The Communication Networks & Social Change (CN&SC) research group of the IN3 is pleased to invite you to this open seminar by Eloy Caloca Lafont (Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico) and César Alcázar Arellano (Universidad del País Vasco, UPV/EHU), both IN3 Visiting Scholars.
The seminar will be recorded and available on the UOC YouTube channel (IN3 playlist) later.
Venue
Room -1A, UOC Castelldefels building (Parc Mediterrani de la Tecnologia, B3 building)
Av. Carl Friedrich Gauss, 5
08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona)
Espanya
When
30/05/2018 9.30h
Organized by
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Communication Networks & Social Change Research Group (CN&SC) of the IN3
Program
Facebook and the technopolitics of the visible: the case of the 2018 Mexican elections
By Eloy Caloca Lafont
Social networks have become key spaces of political contention. Most approaches to Facebook in social sciences address the exchanges of content, practices and capital that take place in the platform, but there are few studies attending to the technopolitics of their algorithms and the patterns of visibility they generate: otherwise, what can be seen (or not) in the platform. With that they outline a politics of the visible, a distribution of the sensible (in Jacques Ranciere's terms). The ongoing empirical research presented in this talk, that analyzes the case of the 2018 Mexican elections, proposes a double technopolitical approach: on one hand, it systematizes the multiple layers, dynamics and actors involved in the Facebook assemblage and, on the other hand, analyzes the connection between algorithms, visibility patterns and modes of subjectivation.
On the relevance of a political economy of the digital space
By César Alcázar Arellano
The flow of information and the ideas that circulate and constitute the digital space are rooted in a material dimension crossed by power and economical-political relations determinants. Therefore, it is necessary to question the specificity of the material structure of the digital space and its relation to power. In this talk I address the question of what critical political economy can provide a heuristic framework for conceptualizing this issue.