Information Policy and Power in the Informational State with Sandra Brahman March 12, 2007

ABSTRACT
While information policy is among the most ancient forms of governance,
there has been a phase change—a change of state—in the extent to which
governments exercise power by deliberately, explicitly, and consistently
controlling information creation, processing, flows, and use. Changes in
the law, in the subject of the law, and in how we think about the law
can result in a change in the very nature of the state itself because
the institutions, processes, and policies of any given political form
are but a moment of stability within a much wider, more diffuse, and
constantly shifting policy field. Three types of knowledge must be
brought together to understand just how this change of state has come
about and what it means for the exercise of power domestically and
globally: In addition to knowledge of the law itself, research on the
empirical world provides evidence about the policy subject (the world
for which information policy is made) and social theory provides an
analytical foundation. Bringing these types of knowledge together makes
visible trends in the /identities/ of the state and of its citizens;
social, technological, and informational /structures; / the /borders/ of
those structures; and the ways in which those structures /change/. This
talk will explore ways in which currents in information policy across
traditional legal silos combine to affect society in each of these
areas, looking both at the U.S. as a case and global resonances with
these trends.

BIO
Sandra Braman has been doing research on the macro-level effects of
digital technologies and their policy implications for over two decades.
Recent work includes _Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power_
(MIT Press, 2006) and the edited volumes _The Emergent Global
Information Policy Regime_ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), _Biotechnology
and Communication: The Meta-Technologies of Information_ (Erlbaum,
2004), and _Communication Researchers and Policy-Making_ (MIT Press, 2003).
See: www.uwm.edu/~braman

Official Website: http://www3.fis.utoronto.ca/research/inforights/