Media Futures in Times of Crisis - 4/5 December, UNSW Sydney
Tanja Dreher
‘Media Futures in Times of Crisis’, is a fee-free symposium hosted by the Media Futures Hub based at the School of the Arts and Media, UNSW. Please share with interested colleagues and HDR students and see details below:
Media Futures in Times of Crisis
Date: Thursday 4 December and Friday 5 December
Venue: UNSW Sydney
Keynotes: Oliva Khoo (Monash)
Amy Gaeta & Beryl Pong (Centre for Drones & Culture, Cambridge)
We live in times of compounding and intensifying crisis: climate catastrophe, a genocide in Gaza, a rising fascist tide across the globe, the long crisis of settler colonial invasion and occupation here in Australia, and the exhaustion of growth economies. Media technologies are often posited as a way to out of crisis: artificial intelligence promises productivity gains, automated weapons are presented as more efficient and humane ways to wage war, new imaging tools shed light on the impacts of global warming, increased data collection is positioned as step toward closing the gap and addressing systemic state neglect. At the same time, media platforms and organisations are also often seen as amplifying crises in the midst of an information disorder, the limited and harmful diversity paradigms of legacy media, and the intensification of racial capitalism in newsrooms and production studios. How are we to make sense of the poly-crisis we find ourselves in? And how are we to cut through the hype of the techno-fix?
Media Futures in Times of Crisis confronts these questions across two days of presentations, screenings, and discussions. Presented by the UNSW Media Futures Hub, the symposium seeks to cultivate theory and analysis adequate to the task of understanding the futures we move toward.
Day 1:
Keynote: Oliva Khoo
MFH Stream Panel #1 Media and Social Justice
Title: Working with and beyond diversity in media
Panellists: Pearl Tan, Ruby Hamad, Sarah Malik, Jodi Brooks
Chair: Tanja Dreher
MFH Stream Panel #2 Data Justice
Title: Configurations of Data, Power, and Participation across public domains
Panellists: Scarlet Wilcock, Georgia van Toorn, Rachel Rowe, Tanja Dreher, Justine Humphry
Film Screening
WINHANGANHA, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Jazz Money
Day 2:
Keynote: Beryl Pong & Amy Gaeta
MFH Stream Panel #3 Racial Technologies
Panellists: Thao Phan, Charu Maithani, Sonia Qadir
Chair: Astrid Lorange
MFH Stream Panel #4 Future Technologies
Title: Futuring Technologies in Crisis Times
Panellists: Seamus Byrne (UNSW), Ayesha Akbar (UNSW), Olga Boichak (USyd), Michael Richardson (UNSW)
Chair: Andrew Brooks (UNSW)
Resilience and Resistance in Journalism: An Industry Roundtable
Speakers: Alex McKinnon (Deepcut News), Farid Farid (AAP), Nour Haydar (Guardian), Alan Sunderland (ABC), and Florencia Melgar (SBS News)
Moderator: Ayesha Jehangir
Free Registration Deadline: 31 October 2025
Symposium (incl. film screening): https://events.humanitix.com/media-futures-in-times-of-crisis
Screening only: https://events.humanitix.com/winhanganha-film-screening-and-q-and-a-with-jazz-money
Dr Tanja Dreher (she/her)
Deputy Head of School (Research) | Associate Professor in Media | Co-Director Media Futures Hub
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