Yesterday, 26th October 2021 we hosted a double issue of the Weizenbaum Colloquium. The speakers were Lisa-Maria Neudert (Oxford Internet Institute) and Martin Seeliger (University of Bremen), our former fellows.
The colloquium started with Lisa-Maria Neudert’s presentation, titled „Private Authority, Information Asymmetries & Regulatory Paralysis – The UK’s Online Safety Regime“, in which she discussed the UK’s proposed Online Safety Bill (OSB) for platform regulation. The second presentation was held by Martin Seeliger, the topic was his and Sebastian Sevignani’s Leviathan special edition on the public sphere. Martin Seeliger presented the conceptual framework of the volume and the central findings of the contributions dedicated to the processes of transformation of collective deliberation.
Thank you Lisa-Maria and Martin for this interesting afternoon!
This week’s issue of Weizenbaum Colloquium was held by our fellow Irina Kalinka, who presented us her dissertation topic „The Political Imaginary of User democracy“.
Contemporary debates about the political impact of digital platforms in the West often revolve around a central, limiting dichotomy: Does digital media revitalize or hurt democracy? Irina’s dissertation project instead shifts the focus to the normative conceptualizations of democracy that are embedded within the platforms themselves. How do they define citizenship, „healthy“ public discourses and the associated practices and pedagogies? Irina understands these underlying assumptions and efforts as the political imaginary of „User Democracy“. She criticizes this notion of democracy, in which subjects are encouraged to imagine themselves as ‚citizen-users‘ of the digital public space provided by platforms. In contrast, she argues for an emancipatory understanding of democracy rooted in the political ethos of (digital) agonism, which emphasizes that popular sovereignty is not an object to be facilitated from above, but a continuous, collective process of struggle around what it means to be in common with others.
Thank you very much, Irina, for your insightful presentation and the subsequent fruitful discussion!
Tuesday, 23rd of February 2021, 2 pm – 3 pm
Weizenbaum-Institut, online
The upcoming issue of Weizenbaum Colloquium will be held by our fellow Irina Kalinka, who will give a presentation with the the title „The Political Imaginary of User Democracy“, based on her dissertation topic:
Contemporary debates about the political impact of digital platforms in the West often revolve around a central, limiting dichotomy: Does digital media revitalize or hurt democracy? This project shifts the focus to show how digital platforms are not only facilitators – of both democratic and anti-democratic endencies – but also engender their own normative conceptualization of democracy. This includes defining what information is in the public interest, what constitutes “healthy” public discourse, and what are good citizenship practices and pedagogies. What emerges from such efforts is a political imaginary I call ‘User Democracy.’
User Democracy is informed by a technocratic understanding of politics, including the valorization of data and automation, predictability, and systematization. Community and popular sovereignty are here imagined as operational and, thus, potentially programmable, which devalues the need for political contestation, inherent in questions of history, justice, and equality, to play out in a truly public setting. Instead, digital public life is facilitated for political subjects through the ‘service’ of interface-design, algorithmic filters, or user manuals. Under this framework, democracy is seen as a project of optimization and management, not common struggle. Subjects are encouraged to imagine themselves as ‚citizen-users‘ of the service of digital public space, where citizenship is an improvable and quantifiable skill – instead of a shared responsibility.
This dissertation, in contrast, argues for an emancipatory understanding of democracy rooted in the political ethos of (digital) agonism, which emphasizes that popular sovereignty is not an object to be facilitated from above, but a continuous, collective process of struggle around what it means to be in common with others.
If you are interested in attending the Weizenbaum Colloquium, please send us a mail (digidem@wzb.eu) and we will provide you with a link to the conference.
Yesterday, 26th October 2021 we hosted a double issue of the Weizenbaum Colloquium. The speakers were Lisa-Maria Neudert (Oxford Internet Institute) and Martin Seeliger (University of Bremen), our former fellows.