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How do established elites react to political challengers? In his Inaugural Lecture, Professor Joost van Spanje will discuss three types of elite responses to challenger politicians, and share his empirical findings on the effects of these responses on citizens in contemporary Europe.
At 5pm on Thursday 26 October 2023, Lecture Theatre, Founder’s Building, Royal Holloway, University of London
PROGRAMME
TUESDAY 16 MAY 2023
9.30-10.30
Registration and Breakfast
10.30-12.15
Early Career Researchers Workshop
Fresh Perspectives and Research Projects
Chair > Scott Downham, Royal Holloway
Discussant
Prof Ben O’Loughlin, Director of Newpolcom
Presentations
Scott Downham, Royal Holloway
How only some Citizens are Socialised into Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers. The Implications for Agency on Digital Platforms
Particularly since the shock popularity and victories of Brexit and Donald Trump, there has been concern that citizens, en masse, exist in democratically dysfunctional ideological bubbles, where they only hear likeminded perspectives. This can occur especially online, via personalisation algorithms of digital platforms like search engines and social media. Nonetheless, researchers now contest the extent of these bubbles. This study therefore explores specific causes and effects of ‘embubblement’ in one marginal and perhaps high-risk group, young people. They are considered more impressionable, and more get their news online. This mixed-methods digital ethnography contains a 10-wave cohort study, diary study hybrid. One day a month for 10 months, participants aged 16-18 (n=20) captured any political communication they encountered or did, across all mediums online and in-person. They primarily made phone screen recordings, but could also use photo, video, sound recording and writing. Findings strengthen the literature’s emerging consensus, overturning the dystopian filter bubble narrative. The research question explores what is causing embubblement. Participants are in these bubbles only to a small degree, except when dominated by very specific structural factors, ‘socialising agents’, across: family, peers, education, media and events. For instance, it could be said that digital media works to embubble citizens; keeping citizens reliant on them, not any competitors, to maximise profit, exemplified by ‘walled garden’ news mobile apps. On social media, primarily TikTok, personalisation algorithms work to embubble users; to keep users consuming content to generate revenue. Political actors, especially TikTok influencers, do likewise, to spread their ideologies or win elections. For this minority of citizens to reclaim agency, resist embubblement from data commodification, and find a path back to the public sphere, one main policy recommendation is to strengthen the UK’s limited political and digital literacy provision, to enable open-minded deliberation.
Hugh Hammond, Royal Holloway
Thought and Body in Platform Labour
Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capitalism identifies a separation between ideal and material work as constitutive of the labour process of what he calls monopoly capitalism. Ideal work refers to conceptualising how labour could be carried out, while the material work denotes the process of carrying out labour. It is this ideal/material split of labour, with management taking hold of the ideal realm and cutting off workers from their capacity to think about their own labour process, that Braverman asserts is key to capitalism’s degradation of worker agency. It is notable then that platform labour requires the worker to think about aspects of their own labour: the feedback mechanisms employed by platforms direct workers’ attentions to specific aspects of their performance (for example, an Uber or Deliveroo driver’s speed, acceleration, and turning) urging them to change how they enact certain aspects of labour without directly telling them how to do it. This suggests that the ideal/material split of labour is not as clean under platforms than it was under monopoly capitalism, and it is necessary to ask what relation between ideal and material work platforms demand of their workers through these feedback mechanisms. I focus on how processes such as machine learning, data collection and predictive analysis produce feedback designed to influence workers, looking at the work of media scholars Adrian Mackenzie and Louise Amoore alongside research on platform labour by Jamie Woodcock, Callum Cant, and Alex Rosenblat. I consider how platform labour relies on a different conception of the mind/body relation to that described by Braverman, and how through this relation new forms of control and exploitation emerge. At stake in such an analysis is not only building accurate accounts of the labour process of Uber and Deliveroo workers that can explain the intervention of new technologies and algorithmic processes, but also understanding how the role of the labouring worker itself has changed in the context of platform capitalism.
Arvind Kumar, Royal Holloway
Invention of Resistance Strategies against Everyday Discrimination. Digital Ethnographic Study of Anti-Caste Twitter Spaces in India
Based on the participant observation of a number of anti-caste twitter spaces and semi-structured interviews of their organisers, this research seeks to explore how anti-caste social activists in India have been using twitter spaces to invent strategies to fight against everyday caste discrimination and violence perpetrated against marginalised communities; and what are the challenges that they face in their pursuit for justice, and how do they navigate form them? On the pretext of this, this research investigates how traditional social hierarchies such as caste (Dumont, 1980; Wilkerson, 2020) get reproduced in the digital spaces (Mandal, 2011), and whether such reproduction prevents voices of marginalised communities in these spaces, and whether there are avenues to overcome from marginalisation.
Dr Cat Morgan, Heriot-Watt University
Digital Trade Union Work: Correcting Misinformation About Strike Action
A culture of connection established by the web and our everyday use of digital technologies have changed how trade union work is performed, becoming more pronounced due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The growing literature on digital trade union work demonstrates that unions use diverse social media to communicate with union members, campaign and organise. However, much of the existing work in this area focuses on traditional union tactics and their replication, such as digital picket lines supporting a physical picket. This pilot study investigates the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers' (RMT) use of Twitter, bypassing traditional communication channels to build solidarity with and control the narrative about strike action. We examine Twitter data by the @RMTunion account in 2022, and the replies and mentions used to directly address other users who share inaccurate information about industrial action and defend workers’ rights. We found the RMT's engagement with misinformation is significant as (1) Twitter is an increasingly common source for news, (2) and is a public platform that can be used, unintentionally or by design, to broadcast the message to a broad audience. Findings indicate that the RMT has become a powerful voice on Twitter by contesting misinformation about ongoing industrial action. Further, other users have liked and disseminated their content, which directly impacts the audience they can reach. This has been instrumental in gaining support from the public during strike action, which is crucial to their success.
