Virtual icon Naming the Beast: The Question of Agency in Social Media and Platformization Studies on Authoritarianism

Abstract

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Wolfram Schaffar (University of Passau) Moderator: Dr. Ülker Sözen (University of Passau & Leipzig University) It is evident that platforms and social media play a central role in the rise of authoritarian forms of rule. The election of Trump in the USA in 2016 and 2024, the success of Duterte in the Philippines in 2016, the continued success of right-wing movements in Japan, and the rise of the AfD in Germany are each associated with specific platforms or social media. However, these analyses raise the fundamental question of agency: Can these successes be attributed to the fact that certain actors use platforms to spread their political agendas? Or do the technical specifications and economic rationality of the respective platforms themselves contribute to polarization and authoritarian developments? There is an ongoing debate on this in the literature (Grohmann and Ong, 2024, special issue on Disinformation-for-Hire as Everyday Digital Labour). In my presentation, I will outline this debate and illustrate it with examples from Thailand, Myanmar, and China. I will argue that, contrary to many analyses which emphasize structural and technical determinism, surprising turns of events in political developments suggest that we should not underestimate the agency of political actors. Wolfram Schaffar holds the Chair of Development Policy at the University of Passau, Germany, and was previously Professor of Political Science and Development Studies at the University of Vienna (Austria), Acting Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Tübingen (Germany) and Lecturer at Chulalongkorn University (Thailand), the University of Yangon (Myanmar) and JSW Law School (Bhutan). Dr Schaffar's research focuses on social media platforms, processes of democratisation and de-democratisation, and state theory in the global South. He focuses particularly on East and Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Myanmar, Japan and China.