Eugenia Siapera as ZeMKI Fellow in Bremen

In the summer of 2025, the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) at the University of Bremen welcomes Professor Eugenia Siapera as a Visiting Research Fellow. Siapera is Professor of Digital Technology, Politics and Society at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland, where she also co-directs the Centre for Digital Policy alongside Elizabeth Farries. She is internationally recognised for her critical research on digital media, platform governance, and the intersection of technology with issues of justice, inequality, and political communication.

During her time at ZeMKI, Siapera will collaborate with the Labs “Platform Governance, Media and Technology” and “Datafication and Mediatization”, engaging in dialogue around the political economy of platforms, algorithmic power, and the socio-political effects of digital infrastructures.

In her current project, which she is advancing during her fellowship, Siapera traces the ideological evolution of Silicon Valley from its countercultural beginnings in the 1960s to its increasing alignment with reactionary politics in the 21st century. Her central argument is that this trajectory is not a betrayal of its origins, but a logical outcome of its founding principles. Drawing on Barbrook and Cameron’s notion of the Californian Ideology, she identifies two core tenets that remain persistent: libertarian individualism and technocratic governance.

Her research further interrogates the paradox of libertarianism coexisting with pervasive surveillance. From a critical perspective, this contradiction dissolves when surveillance is understood as a mechanism of technocratic capitalism and therefore a tool of market efficiency and control, not resistance to freedom. Referencing thinkers such as Foucault, Morozov, and recent work on techno-solutionism and risk governance, Siapera argues that Silicon Valley’s shift from utopianism to authoritarianism has been gradual, and that the anti-democratic core of its ideology is now increasingly visible in an age shaped by Trumpism and its global echoes.

Over the course of her career, Eugenia Siapera has published widely on topics including digital journalism, platform regulation, hate speech, racism, and misogyny online. She has led multiple research projects funded by national and European bodies (IRC, SFI, Horizon) and has made significant contributions to the academic literature on digital politics and media systems. Her work at ZeMKI will further strengthen transnational research collaborations on platform governance and the sociotechnical dimensions of digital inequality.