Chris Pavlakis, Northumbria University
Nested precarities of creative labor on social media
While metrics have long played an important, albeit fraught, role in the media and cultural industries, quantified indices of online visibility—likes, favorites, subscribers, and shares—have been indelibly cast as routes to professional success and status in the digital creative economy. Against this backdrop, this study sought to examine how creative laborers’ pursuit of social media visibility impacts their processes and products. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 30 aspiring and professional content creators on a range of social media platforms—Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and Twitter—we contend that their experiences are not only shaped by the promise of visibility, but also by its precarity. As such, we present a framework for assessing the volatile nature of visibility in platformized creative labor, which includes unpredictability across three levels: (1) markets, (2) industries, and (3) platform features and algorithms. After mapping out this ecological model of the nested precarities of visibility, we conclude by addressing both continuities with—and departures from—the earlier modes of instability that characterized cultural production, with a focus on the guiding logic of platform capitalism.
Jonathan Pettifer, University of Birmingham
Norm Contestation through Digital Platforms and Social Media
Understandings of norm contestation and resistance in international relations largely focus on the roles of state-level actors or international organisations. Theoretical and empirical work that examines how contestation occurs also suffer from two main limitations:
§ Firstly, they over-focus on the use of language alone to explain contestation.
§ Secondly, the role of digital platforms and individuals in helping to drive resistance and contestation in society is often ignored.
Social media and the internet are behemoths of instant information and news, and as such, their potential for influence cannot be understated. Therefore, I propose that research into social media and digital platforms is an essential avenue for further development into understanding contestation at the micro level, specifically in relation to the acceptance of queer people in society. Contestation does not occur at the macro level alone. Work into the use of digital platforms by individuals could provide valuable new insights into the interplay between contesting actors at multiple levels. Returning to the issue of an overfocus on language, research into the use of language on social media provides interesting possibilities. It brings a more nuanced understanding of how discourse influences contesting behaviours as well as how social media can easily spread new beliefs, which in turn influence actors at all levels. I propose that large-N studies be conducted to examine contesting language on digital platforms. They would shed light on interplays between national and international actors’ behaviour and allow comparisons between increases in the use of certain language associated with the contestation and resistance of queer acceptance norms. This would help to explain the conditions in which norm contestation is more likely to occur, and solutions to this could then be proposed to better promote understanding and acceptance towards all people, particularly those in the queer community.
12.15-13.00
Lunch Break
13.00-15.00
Panel: Commodities vs Commons
Chair > Dr Marco Guglielmo
Keynote
Prof Phoebe Moore, University of Essex
The Social Relations of Data Production and Diminishing Rights to the Subject
Phoebe is a globally recognised expert in digitalisation and the workplace. Phoebe’s book The Quantified Self in Precarity: Work, Technology and What Counts (2019) uncovers how the integration of big data and artificial intelligence systems into workplaces bears new risks for the working class. Phoebe has led projects on Platform Labour for the European Commission and the International Labour Organisation. Phoebe is chief editor of the journal Global Political Economy and co-director of the Centre for Commons Organising, Values Equalities and Resilience (COVER).
Guest Speaker
Gabriele Masci, Open Impact
Gabriele is manager at Open Impact, an innovative start-up and accredited spin-off of the University of Milano-Bicocca that provides services and develops digital products for the measurement, enhancement and management of impacts in a perspective of integrated sustainability. Open Impact is itself a platform cooperative aiming to inspire and support policy-makers and stakeholders in their transitions towards the economy of the commons.
Presentations
Scott Downham, Royal Holloway
Public Attitudes towards Data use
Vast amounts of personal data are behind digital platforms. These structures cannot accommodate the agency of citizens on such matters, nor should academics critique digital platforms on such matters, without consideration of public attitudes towards data use. Yet, this is only an emerging research area. Hence, this paper summarises and evaluates the early evidence. Key findings are: 1) UK citizens are fairly optimistic about data use generally, unchanged in recent years. 2) UK citizens are, however, wary of the risks of data use. These concerns have increased in recent years. 3) Several demographic traits predict greater positivity on many questions of data use, including: people who are more digitally familiar, higher socioeconomic status people, younger people, black and Asian people, males, those living in urban or affluent areas, parents and carers (generally, and specifically in regard to their children’s data) and those with positive views of the organisation involved. 4) Emergency services are most trusted to handle data. National and local government sit midway. Last are private companies, including social media companies. 5) The public are neutral to slightly optimistic about artificial intelligence (AI) involvement, but wary of the risks. 6) Organisations are far more positive about data use. 7) Research commonly involves national annual polling. Meanwhile, common for local samples are questionnaires, focus groups and interviews. 8) Some authorities plan longitudinal research using bespoke citizen panels annually, tracking improvements over time. However, of those seen, no updates have been published yet. 9) Current research has several limitations hindering reliability. In light of public support for ethical data use by organisations, recommendations suggest how practices could be better informed. Mainly, what could be used are observational studies of what people actually consent to, rather than relying entirely on abstract and hypothetical self-reports.
