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.

It is our pleasure to announce that on Wednesday 15 June at 4pm in McCrea 1-14, Professor Jorg Matthes will give a talk titled, "Disentangling the effects of incidental exposure to political information on social media”.

Jorg is Professor of Communication Science, University of Vienna. Recently he has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for a project entitled: “Digital Hate: Perpetrators, Audiences, and (Dis)Empowered Targets”. Jorg is at Royal Holloway that day to meet our ERC Consolidator Grant “NewNews” team, and his talk is in the framework of our New Political Communication Unit.

Thank you to newpolcom’s Professor Joost van Spange for organising this event. If you can join us, do come along.

New research: Young Londoners feel trapped in cycles of insecurity

How have young people in global cities coped with the economic, social and environmental pressures caused by successive waves of crisis? Why are young people often disengaged from political activity when they have strong political views?

New research in London shows that young people from less privileged backgrounds worry they will fall into cycles of insecurity that make it hard to even think of getting into any political activity. For example, a 17-year old might worry that a problem at school is going to lead to a problem with police, which makes it harder to get a job after school, and then impossible to afford rent. They see older youths falling into such cycles - it is real, for them. Young Londoners would like to care about climate or the wider economy, but their focus is immediate. For them to engage in politics two things are needed: both an opening up of policy processes to young people and for those young people to gain sufficient stability and confidence to feel that they can act effectively. 

Ben O’Loughlin and James Sloam use narrative analysis to unpack the stories young people tell about how they will experience the transition to adulthood - to jobs, university, rents, and all the possibilities and risks ahead. This is a crucial time - research shows adults’ political opinions form when they are 15-24 years old and rarely change afterwards (despite anecdotes that people move to the right when they are older). Narrative analysis gets at the sequence of events young people will talk about when they describe how they are situated in the world. But it also allows them to talk about the emotions they attach to these events -- and to things still to happen. This gives a richer understanding of how those feelings feed into their decision-making and behaviour. 

The research shows young Londoners’ stories are local, that mental health is a difficult issue for many, and that the narrative plot they offer often corresponds to a cycle of insecurity they worry lies ahead. If they do imagine acting in politics it is locally, on community projects or through social work. They speak little about the structural power that shapes the entire environment – the struggling economy, how democracy works, and how climate change is having consequences already. 

Ben and James carried out this research with cooperation from the Greater London Authority (GLA), whose peer outreach workers ran focus groups and interviews with young people from across London in 2018. A survey was also conducted to put the focus group and interview findings in a wider context of what issues young people feel are political priorities. 

Research with the GLA and other organisations is continuing in 2022. Through the Covid period Ben and James have kept exploring how the voices and actions of young people can be brought into policymaking and politics more widely - a challenge that is far from over. 

Nikki Soo talk - Wednesday 16th March, 3pm, Windsor 1-05

We are very lucky that our former graduate students Dr. Nikki Soo will come and talk to us here this week. Nikki was on our MSc programme and then came back to do a PhD. She worked for Ipsos-MORI in polling for a year or two and has now joined TikTok where she works on their Harmful Content Public Policy. She will answer questions about TikTok and how it moderates political content, and perhaps also about how to get a job working in the politics of social media.

Here are details:

Time: Wednesday 16 March, 3pm-4pm

Place: Windsor 1-05

Title: Safety by Design: Harmful Content Public Policy at TikTok

We look forward to this!

Dr Nikki Soo is a harmful content subject matter expert within TikTok’s EU Public Policy Team, where she engages in a wide range of work including mis/disinformation, hateful behaviour and harassment.

Nikki specialises in the effects of digital technology as it is integrated into society, media and culture, and has previously worked at Ipsos MORI, Cardiff University and The University of Sheffield. 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.

Nikki is also interested in tackling social inequalities, such as access to information and education, and sits as a board trustee with educational audiovisual and moving image charity Learning on Screen.

You can find her @sniksw.