About this Event
About Over the Influence
In Over the Influence: Why Social Media is Toxic for Women and Girls – And How We Can Take It Back, communication professor and CNN Opinion contributor Kara Alaimo demonstrates how social media affects every aspect of the lives of women, girls and nonbinary people —from our relationships and our parenting to our physical and mental wellbeing. Over the Influence is a book about what it means to live in the world social media has wrought – whether you’re constantly connected or have deleted your accounts forever. Alaimo shows why you’re likely to get fewer followers if you’re a woman. She demonstrates how fake news is crafted to prey on women’s vulnerabilities. She reveals why so much of the content we find in our feeds is specifically designed to hold us back. And she explains how social media has made the offline world a far uglier place for women.
But we can change this and reclaim the Internet to empower ourselves. Alaimo offers up brilliant advice for how to get over the influence—how to handle our daughters’ use of social media, use dating apps to find who we’re looking for, use social networks to bolster our careers, and protect ourselves from sextortionists, catfishers and trolls. She also explains what we need to demand from lawmakers and tech companies in order to solve these problems.
Over the Influence calls on women to recognize and call out the subtle (and not-so-subtle) sexism and misogyny we find online, reject misinformation that is targeted to us because of our gender, and use our social platforms to empower ourselves and other women. It will be published on March 5, 2024 — just in time for International Women’s Day.
About Kara Alaimo
Kara Alaimo, PhD is a communication professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She has been writing for CNN Opinion about the social impact of social media and issues affecting women since 2016 and is author of Over the Influence: Why Social Media is Toxic for Women and Girls – And How We Can Take It Back (Alcove, 2024). A former spokesperson in the Obama administration and communicator at the United Nations, she lives in New Jersey with her family.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Annenberg School for Communication, Walnut Street, Philadelphia, United States
USD 0.00