Dr Ilona Steiler, Tampere University, Finland
Political agency in the platform economy: a matter of time
This paper explores the potential for political agency within the platform economy by focusing on autonomy over time. The main argument is that the platform economy—and digital capitalism more broadly—essentially thrives on an accelerated mode of appropriation, commodification and monetized exchange of time, as well as on the precarization of labour. Increasing experiences of time scarcity and labour precarity, in turn, present challenges to the political agency of both platform workers and the consumers of platform services. The paper teases out the role of platforms in the ‘paradoxical phenomenon of simultaneous technological acceleration and increasing time scarcity’ (Hartmut Rosa): while the digitalized workplace leads to increased time pressures, not least through the spatial and temporal conflation of work and leisure, digital technologies such as platforms also provide possibilities for speedier work processes and for ‘buying time’ by micro-outsourcing productive and reproductive tasks, for instance in the sectors of knowledge production or food delivery. Unlike previous forms of delegating tasks, e.g. domestic service, the infrastructure of digital platforms shrinks time and space in an unprecedented manner, contributing to further acceleration. While such digital buying of time is made possible by the supply of hidden, comparatively cheap, and disposable labour that is virtually working 24/7, the demand for platform services also reflects a widely perceived need to optimize time-use amidst competitive labour markets, lacking job security and multiple responsibilities. In conclusion, the paper suggests that political agency in the platform economy must be understood within the logic of ‘all-the-time capitalism’ (Jeffrey Nealon) or ‘24/7 capitalism’ (Jonathan Crary); yet, though the potential for agency and action is severely limited by constant time pressures, time and the struggle over time also offer key instruments for resistance and empowerment by exploiting the temporal vulnerabilities of capitalism.
Dr Bradley Ward, University of Birmingham
Progressive Network Systems. The Political Organisation of Disruptive Agency in the Digital Commons
This paper introduces the concept of the Progressive Network System (PNS) as a normative and descriptive theory of counter-hegemonic organisation and explains how politics-as-a-digital common can enable disruptive agency across the PNS. In summary, the ‘network’ connects supporters and activists into clusters of dissent; the ‘system’ structures them into organisational ecologies; and the ‘progressive’ ideology establishes cohesion and direction by cementing a sense of unity across the network system. The main argument of the paper is that digital platforms provide the crucial infrastructure to expand the actual potentialities for non-hierarchical distribution and coordination within PNSs, but it is their nature of a common good, in conjunction with the technology, that is crucial for the advance of an alternative social order. The PNS as a common platform implies two critical principles. First, shared protocols, and not fixed constitutions, define (a) ‘the landscape of the network – who is connected to whom’ and (b) the governance of the network. Second, control over the flows of information should be distributed across the collective network to (a) enable individuals and collectives to contest and adapt the shared protocols and (b) to protect the network from the surveillance and coercive activities seeking to dismantle and/or boycott the networks. The final part of the paper presents empirical examples of political organisations that approximate the PNS model, with references to the Squares’ movements in Spain in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and to the movements for Constitutional reform in Chile. Through these empirical references, I will identify the potential tensions between the need for direction and the requirements of the politics as a common.
15.00-15.15
Coffee Break
15.15-17.15
Panel: Surveillance vs Empowerment
Chair > Prof Ben O’Loughlin
Keynote
Dr Elinor Carmi, City University of London
To become empowered click here: Shaping people's agency according to tech bros tales
Elinor is a digital rights advocate, feminist, researcher and journalist who has been working, writing and teaching on data politics, data literacies, feminist approaches to media and data, data justice and internet governance. Currently, Elinor is working on the Nuffield Foundation project Developing a Minimum Digital Living Standard. Elinor has published extensively on the impact of the politics of data on democratic and gender relations, and on how data literacy can prompt new networks of resistance.
Guest Speaker
Dr Declan McDowell-Naylor, Information Commissioner’s Office
Declan is Senior Policy Officer at the Information Commissioner’s Office, where is job focuses on matters of regulation and protection of personal data. Prior to joining ICO, Declan served as Research Associate at Cardiff University on a project examining the alternative online media in the United Kingdom. Declan was awarded with a PhD in Public Policy at Royal Holloway.
Presentations
Rachel Brock, University of Liverpool
Visibility as Vulnerability: Surveillance Capitalism's Threat to Women in Online Political Spaces
The relationship between visibility and vulnerability is intrinsically tied to power, identity, and marginalisation. Narratives of surveillance are often centred in the idea that individual privacy must give way to collective safety, and that if one behaves “well” then there is no danger in this. When we extend this outside of the government sphere, we see the same echoes in campaigns such as the push to restrict online anonymity as part of the Online Safety Bill. However, in the era of surveillance capitalism, what is it to be “visible”? What impacts can visibility have on our lives?
This paper proposes that surveillance technology that is meant to provide security can instead create vulnerability, and that this risk is increased if you are a woman or exist outside the gender binary. Feminist research on public spaces tells us that gendered violence often occurs as a response to perceived infringement on male space such as politics (Mantilla, 2013; Sobieraj, 2021). Surveillance technology is designed for implementation without user knowledge or engagement, and even if people are aware of the algorithms it does not mean they understand them (O’Neil, 2016; Uricchio, 2017). This makes it difficult for people to opt out of surveillance, or to understand what data is being collected or how it could be used. Mosaic theory demonstrates that even seemingly unidentifiable pieces of information can be pieced together to obliterate attempts at privacy (Nyugen, 2018). When women’s online lives and voices are seen in “male” spaces of the internet, there can be vitriolic backlash. When these online lives are linked to offline identity, this can create dangerous potential for offline harm. Based upon theory and lived experience of women who have been the targets of this violence, this paper outlines surveillance capitalism’s threat to women. Visibility, in this case, is vulnerability."
Nathan Critch, University of Birmingham
Public Inquiries and Digital Platforms: Spaces of Resistance or Continued Containment?
