function efficiently and with public confidence.
Story Published on 20 November 2009