Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Treré, Competing moral economies and tactical/strategic dimensions of algorithmic agency, diagram published in Algorithms of Resistance (The MIT Press, 2024). Courtesy the authors.
Talk & Lecture
Online Wednesday, February 26, 2025 7.00 pm
Online lecture by Tiziano Bonini (Italy) and Emiliano Treré (Italy/United Kingdom) followed by a conversation with bani haykal (Singapore).
Algorithms of Resistance. Tracing tactics of agency and solidarity within platform society.
Wednesday, 26 February 2025 · 7:00 - 8:30 PM
Today, a growing number of social interactions, economic transactions, political engagements, and affective relations are enabled and regulated by a global network of online platforms operated through algorithms. As algorithmic infrastructures become enmeshed in the fabric of society, more and more aspects of everyday life are being captured and released in data streams that feed digital entities unilaterally coded and controlled by profit-driven tech companies. Through extensive online and offline fieldwork conducted across the Global North and the Global South, Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Treré—co-authors of Algorithms of Resistance. The Everyday Fight Against Platform Power (The MIT Press, 2024)—ventured into uncharted alghoritmic territories. They encountered forms of agency, practices of resistance, and bonds of solidarity enacted by users who negotiate their own terms of existence within the platform regime. In this lecture, the speakers will reflect on how grassroots practices can spark emancipatory frictions that reinvent and disrupt the uneven power relation between users and platforms.
This event is generated by bani haykal within Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions, a research programme that aims to propel a transformative understanding of technology through artistic practices and transdisciplinary synergies.
Tiziano Bonini is Associate Professor, Sociology of Culture and Communication, at the Department of Social, Political, and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena (Italy). He has a background in cultural studies, political economy of communication, and Science and Technology Studies (STS). His research interests include critical algorithm studies, platform studies, and digital cultures with a special interest in the ethnography of digital media practices. Previously, he worked 10 years as editor and producer in the Italian national public radio.
Emiliano Treré is a Beatriz Galindo Distinguished Professor in the Department of Language Theory and Communication Sciences, University of Valencia (Spain) and Reader in Data Agency and Media Ecologies at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media, and Culture. His is a leading scholar in digital activism, critical data studies, algorithm studies, and digital disconnection, with a strong focus on Latin America and the Global South. He co-founded Big Data from the South and co-directs Data Justice Lab, a pioneering research centre exploring the intersections of datafication, AI, and social justice. His work has garnered multiple awards, including the ICA Outstanding Book Award and Honourable Mention (Activism, Communication, and Social Justice Interest Group) and the MeCCSA Outstanding Achievement Award for Article of the Year.
Contributors
bani haykal
Artist-in-Residence
Singapore
As artist and musician, bani haykal (Singapore, b. 1985) experiments with language, sound, and fiction. His work revolves around human-machine relationships/intimacies, and cultural identity formations reflecting critically on how language, tools and technologies have shaped and continue to shape our life experiences. From interfaces to interactions, from fictions to frictions, from commuting to communicating, the creative output of his research often involves the creation of DIY tools and it encompasses site-responsive installations, poetry, and performance as well as publications and music releases.