Public inquiries are used by UK governments to respond to the most high-profile negative events. Whilst ostensibly triggered to investigate, make recommendations and improve policy, from a more critical perspective the public inquiry can be considered a tool of the state. From this perspective, inquiries shift public debates regarding crises into highly formalized, legalistic institutions (inquiries) that seek to “take the heat out of” social conflict. These are often difficult and restrictive processes to participate in for those directly affected by crises. Inquiries therefore seek to depoliticize and contain the political fallout that accompanies crises and seek to limit the terms of political debate around reform and responsibility. When examining more recent inquiries, however, interesting developments have occurred related to the rise of digital platforms and the interface between these platforms and public inquiries. On the one hand, the ubiquity of digital platforms has meant inquiries themselves becoming “more online” in various ways, on the other, those who are directly affected by crises have begun to use digital platforms to organize themselves within and outside of inquiries and as a means of publicizing their perspectives. This paper investigates these dynamics within several recent inquiries. It explores whether this interface between inquiries and digital platforms presents opportunities for resistance for those affected by crises or simply represents continued containment and depoliticization by the state on different terrain.
Dr Ramón Villaplana Jiménez, Catholic University of Lille, France
Political parties as –questionable– agents for openness
Political parties are a key agent considering the potential openness of politics and governance in terms of transparency, participation and collaboration. On the one hand, parties control the centres of government, being responsible for making decisions and supervising policy implementation. From that privileged position, they can choose to promote or hinder open government measures according to their own particular interests, including electoral interests, the guard of secrets, and other matters related to the privileged position of certain lobbies. On the other hand, opposition parties frequently demand more transparency and accountability, in addition to acting as collective actors in some participatory and collaborative processes. A third point of interest is how political parties have applied open government measures to their internal operations, digitalising electoral, deliberative and communicative processes. The different behaviours of parties have consequences on the quality of public policies and the democratic system. This paper reviews the current state of the issue at a theoretical level and identifies examples of attitudes in favour of and resistance to open government among some European political parties.
Co-authors: Dr Giulia Sandri (ESPOL Lille) and Dr Adrián Megías (University of Murcia).
WEDNESDAY 17 MAY 2023
9.30-10.30
Registration and Breakfast
12.15-13.00
Panel: Virtual Realities and Artificial Intelligence
Chair > Dr Pauline Heinrichs
Keynote
Dr Emiliano Treré, Cardiff University
Emerging shapes of domination, resistance and imagination in the age of AI
Emiliano is Reader in data agency and media ecology. He is co-director of the Data Justice Lab and the co-founder of the Big Data from the South Initiative. Emiliano’s books Hybrid Media Activism (2019) and Data Justice (2022) are seminal studies to make sense of power and resistance in the digital age. Emiliano has researched new media as complex ecologies that shape and are shaped by social movements, by exploring the relations between datafication, capitalism, governance and social justice. Emiliano’s focus is on how these dynamics set different scenarios for domination and resistance in the Global North and the Global South.
Guest Speaker
Shehani Fernando, Award-winning immersive creator
Shehani is an award-winning immersive producer / director based in London, passionate about innovative forms of storytelling that combine documentary practice with new technologies. Among her productions, in 2019, Shehani produced ‘The Waiting Room VR’ with BAFTA-winning director Victoria Mapplebeck about her personal journey of living with breast cancer which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won IDFA’s Digital Storytelling award. Shehani worked at the Guardian, where from 2016-18 she directed VR experiences for the Guardian’s in-house VR studio.
Presentations
Jake Pitre, Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Rhetorical Imaginaries: Theoretical Approaches to Platform Futures
The GDPR and other regulatory initiatives, however imperfect, have recently intensified the feeling among major platforms that they must be intimately involved in any future regulation. This paper is interested in how international platform futures are codified through corporate discourse, granting insight not into what regulation will actually look like, or not only that, but instead into the rhetorical and sociocultural structures these companies seek to impose in the collective imaginary. This paper offers an invitation for us to conduct studies that take this future-building seriously as an ideological project of power, and a challenge of theory. Devon Powers argues for cultural studies scholars to take a futurist approach, whereby analysis reclaims talk of the future from those making decisions for us. From a theoretical perspective, then, what tools can we use to better understand how these companies are seeking to control the future of political agency and ideology on platforms? More specifically, this paper offers a comparative example between policymaker and governmental rhetoric on the one hand and TikTok rhetoric on the other during ongoing discussions over that platform's use and regulation in Europe and North America, as a case study to reveal the geopolitical dimensions of this future-making project.
Dr Scott Wark, University of Kent
‘Race, by Proxy’
In this paper, we use recent research we have been conducting on AI’s impact on race and racialisation to reflect on the agency that platforms accord racialised subjects in our digital age. The capacity for AI and ML to make inferences about us using “proxy data” is arguably changing the nature of race and the operations of racialisation. In data science, a proxy is a feature that is used “in place of a variable that cannot be measured” (Upton & Cook, 2014). Proxies act as substitutes that can be used to infer, and therefore to act upon, an unknown piece of data. Taken individually, these substitutions can be inconsequential. At scale, they constitute a logic by which the world can be approximated or modelled, allowing AI and ML systems to measure and act upon that which is in excess of perception. This includes the category of race. Using a series of case studies, we offer an overview of the role that proxies play in transforming race and racialisation. We argue that AI and ML institute a post-big-data politics of race: what we have elsewhere called “racial formations as data formations” (Phan and Wark 2021b). We also argue that these “proxy logics” have political consequences. Proxy logics use data to sort us into contingent groupings: what are sometimes called “clusters” (Amoore, 2021) or “neighbourhoods” (Chun, 2018). These groupings often bear little relation to demographic categories – or, indeed, to our professed identities. Contemporary racial politics is usually conducted as what’s known “identity politics.” While acknowledging our debt to this paradigm, we argue that these new modes of racialisation operate in a different one: what we want to call a politics of proximity. To resist AI’s capacity to racialise and discriminate, we need to figure out what this politics might entail.
