UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Sounds can be much more than just something people hear, and the power of that “sonic data” can be used to identify, to persuade and to shape actions and reactions.
Researcher and social scientist Jasmine McNealy will focus on those actions and reactions during a free public lecture titled “Sound/Off: Data, Persuasion and Regulation” at 4:30 p.m. March 11 in Kern Auditorium on the University Park campus.
McNealy will address the cognitive and emotive power of sonic data, which has increasingly been used as part of people’s interactions with systems that are used to make inferences and predictions about the behavior of those same people. The talk examines the role that sonic data is playing in people’s mediated interactions and how policymakers can and should begin to regulate these interactions.
McNealy is an attorney, critical public interest technologist and social scientist who studies emerging media and technology with a view toward influencing law and policy. Her research emphasizes technological ecosystems, privacy, surveillance and data governance.
She is a senior fellow in tech policy with the Mozilla Foundation, an associate professor at the University of Florida and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
The annual Pockrass Memorial Lecture is named after the late Professor Robert M. Pockrass, a member of Penn State’s journalism faculty from 1948 to 1977. Pockrass, who specialized in public opinion and popular culture, served as the graduate officer and taught radio news writing for the School of Journalism, which became the College of Communications and, later, the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications.