#rp19 speaker Hossein Derakhshan: "News is dying."

Hossein Derakhshan is an Iranian-Canadian writer and researcher, as well as a pioneer of blogging, podcasts and tech journalism in Iran. He is currently a research associate at the MIT Media Lab. He co-authored the report Information Disorder, commissioned by the Council of Europe and published by Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, on the theory and practice of what is known as ‘fake news’.

He spent six years in prison in Iran from 2008 until 2014. Upon his release, Derakhshan wrote an essay on the demise of blogs titled “The Web We Have to Save” and also one about television in prison titled “Television’s Reinvention and the Era of Post-Enlightenment”. He was also a keynote speaker at the Republica 2016 where he spoke about “Post-Web Internet: Is This (The Future) of Television?”

The title of Hossein's session at #rp19 is "Goodbye News, Hello Drama: Post-News Journalism and Democracy".

tl;dr - 3 questions to ... Hossein Derakshan.

"News is dying. Journalism has to reinvent itself around drama instead of news to stay relevant to democracies — It has already started."

1. What are you currently working on that will be part of your talk at re:publica?
The future of journalism.


2. This year's motto is 'tl;dr' (too long, didn't read). Is there a topic you care about that particularly suffers from oversimplification and abbreviation?
Media effect theory: Both politicians and the public think media impacts the society the way viruses infect bodies. It is wrong and only incites censorship.


3. In the spirit of tl;dr: What are your recent must-reads/must-watches?
Michael Schudson: The Sociology of News
James Carey: A critical reader

Jim McGuigan: Raymond Williams on Culture and Society: Essential Writings.
Neil Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death

Find Hossein Derakhshan's #rp19 session here.

Links
> hoder.com
> On Twitter @h0d3r
> On Facebook
> On Medium @h0d3r