Co-author: Dr Thao Phan (Monash University, Australia)
12.15-13.00
Lunch Break
13.00-15.00
Panel: Theoretical Perspectives
Chair > Dr Marco Guglielmo
Keynote
Dr Alex Williams, University of East Anglia
On Platform Hegemony: The Metapolitics of Digital Infrastructures
Alex is a political theorist and lecturer in digital media and society. Since the publication of the book Inventing the Future, Postcapitalism and a World without Work (2016), Alex has become a globally acknowledged theorist of how platform societies cement new hegemony and may enable unprecedented forms of resistance. These ideas are developed further in his most recent book Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (And How We Win it Back) (2022). Alex’s theories are seminal contributions to interpreting the complexities of platform societies.
Guest Speaker
Dr Nikki Soo, TikTok
Nikki is a harmful content and digital well-being subject matter expert within TikTok’s EU Public Policy Team. She engages in a wide range of work including mis/disinformation, hateful behaviour and digital well-being. Prior to joining TikTok, Nikki worked in academia specialising in the effects of digital technology on society, media and culture. She has previously worked at Ipsos MORI, Cardiff University and The University of Sheffield. She earned her PhD in Politics from Royal Holloway, University of London. Her work has previously been published in The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Journalism Studies, as well as The Conversation and The Independent.
Presentations
Antonia Alecu, University of Birmingham
Digital platforms as third spaces of gender performance and resistance
Within the discourse of dissent, third spaces are conceptualised as spaces of existence outside the usual social environments of the individual such as home and school/workplace within which the socialised agent performs a culturally pre-determined identity. Third spaces serve as safe and guarded communities unified by a common objective that does not prevail within the first spaces of existence. Digital platforms have progressively monopolised third spaces in the field of gender performance and liberation, leading the contestation of gender normativity in the societal sphere. This presentation will look at theoretical perspectives on the creation of new gender discourse on digital platforms and the productive capacity of such acts of resistance to generate new parameters of gender expression, arguing that they offer the precondition for challenging restrictive gender identities outside of third spaces. Employing a Foucauldian and poststructuralist feminist framework will allow for an analysis of gender discourse production that uncovers its historical and cultural construction, rather than a fixed ‘natural’ constitution grounded in a pre-discursive notion of truth. This will lead to an understanding of how constructed meaning is operationalised with a restrictive goal, opening up the space for a resurgence of subjugated identities in the digital space through the disengagement from preconstructed identities and the cultivation of new emancipated ones - thus, providing the prerequisite of wider cultural reformation of gender discourse.
Dr Mikael Andéhn, Royal Holloway
Exiting the rabbit hole
‘Incels’ (Involuntary celibates) have become a fixture of the discourse on problematic online groupings. In a recent contribution to the British Journal of Sociology O’Donnell and Shor (2022) argues for an understanding of this grouping as a terrorist organization with political objectives that can be captured under the rubric of ‘male supremacy’. Based on a long-term engagement with the broader online ‘Manosphere’ figuration, I critique this construal of Incels based on the identification and exploration of an apparent paradox: The incel groupings accounting of the social reality the so-called ‘Blackpill’, is a fatalistic and profoundly deterministic view which posits that social hierarchies (such as those that Incels themselves find themselves at the bottom rung of) are fixed. Further, the Blackpill understanding of social reality extends this fatalism to its account of the potential for political change. If political change cannot be achieved through any means, what is the ideological motivation for Incel violence? The Incel radicalization process itself is marked by a conspicuous absence of the possibility of a political teleology. Its ‘ideology’ fails to meet the threshold conditions of a social imaginary with positive content. It so lacks an imagination of a ‘better world’. Even the modality of engaging with Incel forums is one characterized by an acceleration and amplification of the technological milieus own pre-established and 'projective' subjectivity. ‘Members’ are ascribed a collective subjectivation, but not granted the power to co-determine the form of the resulting subject. Ultimately, the Incel grouping is a violent threat, but the danger it poses as an inspiration for mass-violence is far eclipsed by the danger it poses to its own members in the form of dissemination and amplification of suicide ideation. Incels are not terrorists, and arguably even the description of them as a non-theistic death cult is overly accommodating. Instead, we urgently require an understanding of the machinic and mediated nature of the Incel phenomenon, and rather than providing the antagonistic productivity enacted through entertaining Incel ‘ideology’ through critique, we might leave the rabbit hole and look to the material conditions that premise the Incel experience.
Paul Geyer, University of Leeds
The next ideological phase of social media: the subscription model and subscription subject
In this paper, I argue for the next ideological phase of social media. This will be demonstrated in two steps: first, how surveillance capitalism is creating stability, and since instability is necessary for capitalism’s survival, social media is shifting (or at least supplementing Surveillance Capitalism) to a subscription-based model to re-introduce instability. Second, with this shift to a subscription model, a new social media subject is created: the “Indentured-enjoyment” subject. To justify my arguments, I will draw heavily on the Žižekian tradition, to highlight how Surveillance Capitalism is changing. Surveillance Capitalism and algorithmic learning is heading towards stability. Capitalism’s history demonstrates that it needs to be unstable; unstable in the sense that it needs to constantly revolutionise and adapt to new forms of profit, means of production and of ideological and social relations. As Karl Marx stated: “the true barrier to capital, is capital itself”. The stability being created comes from the extraction of user's data, algorithmic learning, constant surveillance, and building a better profile of the individual; in essence, from Surveillance Capitalism itself. Furthermore, by developing Alenka Zupančič’s two-level surplus I argue, this stability can be seen in the social media subject: a tension of overidentifying with the big Other (social media in this circumstance) and user’s surplus-enjoyment being filled in by Surveillance Capitalism. I will utilise Shoshana Zuboff’s definition of Surveillance Capitalism; particularly, her argument that Surveillance Capitalism thrives on a “no exit” situation. I reinterpret ""no exit"" to mean stability. From here, I flip the perspective of asking what capitalism’s next move is, instead of responding to the “no exit” situation. Therefore, I predict a shift to a subscription model that can re-introduce instability by providing new methods of surplus-value extraction, and, from my ideological, Žižekian angle, a new ideological subject.
