School of Social and Political Science

Introduction

After social media: participation, power, and responsibility in digital politics

This inaugural lecture examines the transformation of social media into increasingly automated, individualized, and exploitative environments, which I call auto-media. These changes are reshaping the conditions of democratic citizenship, reducing opportunities for genuine user engagement while shifting responsibility for maintaining democratic norms in public communication from platforms, elites and institutions onto citizens themselves. Rather than causing democratic decline, these innovations amplify existing political dynamics and reconfigure the distribution of power among political elites and the public. As a result, sustaining democratic participation is becoming increasingly difficult: citizens who remain engaged must invest ever greater cognitive, emotional, and social effort, while many others withdraw from politics altogether. I suggest these dynamics may contribute to rising inequalities in participation and to a broader condition of democratic decay.

Introduction and closing remarks

Professor John Devaney, Head of the School of Social and Political Science, introduces the inaugural lecture of Professor Cristian Vaccari, March 2026. 

Professor Devaney's introduction

A very warm welcome on behalf of the School of Social and Political Science. My name is John Devaney, I'm the Head of the School. It's a real pleasure and an honour as part of my responsibilities to host these professorial inaugural lectures. They're a real opportunity to not only have an occasion to celebrate somebody who, in this case, has joined the University from outside the University and was appointed as a Professor in the institution, but also an opportunity to showcase some of the wonderful talent that we have within the school.

Thank you all for attending this evening. I know many of you from the School and from the wider University, but we also have some external guests today, and you're really welcome to the University. In particular, Patricia, who's Christian's partner, is here, and we just like to acknowledge you being here this evening and thank you for coming along as well.

In terms of some of the housekeeping, please could everyone just check that your mobile phones are on silent, so it doesn't interrupt the wonderful lecture that we're about to hear. And if anybody needs to use the bathroom or the toilets, just go out the door and down to the right and through a couple of sets of doors and you'll find toilets in there on the left-hand side.

We are recording the lecture this evening, so it's just to make you aware of that and if that might cause any difficulties for anybody, if you can come and either mention to myself or Helene at the end, we can have a chat to see what we can do about that, in terms of making sure that doesn't cause any difficulties for you.

In terms of the practical arrangements this evening, after Christian's delivered his lecture, which lasts for about 50 minutes - we're not timing it., he's got all the time he wants to talk to us this evening. But Christian is very open to hearing, to engaging in some Q&A, or even just hearing your reflections on the important things that he's going to be talking about this evening. Then we hope that as many of you as possible are able to stay around for a bit longer and join us in the Foyer of the Crystal Macmillan Building where we have some refreshments. And that will give you an opportunity to pass on your congratulations to Christian and also ask him anything about what he said that maybe you didn't have the opportunity to ask him about during the Q&A.  If anyone is free to stay, please do.

In terms of our speaker, one of the many, many positive things and enjoyable things of being Head of a School is that you get to partake in recruitment processes and to make appointments, not only to the School, but to the University, and I was very fortunate to actually be on Christian's appointment panel back in 2023, when we were looking for a new Professor to join our subject area of Politics and International Relations, and we were at that stage developing a new program which was starting to be delivered through the Edinburgh Futures Institute, and we wanted somebody to come along to take responsibility for this new program on Future Governance. We had a very strong field of candidates applied for that post, one, because of the very strong reputation that Politics and International Relations at Edinburgh actually has. But also I think that people were very attracted to the post itself. I was really delighted not only that Christian applied - because I didn't know him beforehand - but when we had the interview, went through the selection process and I think you were involved in that as well - we were immensely impressed by Christian, both his CV and also his visions for what he would do if he came to Edinburgh. And over the past three years, I've been very pleased to see how Christian has settled into his role here at Edinburgh, and not just seen it as a place where he can work from, but actually added to and contributed to the life of the School in many different ways.

And so that's been a really positive thing to see. The inaugural lecture that we're going to hear this evening is titled After Social Media: Participation, Power and Responsibility in Digital Politics and the lecture itself will examine the transformation of social media into increasingly automated, individualised and exploitative environments, which Christian calls “auto media”. These changes, he states, are reshaping the conditions of democratic citizenship, reducing opportunities for genuine user engagement while shifting responsibility for maintaining democratic norms and public communication from platforms, elites and institutions onto citizens themselves.  And Christian will expand on this in greater detail later on.

So as I mentioned earlier on, Christian was appointed here in September 2023. He's got a very impressive CV. In terms of his own academic background - he holds a first degree in Communication Sciences from the University of Bologna in Italy, including a year as an exchange student in the University of California, San Diego; and a PhD in Communication in New Technologies from the IULM University in Milan and he won that Celso Ghini Prize for the best Italian PhD dissertation in Electoral Studies in 2005-6. After completing his doctorate, Christian did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Bologna before moving into roles as an Assistant Professor and later Associate Professor, and after this followed roles as Reader and then Lecturer at Royal Holloway at the University of London; then Reader, followed by full Professorship at Loughborough University, where we were very fortunate to steal him from.

He holds a Chair in Future Governance, Public Policy and Technology, as I mentioned, and is the Program Director of the MSC Future Governance at Edinburgh Futures Institute. He was the Editor in Chief for the International Journal of Press Politics between 2019 and 2024, and that included organising its annual flagship Conference. He's also been a co-rapporteur for two Council of Europe committees, and looking at his present and future rules, Professor Vaccari is presently Vice Chair – and from 2028 – will be Chair of the Political Communication Division of the International Communication Association. 

Alongside all of his academic endeavors, I know he's also - which is no surprise to anybody when we know that he's Italian - a great lover of food and travel, and also the arts. I'm going to finish off by saying this: I'm really looking forward to hearing your presentation, Christian and I’m sure our sort of colleagues here will want to engage with you in some questions and reflections afterwards. But thank you very much and hand over to you. Thank you.

 

Professor Devaney's closing remarks

Christian, thank you very much for what's been a really thought-provoking and engaging lecture. I was too busy scribbling at the end there to actually give you a round of applause along with everybody else. But it's a really good example of what an inaugural lecture should be in terms of opening up your world and academic study, to a wider set of ideas that we can all probably engage in, because actually we all connect with these things in a day and daily basis, whether it's the media in the general form or whether it's social media in that particular form.

That was also interesting in terms of, as many people do with their inaugural professorial lecture, giving us an insight into a bit about their early and formative years, and to see the sort of things that you were exposed to as a baby and infant which have carried through to this stage in your career and life, but also this idea of the role that the media plays in our lives as individuals and as a society.

And I was thinking more about, as you talked, about the construction, deconstruction, reconstruction of society by auto media and what that means for us in terms of the responsibilities that we have individually because of our engagement with these different forms of media, but also a point that you were making about the inequities that are amplified as a result of the passing of responsibility to individuals to navigate these things, rather than feeling as though the state or other bodies have responsibilities in all of that.

And therefore that new media, or the internet, has caused another set of disruptions in the same way that writing and printing have caused to previous generations. And how as societies we’re having to try and navigate what that means for the new ways of communication, but also what that means for democracy itself. So I was really struck by all of that and it's left me with plenty of things to think about over the next while.

So, the promise that you showed at your interview back in 2023 is very evident and all the things that you've done since then - and good to have mentioned about food as well. Could we open it up for comment for questions for reflections that, those who are here tonight, might want to share. So if you do have a question or you do have a reflection, please stick your hand up - there's plenty of hands going up.