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Drake lecture to explore Facebook, intellectual property

CONTACT: Tory Olson, 515-271-1834, tory.olson@drake.edu

Facebook and intellectual property will be the topic of a Drake University lecture Friday, Feb. 26, by media expert Andrew Herman of Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Herman, associate professor and chair of communication studies and faculty in the graduate program in cultural analysis and social theory, will deliver his talk at 3:30 p.m. It is free and open to the public and will be held in the Honors Lounge of Medbury Hall, 2730 Forest Ave.

In his lecture, “Cultural Policy and the Intellectual Properties of Web 2.0,” Herman will explore cultural policies of intellectual property — in the digital sense — through his study of Facebook. He has studied the controversies in spring 2009 between Facebook and users over the policies that govern creative personal work on the social networking site.

Herman, who is working on a book about digital media, intellectual property and cultural policy, has published many works on social theory, media and culture. He taught full-time at Drake from the fall of 1992 to 2002 and was associate professor of sociology.

He is the author of “Better Angels of Capitalism: Rhetoric, Narrative and Moral Identity Among Men of the American Upper Class” and co-editor of “Mapping the Beat: Popular Music and Contemporary Cultural Theory” and “The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory.”

The lecture is sponsored by the Drake University Center for the Humanities and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

For more information, contact Joseph Schneider at joseph.schneider@drake.edu.