15.15-17.00
Roundtable
Future Challenges and Research Agendas
Venue
Senate House - University of London, Malet Street, London.
Rooms 103 (Registration and catering) and 104 (ECRs Workshop, Panels and Roundtable)
Hosted by
The New Political Communication Unit and The Gender Institute
Royal Holloway University of London
Acknowledgements
The symposium is funded by the Reid Research Fund, School of Law and Social Sciences, Royal Holloway.
The Early Career Researchers Workshop is funded by the PGR-led-events fund, School of Law and Social Sciences, Royal Holloway.
Info and Updates
http://www.newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/
Join our international symposium that aims to discuss theoretical perspectives and empirical research on the tensions that arise from the political agency within and of platform societies. Digital platforms reshape social relations across multiple dimensions, defining new routes to explore the possibilities of exploitation and liberation in capital/labour, human/nature, and gender relations. The starting point for our symposium is that two tensions shape political contestation in platform societies: The first is the contestation over data commodification versus the promotion of digital commons. The second tension arises between digitalisation as a tool for authoritarian surveillance or as a means for democratic empowerment.
The symposium aims to advance knowledge on theoretical and empirical grounds by asking how political agency fits into these tensions. We are particularly interested in comparative studies on how different actors (e.g. parties, policy-makers, NGOs) seek to shape digital politics in different world regions.
Please submit an abstract of your proposal (max 300 words) by 19:00 (BST) Friday 7 April 2023, using this form indicating your preference for the most suitable panel:
1. Political agency within and of platform societies. Theoretical perspectives.
2. Political agency and platform societies. Commodities vs commons?
3. Political agency and platform societies. Surveillance vs empowerment?
4. Political agency in virtual realities
Each panel will begin with keynote speeches by globally acknowledged scholars and practitioners (to be announced soon). We will communicate the outcome of the call by Tuesday 18 April 2023. We will provide a partial refund for travel and accommodation expenses for PhD students and early career researchers. As we are committed to promoting equality and diversity in academia, we particularly welcome proposals by authors from under-represented groups.
The symposium is hosted by the New Political Communication Unit and the Gender Institute at the Royal Holloway University of London. For information, email Dr Marco Guglielmo (Marco.Guglielmo@rhul.ac.uk), Prof. Ben O’Loughlin (Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk), Dr Pauline Heinrichs (Pauline.Heinrichs@rhul.ac.uk). More info here.
Join the online workshop Digital Platforms and Gender Relations: A New Space for Feminist Resistance?
We’re delighted to have guest speakers Kylie Jarrett (Maynooth University, Ireland), Dr Helen Thornham (University of Leeds, UK) and Dr Amy Bonsall (Gender Institute, Royal Holloway).
Thursday 26 January 2023, 17.00-19.00 (UK time)
Online – MS Teams
Join online for the three talks and the lively discussion to follow. This is the third event we are hosting this year in our series, ‘The Politics of Platform Societies. Dialectics, Actors and Resistance in the Digital Age’. This is convened by the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway.
How do digital platforms contribute to shape gender relations? Under what condition do platforms prompt the reproduction of patriarchy – or fuel new forms of feminist resistance? The third workshop of the series ‘The Politics of Platform Societies’ will unpack these complex questions. The workshop has three main goals. First, we aim to identify how platforms prompt new dialectics between practices of patriarchal domination and feminist resistance. We will look for instance at the commodification of bodies and emotions on social media and at new practices of solidarity online. Second, we seek contributions to advance knowledge about how platforms are shaping gendered relations of production and social reproduction, and to look at cases where instead platforms facilitate the emancipation of women. Finally, we seek to investigate whether digital platforms, which are supposedly borderless in nature, are facilitating the emergence of new transnational networks of feminist resistance. Our guests will provide insights on new forms of sexist exploitation online and at the same time on the potential agency of civil society organisations and social movements to organise feminist resistance and solidarity through online communities.
Dr Kylie Jarrett is Associate Professor in Media Studies at Maynooth University, Ireland. Kylie’s expertise is on the political economy of digital media and in particular the commercial Web, with an emphasis on digital labour. She authored, among others, ‘Digital Labor’ (Polity, 2022) and ‘Feminism, Labour and Digital Media: The Digital Housewife’ (Routledge, 2016). Throughout her research, Kylie has applied Marxist feminist theories of domestic work to understand the practice of consumer labour.
Dr Helen Thornham is Associate Professor in Digital Cultures at University of Leeds. Helen has researched extensively on issues of gender and digital technology, culture, and data inequalities. She is currently leading the Network ‘INCLUDE+’ (INCLUsive Digital Economy network+), which explores how social and digital environments can be built, shaped and sustained to enable all people to thrive. In 2017, Helen authored the book ‘Gender and Digital Culture’ (Routledge) and she is currently working with Dr Joanne Armitage and a number of activist groups exploring technology and social justice issues in the UK and across Latin America through UKRI funded projects.
Dr Amy Bonsall is Gender Research and Outreach Fellow at the Gender Institute, Royal Holloway. She is co-founder of the ‘Women in Academia Support Network’, which connects more than 13,000 women working in higher education worldwide.
Professor Ben O’Loughlin (Director of the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway) will introduce the workshop series.
The workshop is open to anyone. Indeed, our aim is to stimulate the participation of students, academics and citizens from every background and expertise. Digital platforms are part of our daily lives, shaping how we communicate, consume and crucially seek information on political events. These are the conditions in which we can be political. Our goal is to provide all the attendants with a compass to become more aware of the political implications of digitalisation.
Digital Platforms and Ecology. Allies or Foes?
