Turkey held its municipal elections on March 31, 2024. Beyond their immediate importance for local governance, addressing issues such as urban spaces and environmental challenges, these elections hold broader significance for the challenge of democracy in a nation that has been grappling with competitive authoritarianism for a while. Nowhere is this significance more pronounced than in the race for Istanbul's mayorship. Istanbul, being the commercial and cultural heart of Turkey, witnessed a landmark double victory by the opposition candidate five years ago, shaking the economic infrastructure of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)'s governance model. What do these elections signify for the future of democracy, at both local and national levels, in Turkey? Stanford scholars on Turkey will engage in a dialogue with Gönül Tol to explore the implications of the March 31 local elections.

This event is co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the Middle Eastern Studies Forum, and CDDRL's Program on Turkey.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Gönül Tol is the founding director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey program and a senior fellow with the Black Sea Program. She is the author of Erdoğan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria. She has taught courses at George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies and at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University on Turkey, Islamist movements in Western Europe, world politics, and the Middle East. She has written extensively on Turkey-U.S. relations, Turkish domestic and foreign policy, and the Kurdish issue. She is a frequent media commentator.

Join the Cyber Policy Center on April 9th from Noon–1PM Pacific with speaker Ronald E. Robertson for Disentangling User Choice and Algorithmic Curation in Online Systems. The session will be moderated by Jeff Hancock, co director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, and is part of the Spring Seminar Series, a series spanning April through June hosted at the Cyber Policy Center. Sessions are in-person and virtual, via Zoom and streamed via YouTube, with in-person attendance offered to Stanford affiliates only. Lunch is provided for in-person attendance and registration is required. Sessions will take place in Encina Commons, Moghadam Room 123, 615 Crothers Way on Stanford Campus.

Widespread concerns about the systems that mediate our access to online information are often discussed in metaphorically compelling but operationally limited terms. Among the most prominent of such concerns, are the loosely defined concepts known as echo chambers, filter bubbles, and rabbit holes, all of which focus on the role that online systems play in spreading partisan, unreliable, or extremist information. In this talk Robertson examines how these concepts, and concerns about the impact of online systems more broadly, can be better understood and measured in terms of user choice (what people do) and algorithmic curation (what people see). To do so, he provides an overview of research that examines user choice and algorithmic curation in isolation and under controlled conditions, as well as recent research that examines how humans and algorithms interact under ecological conditions. Robertson will also discuss the implications that the findings from these studies have for researchers and policy makers, the challenges presented by new and ever-evolving systems for accessing online information, and the need for independent, ongoing, and long-term research to better understand how people interact with online systems.

About the Speaker

Ronald designs experiments and software to study the ways in which humans and algorithms interact in digital spaces, especially as they pertain to online information seeking. He is currently a research scientist at the Stanford Internet Observatory and obtained his PhD in Network Science from Northeastern University, where he was advised by Christo Wilson, a computer scientist, and David Lazer, a political scientist. His research aims to help us better understand the intersection of user choice, algorithmic curation, and choice architecture in online platforms including web search engines and social media sites and has been published in top journals, including Nature, Science Advances, PNAS, and in conference proceedings, such as the Proceedings of the ACM: Human-Computer Interaction, the Proceedings of the Web Conference (WWW), and Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM).

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey's pugnacious president, is now the country's longest-serving leader. On his way to the top, he has fought many wars. This book tells the story of those battles against domestic enemies through the lens of the Syrian conflict, which has become part and parcel of Erdoğan's fight to remain in power.

Turkey expert Gönül Tol traces Erdoğan's ideological evolution from a conservative democrat to an Islamist and a Turkish nationalist, and explores how this progression has come to shape his Syria policy, changing the course of the war. She paints a vivid picture of the president's constantly shifting strategy to consolidate his rule, showing that these shifts have transformed Turkey's role in post-uprising Syria from an advocate of democracy, to a power fanning the flames of civil war, to an occupier.

