Joyojeet Pal as ZeMKI Fellow in Bremen

The Center for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) at the University of Bremen welcomes the renowned media and technology expert Joyojeet Pal as a Visiting Research Fellow in June 2025. Pal is Associate Professor at the School of Information at the University of Michigan and researches the role of digital technologies in political public spheres, especially in the Global South.

During his stay in Bremen, Pal will devote himself to a current research project on the interplay between technology, populism and charismatic leadership in India. Under the title “Technopopulism in the Digital Age”, he is investigating how technological rhetoric is used to legitimize political power. The focus here is on the idea of a “technocracy”, i.e. the idea that politics and administration could be optimized through rational, technology-supported processes and thus democratically legitimized.

Pal shows that this idea has taken a new, populist turn in digital India. Using prominent politicians such as Chandrababu Naidu and Narendra Modi, he analyzes how technology imaginaries, for example by referring to Silicon Valley or the branding of “Digital India”, are used specifically to stage charismatic leaders. In his research, he draws on case studies from India, but also refers to similar developments in countries such as El Salvador, Rwanda, Argentina and the USA.

Joyojeet Pal holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and has worked for many years at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on political communication in digital spaces, with a focus on India and the Global South. He has published numerous scholarly articles on the role of social media in election campaigns, the visual politics of leaders, and digital inequality.

In addition to his academic work, Pal is also active as a producer: He caused a stir with the Netflix documentary “For the Love of a Man”, which documents the cult of personality around movie stars and fan clubs in South India.

His stay at ZeMKI will not only contribute to the further development of his research project, but also strengthen international exchange on political communication, media practices and technology discourses.