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A conversation between cultural historian and media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan and President Michelle J. Anderson. The two discussed social media and AI, and their role in politics.
October 15, 2024
A conversation between cultural historian and media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan and President Michelle J. Anderson. The two discussed social media and AI, and their role in the 2024 election cycle and the politics beyond.
Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia.
He is the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (2018), Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction (2017), The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) (2011),Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity ( 2001), and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (2004). He also co-edited (with Carolyn Thomas) the collection Rewiring the “Nation”: The Place of Technology in American Studies (2007).
He co-hosts the award-winning podcast Democracy in Danger. Vaidhyanathan is a columnist for The Guardian and has written for many other periodicals, including The New York Times, Wired, The New Republic, Bloomberg View, American Scholar, Reason, Dissent, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times Magazine, Slate.com, BookForum, Columbia Journalism Review, The Washington Post, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times Book Review, and The Nation. He is a frequent contributor to public radio programs. He has appeared on news programs on ABC, BBC, CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC, and on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart on Comedy Central.
In 2015 he was portrayed on stage at the Public Theater in a play called Privacy.
After five years as a professional journalist, he earned a Ph.D. in American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Vaidhyanathan has also taught at Wesleyan University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Columbia University, New York University, McMaster University, and the University of Amsterdam.
He is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and a faculty associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He was born and reared in Buffalo, New York, and resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.
