OII’s Wednesday Webinar Week 5 'Root Systems, Land Cultivation, and Hurricanes: The Benefits and Limitations of Applying Ecological Metaphors to Information Dysfunction'
The OII welcomes Professor Whitney Phillips, and Dr Ryan M. Milner, hosted by Felix M. Simon a Leverhulme Doctoral Scholar student at the OII.

You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and Our Polluted Information Landscape, co-authored by Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner, employs a series of ecological metaphors to describe our present information landscape and to explain the various network changes that brought us to this moment. While these metaphors provide a useful, inclusive entry-point into pressing ethical and political issues, they also pose some methodological challenges. This talk will discuss both the positives and the negatives of metaphor as argument. It will also discuss how and why Phillips and Milner chose to translate You Are Here’s metaphors into a children’s book.
Date: 17 February 2021, 17:00 (Wednesday, 5th week, Hilary 2021)
Venue: Venue to be announced
Speakers: Professor Whitney Phillips (Syracuse University), Felix M. Simon (Oxford Internet Institute), Dr Ryan M.Milner (College of Charleston)
Organising department: Oxford Internet Institute
Organiser contact email address: events@oii.ox.ac.uk
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://oii.zoom.us/webinar/register/7816100355371/WN_9c9a6G0jSMi4fvDmPlAS4A
Cost: FREE
Audience: Public
Editors: Isabelle Malcolm, Flora Seddon