Session 15 of "Behind the Scenes" Online Talk Series with Blake Hallinan & CJ Reynolds

Blake Hallinan & CJ Reynolds – Malcontents as method: How bad actors offer an alternative vision of good governance on social media

Time und Date: January 28, 2025, 3-4 pm (CET)

Blake Hallinan & CJ Reynolds from Hebrew University of Jerusalem will be speaking in the next session of the PGMT Lab online talk series “Behind the Scenes – Conversations on Empirical Platform Governance Research”.

A focus on the usual suspects—states, firms, and non-governmental organizations—risks returning the usual answers about what platform governance is and should be. In this talk, we make the case for staying with the troublemakers: those who, by circumstance and choice, occupy a position of antagonism to content moderation. Drawing from our collaborative and independent research on creator organizing, we show how malcontents, degenerates, and other purported bad actors diagnose formal governance systems and innovate informal governance practices that challenge assumptions about the identity of political actors and the meaning of political participation.

Registration required.

About the Series

This talk is part of the series Behind the Scenes – Conversations on Empirical Platform Governance Research that invites scholars in this field to share their experiences and views, fostering community exchange about how we can study platform governance in this challenging context. It is hosted by the Lab “Platform Governance, Media, and Technology” (PGMT) at the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI), University of Bremen, and the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies, University of Groningen.