School of Social and Political Science

Description

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.

Please note that this lecture might be filmed.

Venue: Meadows Lecture Theatre, Doorway 4, Medical School Teviot Place, Edinburgh EH8 9AG.

Timings: 5.15-6.30pm: Lecture

Followed by a reception until 19.30 in the Chrystal Macmillan Building.