Political populism and digital culture
THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
Keywords:
political populism, Ernesto Laclau, Luciano Floridi, philosophy of information, infosphere, artificial intelligence, agency, digital mediaAbstract
Following the tradition of approaching the populist actor as a sign in socio-cultural communication and political populism as an ontological process of political action, according to Ernesto Laclau, this article shifts attention to the digital environment, where effective contemporary populist discourse unfolds. Populist practices extend beyond political action and are embodied in the public communication of contemporary celebrities, a phenomenon that has become especially evident in the age of social media. To identify the essential characteristics of the political populist and the digital environment within a single theoretical framework, this study employs the methodology and conceptual foundations of Luciano Floridi’s philosophy of information, which allows the political populist to be considered as an informational organism (inforg) in new conditions of existence—the infosphere. Considering the conceptual separation of intelligence and activity, understood as the agency of new artifacts driven by artificial intelligence, the author draws an analogy, revealing the configurational affordances of the infosphere for the political populist, who, like algorithm-driven artificial artifacts, adapts to external stimuli coming from micro-audiences in digital networks in search of maximum popular approval. An ontological affinity between the informational entities of the populist and the artificial artifact is identified, based on their shared characteristic—agency—which is planned outcomes of the technologies. Thus, digital culture shapes new practices of daily activity, political representation, and communication, while also creating challenges for humans in the realm of responsibility and control over their own lives. The study demonstrates that populism serves as a distinctive marker of transformations in the socio-cultural space within the digital infosphere, and that new life practices of digital culture indicate a re-ontologization of our existence.
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