This panel explores the use of digital ethnographic work in understanding the complex relationship between digital platforms and authoritarianism. Challenging underlying assumptions of both the nature of this relationship and typical methodological approaches, Rosana Pinheiro-Machado and João C. Magalhães discuss their own important and innovative approaches to studying these messy and deeply ambivalent spaces.
First, Dr. Pinheiro-Machado discusses the radicalisation of some segments of precarious workers in Brazil. As informal workers start enterprising on digital platforms, her work investigates the extent to which these technological shifts impact political radicalisation. Is this political identification a reflection of predisposed political views that were already latent previously? Or are the digital platforms pushing them to the far right? Based on a combination of intensive long-term ethnography and extensive computational approaches, Dr. Pinheiro-Machado will explore push and pull factors that enable the encounter between precarious workers and authoritarian populism.
Next, Dr. Magalhães explores the messy relationship between digital platforms, democracy, and authoritarianism. Early celebratory accounts were replaced by fears of ‘filter bubbles’ and induced polarization, which have been however constantly contradicted by empirical research. Dr. Magalhães suggests that this hazy picture is largely the consequence of a misleading assumption, one that takes exposure and consumption of “information” as the most important aspect whereby platforms affect the formation of political subjects. Reminiscent of older, deterministic views of media’s social power, and closely associated with the ‘marketplace of ideas’ paradigm, this assumption tends to flatten human agency and ignore the multiple registers, experiences, and inequalities through which political phenomena happens. Dr. Magalhães argues that an ethnographic sensibility towards the messy reality of how ordinary people imagine and engage with digital networks is needed if we are to develop a more realistic understanding of how the Internet transformed our political lives.
João C. Magalhães is an Assistant Professor in Media, Politics, and Democracy at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies, University of Groningen (Netherlands). His work concerns the multiple intersections of platforms and politics and has been published in the ‘Journal of Communication’, ‘International Journal of Communication’, and ‘Social Media + Society’, among others. João holds a PhD from the LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science).
Rosana Pinheiro-Machado is a Professor in the School of Geography at the University College Dublin. She is the Director of the Digital Economy and Extreme Politics Lab and the Principal Investigator of the project Flexible Work, Rigid Politics in Brazil, India, and the Philippines, funded by the European Research Council, Consolidator Grant. Twitter: @_pinheira