Conference Program
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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M.04. Democracy Education and A.I. in the Geopolitical Disorder. A Proposal for a New Democratic Citizenship (1/2) Location: Scienze Politiche (CU002): Aula D Convenor(s): Alessio Fabiano (Universita' Degli Studi Basilacata, Italy); Claudio De Luca (Universita' Degli Studi Basilacata, Italy); Teodora Pezzano (Universita' Della Calabria, Italy); Giuseppe Spadafora (Universita' Della Calabria, Italy) | |
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Populism, Affective Mediatization, and Digital Governance: Reconfiguring Leadership and Democracy in Europe UCAM UNIVERSITY/SISP MEMBER, Italy
Panel submission
Panels: 5.c. Media: The Challenge in the Digital Age Keywords: fandom, digital governance, populism Populism, Affective Mediatization, and Digital Governance: Reconfiguring Leadership and Democracy in Europe Elena Varotto UCAM UNIVERSITY/SISP MEMBER, Italy; ELE.VAROTTO@GMAIL.COM This panel addresses a central question: How is political leadership reconfigured in a context marked by polarization, citizen disaffection, and affective mediatization? From the consolidation of Vox to the ascent of Fratelli d’Italia, we witness a mutation of political language where emotional appeals, symbolic enemies, and the aestheticization of leadership play a decisive role. Digital platforms are crucial in this transformation: social media amplify populist messages and enable the creation of affective communities around leaders who increasingly operate as celebrities. Concepts such as political fandom, asymmetric intimacy, and parasocial interaction provide analytical tools to understand how legitimacy is constructed today. The hypothesis guiding this panel is that contemporary populism is not merely a discursive strategy or a permanent campaign, but also a form of emotional and symbolic participation deeply mediated by spectacle and digital culture. Case studies such as the “Bimbe di Giuseppe Conte” or Giorgia Meloni’s visual narrative on Instagram exemplify this transformation. At the same time, these dynamics intersect with the fragmentation of digital governance in Europe. The EU’s Digital Services Act represents an ambitious attempt to regulate platforms, protect rights, and ensure algorithmic transparency, yet its effectiveness is constrained by uneven competences, divergent national models, and epistemic vulnerability. By combining comparative analysis with EU-level governance debates, this panel invites contributions on how populism, affective mediatization, and fragmented regulation converge to challenge democratic quality, public deliberation and social cohesion. ReferencesLaclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. Chadwick, A. (2017). The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power. Varotto, E. (forthcoming). Strategic Coherence in Crisis: The EU’s Response to Global Disorder Across Energy and Digital Governance. | |