Tuesday 29 November 2022, 17.00-19.00 (UK time)
In person at Mc-Crea Building, room 1-17, and on MS Teams
Are digital platforms good or bad for the natural environment? The second workshop of the series ‘the Politics of Platform Societies’ will unpack this complex question. As the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) demonstrates the struggle of world powers at taking decisive action, the question of whether the digital transition is an ‘ally’ or a ‘foe’ for green politics is more timely than ever. On the one hand, both EU ‘Next Generation’ programmes and UK ‘digital’ and ‘climate change’ strategies envision the digital and the green as twin transitions towards a more sustainable environment. The flow of data and the development of artificial intelligence can support a ‘smart’ development in energetic grids, systems of transportation, logistic. On the other hand, the environmental impacts of digital infrastructures that support increased flows of data as well as the impacts of the overconsumption of digital devices is overlooked – both in academia and in public discourse. Our guests will provide insights to advance knowledge on the dialectics underlying the relations between digital platforms and ecology, on the potential agency of governments and international organisations to prompt a eco-friendly digitalisation, and on how social movements can organise resistance to models of digitalisation that over-exploit natural resources.
Dr Giorgio Pirina (University Cà Foscari, Venice, Italy) will deliver a keynote speech to the workshop. Giorgio is an expert on the impact of platform capitalism on labour and ecology and he is currently pioneering studies on the impacts of the digital transition on global supply chains of raw materials. His focus is on the predatory extraction of minerals for digital infrastructures and devices. Among his publications: Beyond the Myths of Digitalization: Labor, Space and Ecology in the Digital Age; SME in the Digital Era (forthcoming); The Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Serra de Estrela, Between UNESCO Geopark and Lithium Mining.
Dr Pauline Heinrichs (Lecturer in International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London) will focus on how the digital and the green transitions are intertwined in international relations. Pauline’s expertise is on how the strategic narratives of world leaders shape international relations. Further, she conducted research and policy engagement at the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference.
Namine Abou Bakari is Digital Rights Campaigner for the Greens/EFA at European Parliament and she collaborates with the Green European Foundation. Namine has worked extensively on digitalisation and the green transition, in particular on the right to repair and circular economy.
Professor Ben O’Loughlin (Director of the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway) will introduce the workshop series.
The workshop is open to anyone. Indeed, our aim is to stimulate the participation of students, academics and citizens from every background and expertise. Digital platforms are part of our daily lives, shaping how we communicate, consume and crucially seek information on political events. These are the conditions in which we can be political. Our goal is to provide all the attendants with a compass to become more aware of the political implications of digitalisation.
WORKSHOP SERIES
THE POLITICS OF PLATFORM SOCIETIES
Dialectics, Actors and Resistance in the Digital Age
Over the last two decades, the ‘digital revolution’ reshaped social relations in multiple ways. Data accumulation and management became the cornerstone prompting new modes of (re)production, consumption, and communication.
The impacts of digital platforms on social relations received increasing scholarly attention in the last few years and raised multiple debates. The more optimistic emphasise how platforms open up social relations by boosting ‘sharing’ economies and horizontal forms of social and political participation. The more pessimistic point out that digital technologies worsen economic exploitation and fuel nativist echo-chambers.
Platform societies are characterised by the emergence of new dialectics between two contrasting models of digitalisation. On the one hand, the big tech (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) prompt ‘digital as commodities’, a model primarily fuelling new routes of profit maximisation. On the other hand, civil society has been promoting the ‘digital as commons’ to open new spaces for collaborative forms of generation, management and distribution of public value.
Until now, there is a gap in research that systemises how these dialectics affect multiple dimensions of social relations. This sets the rationale for the workshop series ‘the Politics of Platform Societies’. Our goal is to advance knowledge on the dialectics, actors and resistance of the digital age, by opening a new space of dialogue among academics, politicians, and civil society organisations. First, we will shed light on the new dialectics between competing models of digitalisation. Second, we will focus on the agency of platform politics, identifying different approaches by political parties and social movements. Third, we will map the emergence of new forms of resistance in the digital age.
The workshops are open to anyone. Our aim is to stimulate the participation of students, academic and citizens from every background and expertise. Digital platforms are part of our daily lives, shaping how we communicate, consume and crucially seek information on political events. They are the condition for our politics. Our goal is to provide all the attendants with a compass to become more aware of the political implications of digitalisation.
We will address the multiple dimensions of the politics of platform societies through four workshops dedicated to key topics for contemporary global politics.
1. Digital Platforms and Democratic Relations: Reinventing participation?
Thursday 10 November 2022, 17.00 (UK time). Online workshop – MS Teams
Keynote:
Professor Natalie Fenton, Goldsmiths, University of London. Prof Fenton is a leading researcher on the relations between new media ecosystems and the engagement of citizen in radical democratic processes.
Panellist:
Professor Oscar Barbera, University of Valencia (Spain). Prof Barbera is a leading scholar on parties’ digitalisation. More specifically his expertise is on the effects of parties’ platforms on participation and intra-party democracy.
The workshop will be introduced by Professor Ben O’Loughlin, Director of the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway, University of London.
2. Digital Platforms and Ecology. Allies or Foes?
Tuesday 29 November 2022, 17.00 (UK time). Venue to be confirmed
Keynote:
Dr Giorgio Pirina, University Ca’ Foscari Venice (Italy). Dr Pirina is expert on the ecological impacts of platform economy on global supply chains, with a focus on how predatory extraction of minerals for digital infrastructures and devices.
Panellists:
Dr Pauline Heinrichs, Royal Holloway University of London. Dr Heinrichs’ expertise is on how the strategic narrative of world leaders shape international relations. Further, she conducted research and policy engagement at the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference.
