Visiting from the Copenhagen Business School, Fulbright scholar Mikkel Flyverbom arrived at SC&I this fall. On Oct. 28 at 1:30 p.m., Flyverbom will present his latest research on digital transformations and the management of visibilities in SC&I room 323.

The talk will focus on his latest book, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. The book primarily focuses on transparency and how people increasingly expect organizations, individuals, and societies to share information. Transparency projects often start from a simple formula: if organizations disclose information we can see what things are really like, and the result will be better accountability and governance.

Flyverbom’s take on transparency is that it’s not that simple. Rather, he looks at the paradoxes and dynamics of transparency efforts and calls for a focus on the ‘management of visibilities’.

“It’s not like a window where you can look into an organization, it’s a matter of organizations choosing what to share, what to hide, what to highlight, and what to make invisible,” Flyverbom said.

In addition to the topic of transparency, his primary research areas include global internet governance, big data and governance, the internet industry, corporate advocacy, and networks. While there are many reasons Flyverbom chose to continue his research at Rutgers, the main reason was SC&I’s diversity in subject matters.

“SC&I is one of the few places where you have people working across different types of disciplines that have to do with communication and information,” Flyverbom said. “There’s an intersection of communication with information science, library studies, media studies…and I think that’s fairly unique.”

Flyverbom said he is grateful for the Fulbright scholarship that made it possible for him to come to SC&I, be part of the community, and continue to develop his research on an international scale.