Digital Images and Democracy: Grounds for Optimism?

Digitaler Vortrag

Images play a big role in “digital democratic pessimism”: the view that the recent digitalization of media harms democracy. For example, deepfakes—convincingly false videos—blur the lines between truth and lies; memes are used by extremist movements as a new form of propaganda; Instagram and TikTok shorten our attention spans. Here I will explore a more optimistic view: that new uses of digital images can strengthen democracy. I focus on online communities that are not just passive consumers of images, but also image-producers and image-verifiers. By strengthening such active roles, can we meet the challenges that digitalization poses to democracy?

Vid Simoniti is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. His research focuses on the intersection of art and politics: he has published on socially engaged art, bio-art, art and technology, and the work of Adrian Piper. In 2021, he has been named one of ten BBC New Generation Thinkers, who will create new spoken word content for BBC Radio. You can also listen to his podcast, Art Against the World, which explores how contemporary artists respond to social issues ranging from ecology to migration.

Moderation: Dr. Sarah Hegenbart

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Organizational information on the digital lecture
The Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg is offering this event live as a zoom meeting, in which viewers can also take part in the subsequent discussion with video contributions.

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