PODCAST: “Freedom and the Internet”: A Podcast Series from the BMBF Project “ReDICo”

“Freedom and the Internet” is the name of the Podcast series from “ReDICo: The Podcast for Digital Interculturality”. In light of the “Wissenschaftsjahr Freiheit”, scientists from the ReDICo project reflect on the Internet, how it is evolving, and how digital platforms may hinder freedom but also provide spaces in which freedoms can be realised. #Wissenschaftsjahr

“Freedom and the Internet” is the name of the first series of “ReDICo: The Podcast for Digital Interculturality”. In the first episode, “The Patchwork of Platforms”, Fergal Lenehan and Yolanda López García explore how digitality can be viewed anew from the perspective of platformization, posdigitality and agentive fragments, and how these structures mould our freedom on the Internet. In the second episode, “The Fundamental Error”, Luisa Conti and Roman Lietz explore how individuals and communities are evolving in a postdigital and globalized society, discussing the potential and limits of the freedom of movement and expression online. In the third episode, Anna Finzel and activist Bisi Alimi build on the first two episodes and discuss the challenging situation of the LGBTQI+ community in Nigeria, the critical role that online communities play for marginalized individuals, and how social media platforms, such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, have become spaces of freedom for the LGBTQI+ community in Nigeria.

The BMBF financed project “ReDICo: Researching Digital Interculturality Co-operatively” sought to bring Intercultural Communication and Internet Studies, as interdisciplinary fields, closer together in order to realise a paradigm shift in the common understanding of both Intercultural Communication – as a daily experience – and the Internet – as a ubiquitous technology and, thus, also a daily experience. Reflecting on this new world of digital interculturality and how it relates to freedom opens up this discussion and highlights its everyday relevance.