Digital platforms and ethno-nationalist populism share an affinity via engineered confusion

Evidence

As we saw in part 2, speculative technologies do not merely subtract lived experiences into commodified predictive data; they are nodes for circulating the radical uncertainty that defines a speculative mode of being. Ethno-nationalist populist movements have channeled their digital activism right at the heart of the spaces afforded by such technologies; the connectivities and cleavages evident in the steady growth of these platforms’ constituencies now extend far beyond the fringe, achieving magnitudes of mobilization that traditional social movements have previously lacked. Sociologist Paolo Gerbaudo (2018) has emphasized this affinity between digital technologies (their dependence on and use of contradiction, opacity, and confusion) and neopopulist publics. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 698

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the financialization literature’s treatment of radical uncertainty and with the Gerbaudo thesis on neopopulism and digital contradiction. — connects to: Platform algorithms delivered foreign propaganda to its most receptive audiences — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 203