Conference on Social Media in Kuwait University - Regional Programme Gulf States
The Department of Philosophy at the College of Arts in Kuwait University together with the Regional Program Gulf States, held a one-day conference in Kuwait on social media. Entitled “Social Network Sites: Theoretical Frameworks and Application Issues”, the conference contained five sessions that addressed questions related to the effect of social media on people’s freedom, identity, culture, psychology, and political activism. Each session was composed of social scientists and media experts from the MENA region and Europe.
In his opening remarks to the conference, Dr. Abdullah Al-Hajri, the Acting Dean of the College of Arts, asserted that “the college of art was keen to benefit from electronic communication programs during the Corona pandemic, as its various departments organized many conferences and seminars online.” He also emphasized the importance of the conference as it “brings together a group of philosophers and thinkers from inside and outside Kuwait, to discuss an issue of great importance and danger, which is the issue of unlimited freedom produced by the social network sites.”
In his turn, Mr. Frank Neumann, the deputy head of the German mission to Kuwait thanked the organizers for choosing a topic that is often considered controversial. He also stressed the importance of developing recommendations “on how to navigate the social media world successfully in the future.” Reflecting on how social media impacted the public diplomacy of the German Embassy in Kuwait, Mr. Neumann said “we are not restricting ourselves to increase the number of likes and followers – we are aiming now to relay a positive image of Germany in Kuwait, to transport government views or lobby for joint actions, to connect people from our two countries to achieve a better understanding for each other, and to offer a direct platform of dialogue previously reserved for governments to the people of Kuwait and Germany.” He also noted the challenges created by social media “that warrant our immediate attention, from possible violations of user rights and infringements on our privacy to the fake news that leads to the butterfly effect.”
For his part, the Head of the Department of Philosophy and Professor of Contemporary Political Philosophy at Kuwait University, Dr. Muhammad Al-Wuhaib, emphasized that sociologists have identified three main forces linking successful democracies: the social capital provided by broad social networks with high levels of trust; strong state institutions; and stories shared by people. He pointed out that the biggest challenge facing any appeal to common sense today is that most political rulings and opinions divide society to the extent that polarization has become a sign of our political dialogues, and “that pervasive polarization in our political world has been exacerbated by the means of communication in the past decade, such as Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms.”
Originally, the conference was planned for days, but the death of the UAE’s president and the declaration of three days of mourning in Kuwait has forced the organizers to group all the conference’s sessions in one day. However, on the evening of May 15th, Dr. Mohammad Alwuhaib organized at his Diwaniah a presentation to Dr. Anes Amor from the Higher Institute of Human Sciences in Tunis entitled “translation and social media” which was attended by the conference speakers and many guests.
The concept note of the conference and its program are attached.
