Jane Fountain, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, will discuss “Deinstitutionalization and Reinstitutionalization in the Virtual State” on Monday, April 5, at 12 p.m. in Thompson 620. Fountain is also the founder and director of the National Center for Digital Government and the director of the UMass Science, Technology and Society Initiative.
Professor Fountain’s talk, part of the Center for Public Policy and Administration’s Spring 2010 Faculty Colloquium, will address current claims that social networking and associated technologies and media have the power to transform government and civil society. These claims emphasize the wisdom of crowds, the power of citizens to solve policy problems, and the extraordinary ability to coordinate and communicate using digital media. However, these claims ignore or discount the role of power, politics, institutions and other core elements of governance.
Fountain is the author of the award-winning Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change, and her research on technology and governance has appeared widely in scholarly journals and edited collections focused on science, technology, and politics and public policy. Fountain’s work has been supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, and a generous gift from PriceWaterhouseCoopers enabled her to establish the Women in the Information Age Project during her tenure at Harvard University, where she served on the faculty of the Kennedy School of Government for 16 years before assuming her position at UMass Amherst.
Fountain is currently a member of the World Economic Forum Global Advisory Council on the Future of Government, as well as the American Bar Association blue ribbon commission on the future of e-Rulemaking. She has served on several advisory bodies for organizations including the Social Science Research Council, the Internet Policy Institute, and the National Science Foundation.
Fountain holds a Ph.D. from Yale University in organizational behavior and political science, and has been a Radcliffe Fellow, a Yale Fellow, and a Mellon Fellow.
Professor Fountain’s talk is free and open to the public. Brownbag lunches are welcome.