Automated media and commercial populism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID18958349
AutoresZala Volčič (0000-0002-2154-4520, Monash University), M Andrejevic (0000-0002-6096-1060, Monash University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen37
Número1
Páginas149-167
Fecha de publicación2023-01-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0950-2386 • E-ISSN: 1466-4348
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09502386.2022.2042581
OpenAlexW4220767797
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas15

This article considers the link between the increasingly important role of automated information curation online and the rise of what we call ‘commercial populism’. We invoke the term to refer to the convergence of populism as a marketing tool – a way of selling, for example, nutritional supplements or survivalist merchandise – with political strategies that cater to the citizen as consumer (whose freedoms are framed in the individual register of personal taste unfettered from civic concerns or constraints). Perhaps unsurprisingly in this context, we draw on the example of Donald Trump's political rise, which while not unrelated to his particular idiosyncrasies, demonstrates how the automated curation of social media aligns itself with what the aggressive rise of commercial populism. The goal of such an analysis is to consider how the combination of hyper-commercialism with the formal attributes of social media contributes to inter-related political pathologies of polarization and conspiracy theory. The consumer-oriented model of personal taste catered to by algorithmic curation highlights the paradox of ‘social’ media: they promise to enhance the social by displacing or reframing it fundamental a-social. The offloading of social decisions and formation onto commercial, automated systems for curating news and information reinforces this version of individualism, contributing to the forms of misrecognition that enable it

Cognitive reframing · Internet privacy · Political science · Politics · Populism · Public relations · Social media · Sociology · Taste · Computer Science · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology

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