From the first days of Erdoğan's rule through the failed coup against him, via the Kurdish peace process, the Arab uprisings and the refugee crisis, this compelling, authoritative book tells the story of one man's quest to remain in power--tying together the fates of two countries, and changing them both forever.

This event is co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the Middle Eastern Studies Forum, and CDDRL's Program on Turkey.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gönül Tol is the founding director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey program and a senior fellow with the Black Sea Program. She is the author of Erdogan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria. She has taught courses at George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies and at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University on Turkey, Islamist movements in Western Europe, world politics, and the Middle East.She has written extensively on Turkey-U.S. relations, Turkish domestic politics, and foreign policy and the Kurdish issue. She is a frequent media commentator.

Image

This talk examines the concept of aesthetic perfection against the backdrop of today’s digital mediascape, where the latest screen technologies promise sharp, pristine images with lossless compression and a lifelike appearance. While, in Hito Steyerl’s account, the circulation of “poor” or “imperfect” images can disrupt hegemonic media logics, I demonstrate that the very ideal of perfection is an engine of semantic instability in the modern age. Intervening in contemporary debates about “rich” and “poor” images, and “high” and “low” definition, my lecture offers a differentiated and historically dynamic understanding of perfection as a limit concept in global film and media theory. I argue that moving images played a crucial role in the redefinition of perfection, as classical conceptions of the term gradually and unevenly gave way to perfectionism, perfectibility, and an aesthetics of imperfection. Integrating Reinhart Koselleck’s method of conceptual history into the study of moving images, my talk reconceives the history of global film and media theory as one of semantic persistence, change, and radical novelty of meaning.

Nicholas Baer is Assistant Professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley, with affiliations in Film & Media, Critical Theory, and Jewish Studies. He is author of Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism (University of California Press, 2024) and co-editor of three volumes: The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933 (University of California Press, 2016), Unwatchable (Rutgers University Press, 2019), and Technics: Media in the Digital Age (Amsterdam University Press, 2024).

This event is hosted by the Stanford Humanities Center and co-sponsored by The Europe Center.

Join the Cyber Policy Center on May 7th from Noon–1PM Pacific with speaker Olivier Blazy, of Ecole Polytechnique, for Online Age Verification and Privacy Protection: An Impossible Equation? The session will be moderated by Florence G'sell of the Program on Governance of Emerging Technologies at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, and is part of the Spring Seminar Series, a series spanning April through June hosted at the Cyber Policy Center. Sessions are in-person and virtual, via Zoom and streamed via YouTube, with in-person attendance offered to Stanford affiliates only. Lunch is provided for in-person attendance and registration is required. Sessions will take place in Encina Commons, Moghadam Room 123, 615 Crothers Way on Stanford Campus.

The internet, often described as a vast and unruly wilderness, presents a universal challenge: maintaining safety and order. A key concern is the protection of children online, specifically through restricting their access to sensitive content. Various methods of online age verification have been attempted, ranging from highly intrusive techniques to those that are less effective.

In this presentation, Blazy will delve into the common pitfalls associated with traditional age verification methods both in term of safety, and security, and will then introduce a new framework developed in collaboration with the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) and PEReN. This framework utilizes readily available technologies and offers a practical implementation approach. Finally Blazy will discuss how this proof of concept not only addresses specific challenges but also aligns with current legislative measures, and expectations while contributing to a safer and more privacy-friendly digital environment. 

About the Speaker

Professor at Ecole Polytechnique, and leader of their newest Cybersecurity program, Olivier Blazy has worked in the field of cryptography for 15 years from a PhD on zero-knowledge and implicits proofs of knowledge to post quantum cryptosystems and study of real-work schemes for secure end-to-end communications. He was involved in several major projects on identity-based cryptography, and post-quantum cryptography, which lead to several submission to the NIST standardization process, including 2 (of the 3) alternative finalists. Recently, he worked with the french Data Protection Authority (CNIL) on an age verification proof of concept to serve as a baseline for guidance of new french (and hopefully european) legislation. Before joining Ecole Polytechnique as a Professor, Olivier was an assistant professor in University of Limoges, and did a post doctorate in Germany.Throughout his career, he worked with several companies and government entities to bridge the gap between cutting-edge academic cryptography and practical deployment to help solve complex challenges in securing digital communications.

