Aendra Rininsland

We are living through a tumultuous time for the world’s information ecosystem, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the social media space. Between platforms being weaponised by reactionary forces and the resulting legislative blowback from governmental bodies, social media has never before been so politicised.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the decentralised microblogging space, with Bluesky and other networks subject to everything from age verification laws to thinly-veiled threats by American conservative politicians. Yet, perhaps decentralisation is a route by which we can start building a better social media, one that is more user-centric and prioritises social needs over the profit of large corporations.

In this topic we can analyse Blacksky, Eurosky and Northsky as alternative futures for social media, and why data sovereignty is increasingly important for how we structure these information webs.

I’ve worked in traditional media organisations my entire career and they’re weird places.

Understanding the economics of the industry (as well as the motivations of the people working in it) is helpful for illuminating why the media does what it does.

This topic considers moral panics in the UK as a lens through which to view historical behaviours of the press from the 1950s to present day.

Bluesky and Mastodon are emergent microblogging platforms designed to reduce the centralisation of power in the social media ecosystem. Bluesky especially is notable due to its large userbase and wide adoption by the world’s media. This topic will discuss similarities and differences between these two technologies, as well as those between decentralised and traditional social media. Opportunities for innovation and expansion within these spaces will also be discussed.

I run the bimonthly atproto.london meetup here at Newspeak House as well as co-host Journalism Technology London, also at Newspeak House. If you want to build something cool in the ATProto space, I can absolutely help you with that!

Visual design is increasingly a major part of how we understand the world, with data visualisation being a primary lens through which the general public understands the myriad data produced by governments and organisations.

This topic covers basic principles of visual design in relation to data visualisation, what pitfalls to avoid, and why we all have a shared responsibility to visualise data honestly and accurately.

Moderation is more than the sum of the decisions made by community management teams on social media platforms — it is ultimately the social contract that upholds norms within online spaces, and with that comes a great degree of power to define goals and borders of those spaces. In a sense, moderation is the politics of the online domain.

This topic is about the various approaches to moderation, including Bluesky’s composable moderation via 3rd party labellers, and the Fediverse’s approach of independently moderated islands that are part of a decentralised ecosystem.

Get started with data journalism by interrogating datasets and using Freedom Of Information (FOI) requests to investigate public bodies.

I can walk you through filing your first FOI via WhatDoTheyKnow.com, how to search data.gov.uk, and what to do when you finally get that data loaded into a spreadsheet application.