More panellists to be confirmed
3. Digital Platforms and Gender Relations. A new space for feminist resistance?
Thursday 26 January 2023, 17.00 (UK time). Venue to be confirmed
Keynote:
Professor Kylie Jarrett, Maynooth University (Ireland). Prof Jarrett’s expertise sits at the intersections between digital labour and feminism. Her focus is on how the practices of consumer labour asymmetrically affect women in contemporary societies.
Panellists to be confirmed
4. Digital Platforms and Labour Relations. Empowerment or exploitation?
Thursday 23 February 2023, 17.00 (UK time). Venue to be confirmed
Keynote:
Professor Phoebe Moore, University of Essex. Prof Jarrett’s is a globally recognised expert in digitalisation and the workplace. Moore’s focus is on the integration of big data, artificial intelligence systems into workplaces and the risks and benefits these pose for working people.
Panellists to be confirmed
Workshop
Digital Platforms and Democratic Relations: Reinventing participation?
Thursday 10 November 2022, 17.00 (UK time)
MS Teams link here
Are digital platforms good or bad for democracy? The first workshop of the series ‘the Politics of Platform Societies’ will unpack this apparently simple question. The 2010s begun with the enthusiasm for how online communities could communicate and organise resistance to authoritarianism. Hope lay in the ‘Arab Spring’, and non-hierarchical protests to disrupt the politics of austerity – the ‘Occupy’ movements. 2016, however, marked a turning point. It became clear that social media can be hacked for authoritarian ends. Cambridge Analytica harvested data from millions of citizens to support Trump’s election. That are the long-lasting effects of these processes? Under what conditions can platforms make our societies more democratic? And how do new gigantic flows of information through platforms reshape how public opinion forms? Meanwhile, new debates have arisen around ‘digital parties’. Podemos in Spain and the 5 Stars Movement in Italy were born under the promise of advancing direct democracy through their platforms. Were they a new and more participatory form of political organisation? Or did platforms still worsen leadership engagement with grassroots activism? Our workshop will address these questions through the contributions of leading academics in the field of digital politics and communication.
Professor Natalie Fenton (Goldsmiths, University of London) will deliver a keynote speech to the workshop. Prof Fenton is a leading scholar on the relations between new media ecosystems and the engagement of citizen in radical democratic processes. Among others, she authored the book Digital, Political, Radical (2016), in which she argues against the notion that digital activism is inherently democratic. Instead of considering social media and movements in isolation from the structures of capitalism and liberal democracies, Fenton claims the need to re-politicise the economy and re-socialise politics as the condition for radical movements to advance democracy through digital media. More recently, in her book The Media Manifesto (2020), co-authored with Des Freedman, Justin Schlosberg, and Lina Dencik, Fenton makes a compelling case for the need to envision a media system around news co-operatives run by local communities to face the current power imbalances in the flows of information governed by big social media and traditional broadcasters.
Professor Oscar Barbera (University of Valencia, Spain) will be our panellist. Prof Barbera is a leading scholar on parties’ digitalisation. He is an expert on the effects of parties’ platforms on participation and intra-party democracy. Recently, Barbera co-edited the volume Digital Parties. The Challenges of Online Organisation and Participation in which the authors challenge the idea that digital platforms shape party competition in a single direction. Instead, by focusing on how digital tools reshape parties’ organisation and activists’ participation, Barbera and colleagues provide a theoretical compass to make sense of how political organisations migrate into the digital. Beside his interest in digital parties, Prof Barbera chairs the ‘Digitalisation and Policy Research Group’ at University of Valencia, whose core goal is to investigate the impact of digitalisation on democratic participation and how citizens have been increasingly participating to policies’ designs in different contexts through digital platforms.
Professor Ben O’Loughlin (Director of the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway) will introduce the workshop series.
The workshop is open to anyone. Indeed, our aim is to stimulate the participation of students, academics and citizens from every background and expertise. Digital platforms are part of our daily lives, shaping how we communicate, consume and crucially seek information on political events. These are the conditions in which we can be political. Our goal is to provide all the attendants with a compass to become more aware of the political implications of digitalisation.
Thank you to our new lecturer Dr Marco Guglielmo for organising this, the first in a series of events.
PIRWired, a podcast by the NPCU and the Department of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, just released its latest episode, hosted by Luke Coughlan, where Prof. John Connolly talks about how the UK government prepared for a potential pandemic prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, how the government's crisis management strategies might adapt to the new reality, and a potential no-deal Brexit. The podcast can be listened at https://soundcloud.com/pirwired/sets”.
This week we are delighted to host Prof. Lene Hansen from the University of Copenhagen. Prof. Hansen is known internationally for her work on communication and security, and in particular the role of images. On Wednesday she will give a talk to our research seminar. Details here:
Time: 1pm-2pm Wednesday 20th November 2019
Place: McCrae 1-13
Images and World Politics
Images are crucial to world politics. Could we imagine the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11 without the videos of the planes crashing into the towers? Or the European refugee crisis in 2015 without the photo of Alan Kurdi laying alone on the beach? Images “speak” world politics and (in)security in distinct ways. This calls for the development of new theoretical approaches and methodological strategies. This talk provides an introduction to the growing field of research on visual representations and world politics, and a series of theoretical and conceptual suggestions for how we might move forward.
All welcome!
This Thursday evening we are hosting a book launch for Ben Schrader's new book Fight to Live, Live to Fight: Veteran Activism after War. The role of veterans in our societies is very much under-the-rader, yet they play an important role in debates about war and foreign policy. Ben will shed a light on how this unfolds in the US, based on his own experience. He has summarised this in a recent post for the Disorder of Things blog here.
The event takes place at Royal Holloway's central London building, Bedford Square:
Time: 5pm-6.30pm, Thursday 21st November
Place: Bedford Square room 1-01.
Google map for Bedford Square: https://goo.gl/maps/axxNpvfR4Dc6dQFB9
Please join for a lively and important talk and debate.