Join the Cyber Policy Center on April 30th from Noon–1PM Pacific for Screen Struggles and Screen Delight: Is Social Media Sabotaging or Saving Adolescent Mental Health? with speaker Patti Valkenburg, Distinguished Professor of Communication at the University of Amsterdam and founder and director of Center for research on Children, Adolescents, and the Media. The seminar will be moderated by Jeff Hancock, co director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, and is part of the Spring Seminar Series, a series spanning April through June hosted at the Cyber Policy Center. Sessions are in-person and virtual, via Zoom and streamed via YouTube, with in-person attendance offered to Stanford affiliates only. Lunch is provided for in-person attendance and registration is required. Sessions will take place in Encina Commons, Moghadam Room 123, 615 Crothers Way on Stanford Campus.

Social media can be a source of joy and happiness for some adolescents but a trigger for sadness and depression in others. Why is that? In 2018, Patti Valkenburg and her team launched Project AWeSome—Adolescents, Well-being & Social Media—to explore the complex relationship between social media use and mental health. Pioneering a person-specific (or N=1) media effects approach, they combined qualitative in-depth interviews with large-scale longitudinal data analysis to understand how social media's impact on well-being differs from adolescent to adolescent. Both their qualitative and quantitative findings challenge common hypotheses about the impact of social media on well-being. In this seminar, Valkenburg will delve into these findings, discussing whose mental health is most likely affected by social media use and why. Her presentation will conclude by outlining future research directions that will further our understanding of social media’s role in adolescent lives.

About the Speaker:

A University Distinguished Professor at the University of Amsterdam, Patti Valkenburg’s research focuses on the impact of (social) media on youth and adults. She is particularly interested in theorizing, studying, and demonstrating how individuals differ in their susceptibility to the effects of (social) media. Her Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model, published in the Journal of Communication, has served as a theoretical basis for numerous academic publications, and it is taught in communication classes globally. An informative video clip from the University of Amsterdam explains her model and serves as a resource for undergraduate courses.

Valkenburg’s scholarly contributions have been recognized with multiple grants and awards. Notably, she was the first social scientist to receive the Dutch Spinoza Award, the most esteemed academic accolade in the Netherlands, accompanied by a grant of 2.5 million euros free to spend on research. Her recognitions also include an Advanced Investigator Grant from the European Research Council and the Steven Chaffee Career Achievement Award from the International Communication Association (ICA). She has been honored with fellowships from the ICA, Association for Psychological Science, and Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her commitment to accessible knowledge is evident in her open-access book, Plugged In, published by Yale University Press and translated into various languages.

Another turn to the right or more of the same?

Voters in the twenty-seven member states of the European Union head to the polls in early June to elect a new European Parliament for the next five years. Can we expect another victory for the populist right, as we have witnessed in so many recent elections throughout the world? In this talk we discuss the balance of power and policy achievements of the outgoing Parliament, and look ahead at the results we can expect in June. We further consider the implications of the widely expected sharp turn to the right for the functioning of the Parliament and EU policy making. 

Christophe Crombez is a political economist who specializes in European Union (EU) politics and business-government relations in Europe. His research focuses on EU institutions and their impact on policies, EU institutional reform, lobbying, party politics, and parliamentary government. 

Crombez is Senior Research Scholar at The Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University (since 1999). He is also Professor of Political Economy at the Faculty of Economics and Business at KU Leuven in Belgium (since 1994). Crombez obtained a B.A. in Applied Economics, Finance, from KU Leuven, and a Ph.D. in Business, Political Economics, from Stanford University.

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by May 2, 2024.