On power and possibility: politics, publishers, and platforms

Inaugural lecture by Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Abstract

How can we understand the interplay between political actors, news publishers, and platform companies among the informal political institutions enabling and constraining citizenship? In many ways fundamentally different, there are also common denominators: they all exercise power, in part in competition with one another, they do so in large part through and over public communication, and they are constrained not only by formal rules but also informal norms. For researchers, they are simultaneously indispensable informants for anyone who wants to understand how public life functions, and unreliable narrators of their role in it. In this lecture, I will draw out key points from my ongoing research on politics, publishers, and platforms as constitutive for various forms of citizenship, explain why I seek to anchor this work to the public and outline some next steps for the study of their power in our society – as well as some possibilities for how such power might be exercised differently.

After the lecture, the Department of Communication will host a reception in room/area 23.1.30 (the area above the canteen)