Programme for 16-17 May Political Agency London symposium

PROGRAMME TUESDAY 16 MAY 2023

Please note paper abstracts are available to read here.

Venue

Senate House (room 104) - University of London,

Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU.

Travel guidance is here.

Hosted by

The New Political Communication Unit and

The Gender Institute

Royal Holloway University of London

Registration for in-person and online attendants at this link

More info and updates http://www.newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk

10.30-12.15

Early Career Researchers Workshop

Fresh Perspectives and Research Projects

Discussant > Prof Ben O’Loughlin, Director of Newpolcom

Scott Downham, Royal Holloway

‘How only some Citizens are Socialised into Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers. The Implications for Agency on Digital Platforms’

Hugh Hammond, Royal Holloway

‘Thought and Body in Platform Labour’

Arvind Kumar, Royal Holloway

‘Invention of Resistance Strategies against Everyday Discrimination. Digital Ethnographic Study of Anti-Caste Twitter Spaces in India’

Dr Cat Morgan, Heriot-Watt University

‘Digital Trade Union Work: Correcting Misinformation About Strike Action’

Chris Pavlakis, Northumbria University

‘Nested precarities of creative labor on social media’

Jonathan Pettifer, University of Birmingham

‘Norm Contestation through Digital Platforms and Social Media’

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’

Guest Speaker > Gabriele Masci, Open Impact

Scott Downham, Royal Holloway

‘Public Attitudes towards Data use’

Dr Ilona Steiler, Tampere University, Finland

‘Political agency in the platform economy: a matter of time’

Dr Bradley Ward, University of Birmingham

‘Progressive Network Systems. The Political Organisation of Disruptive Agency in the Digital Commons’

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’

Guest Speaker > Dr Declan McDowell-Naylor

Information Commissioner’s Office

Rachel Brock, University of Liverpool

‘Visibility as Vulnerability: Surveillance Capitalism's Threat to Women in Online Political Spaces’

Nathan Critch, University of Birmingham

‘Public Inquiries and Digital Platforms: Spaces of Resistance or Continued Containment?’

Dr Ramón Villaplana Jiménez, Catholic University of Lille, France ‘Political parties as –questionable– agents for openness’

PROGRAMME WEDNESDAY 17 MAY 2023

10.30-12.15

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’

Guest Speaker > Shehani Fernando, Immersive Creator

Jake Pitre, Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada

‘Rhetorical Imaginaries: Theoretical Approaches to Platform Futures’

Dr Scott Wark, University of Kent

Dr Thao Phan, Monash University, Australia

‘Race, by Proxy’

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’

Guest Speaker > Dr Nikki Soo, TikTok

Antonia Alecu, University of Birmingham

‘Digital platforms as third spaces of gender performance and resistance’

Dr Mikael Andéhn, Royal Holloway

‘Exiting the rabbit hole’

Paul Geyer, University of Leeds

‘The next ideological phase of social media: the subscription model and subscription subject’

15.15-17.00

Roundtable

Future Challenges and Research Agendas

The speakers and guests will 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.

Finally, we seek to stimulate fresh debates on the future directions of digitalisation, and what new risks and opportunities may be emerging for the decades to come.

O'Loughlin presents today in Riga on Taiwan's climate communication

The conference Fostering action with narratives: Communicating about climate change and energy transition in politics, business, media and society, takes place on March 30, at Rīga Stradiņš University and online. 

At 13:30 EET / 11:30 GMT Pauline Sophie Heinrichs and Ben O’Loughlin will talk about Taiwan and its identity construction in international relations with the help of climate narratives. As a polity that is not a nation-state, Taiwan has to think carefully about how to use informal networks of governance to have its voice on issues.

To receive a Zoom link for the conference, you should register here: http://rw2023.rsu.lv/registration

CALL FOR PAPERS: Political Agency within and of Platform Societies

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.

Funding won for Political Agency within and of Platform Societies - symposium to come

NewPolCom has won funding from the Reid Research Fund at Royal Holloway for the next stage in our investigation of Political Agency within and of Platform Societies: Ideas and Social Relations in the Digital Age. The project is led by Marco Guglielmo, supported by Pauline Sophie Heinrichs and Ben O’Loughlin. The project aims to develop a theoretical framework and to launch an empirical research agenda on political agency within and of platform societies. This includes an international symposium on ‘Political Agency in the Digital Age’ to be held in May 2023.

Marco theorises that political contestation in platform societies is shaped by contestation over two tensions. The first is contestation over data commodification versus the promotion of digital commons. The second ranges from digitalisation as authoritarian surveillance to democratic empowerment. The project asks how political agency fits into the contestation process. It aims to stimulate comparative studies on how different actors — parties, policy-makers, NGOs — are shaping digital politics in different world regions.

If you have any questions about this initiative, contact marco.guglielmo@rhul.ac.uk.

Ben O'Loughlin Visiting Scholar at George Washington University

Ben O’Loughlin is Visiting Scholar at George Washington University. Ben is based in the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication (IPDGC) and working with the School of Media and Public Affairs and the Elliott School of International Affairs.

While at GW, Ben will be working on:

(i) climate disinformation and why people do it,

(ii) US-Taiwan-China strategic narratives, and

(iii) staging Iran’s international identity after 20 years of nuclear talks.

Ben is very grateful to Thomas Miller, Babak Bahador, Yvonne Oh and Will Youmans for hosting his fellowship.

26 January 5pm join online: Digital Platforms and Gender Relations: A New Space for Feminist Resistance

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)

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.

New workshop series: The Politics of Platform Societies - do join us

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

Digital Platforms and Democratic Relations - join us on 10 Nov online/in-person

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.

ICA preconference on re-imaging media, war and conflict - apply now!

Ben O’Loughlin and the other editors of the journal Media, War and Conflict will hold a preconference at the International Communication Association annual convention in Toronto in May 2023. The theme is: Reimagining the Field of Media, War and Conflict in the Age of Information Disorder.

For a description of the theme, and details on how to apply, please check here. We strongly encourage applicants from what Canada deems Tier B and C countries — if you are in this category, see the link on how to apply for a bursary.

If you have any questions about how to apply or about the event, please email Katy Parry at k.j.parry@leeds.ac.uk.