The conference “Philosophical Challenges of Social Networks 2.0: An Interdisciplinary Perspective” is presented as an interdisciplinary meeting. It arises, on the one hand, from the urgent daily need to study a topic that profoundly affects current events: Social Networks 2.0, and on the other hand, from the evident delay of academic philosophy in analyzing the issue. The conference will take place on June 13th at the venue of The Corrala and on June 14th and 15th at the CBA. While the final program is still being finalized and will be uploaded in the coming days, we can already confirm that Eloy Fernández Porta, Remedios Zafra, and Fernando Broncano will be participating on each of those days.
This present congress This interdisciplinary approach arises, on the one hand, from the urgent daily need to study a topic that profoundly permeates current events: social media 2.0, and on the other hand, from the evident delay of academic philosophy in analyzing the issue. This delay has resulted both in a lack of answers, which has facilitated the emergence of, among other things, ethical washing in the corporate world, and in the marginalization of philosophy in multidisciplinary studies in this field. While other branches of knowledge, such as psychology, anthropology, computer science, and sociology, have begun to focus their studies on the implications of these new technologies, the owl of Minerva has once again raised its wings after breaking through the twilight. Certainly, there have been some theoretical precedents for the interdisciplinary analysis of social media. For example, at the national level, we find issue number 91 of the journal TELOSPublished in 2012 and dedicated to digital identity on social networks, and internationally, the compilation *Facebook and Philosophy*, published in 2010, are relevant. However, we find a certain gap in the analysis of this topic in recent years, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to virtuality occupying spaces and roles that were hardly imaginable a decade ago. Furthermore, analyses have been conducted from a philosophical perspective disconnected from other branches of knowledge, committing the same endemic error as research in other areas. In response, we would like to make a concerted effort with other branches of knowledge, extending a hand from philosophy and, in doing so, dignifying it.
Specifically, we want to revisit five lines of research and reinterpret them within the context of contemporary life: (1) the concept of 'digital community' (Castells, The Internet Galaxy, 2001), (2) virtual identity and aesthetics (Barthes, Camera Lucida, 1990), (3) the sustainability of new digital communities (Dreyfus, Online Nihilism, 2002) (Riechmann, Did the Smartphone Defeat the Environmental Movement?, 2016), (4) the epistemic pathologies of social networks (Kidd et al., Vice Epistemology, 2020), and (5) everyday surveillance via screens (Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 2019). In short, at a theoretical level, we want to revisit some reflections made over the last three decades and apply them to the present day from a multidisciplinary perspective. With this, we aspire to restore the relevance of philosophy to such an urgent and current issue and to put it in dialogue with other branches of knowledge.