https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/SOCL5465?type=COREIt is now almost a truism that the internet has fundamentally changed the conditions for political mobilization. In the 1990s, it was initially "cyber-optimists" who believed that the internet would open up new spaces for freedom and political participation. Around 2010, this optimism reached its high point: the "Arab Spring" was widely framed-especially in Western liberal media-as proof that digital information technologies could drive democratization and political change. Since then, platforms have been central to mobilizations across the globe, from Black Lives Matter in the United States to the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, the White Paper Movement in China, or recent protests in Bangladesh.But the euphoria quickly began to crack. From the mid-2010s onwards, the discourse shifted: with the rise of populist parties, debates about "misinformation" and the closely related issues of radicalization and polarization, it became clear that digital public spheres are by no means "nonhierarchical spaces." During the pandemic, at the latest, it became apparent that power struggles and hierarchies are just as present in digital spaces as they are in the "analog" world - and that both state and non-state actors can use digital technologies for control, surveillance, and discipline. At the same time, the outsized influence of large tech companies-whose priority is not political empowerment but profit and consolidation-became impossible to ignore. Today, both utopian and dystopian narratives about the internet feel outdated. The internet is nolonger a "new" medium; it is fully embedded in our social and political fabric, even as it continues to evolve. This course moves beyond simple good-bad dichotomies to ask: How exactly do digital publics reshape political mobilization?In order to analyze these changes, we will focus on two key concepts: that of publics and that of platforms. The concept of publics allows us to understand political dynamics beyond a purely institutional or normative perspective. Publics are not only a historical construct that has emerged from civic exchange, nor are they exclusively a normative ideal of deliberative democratic theory. They can also be thought of as collective communities of attention-places where content circulates, affects are produced, and subjects are addressed. Publics exist in the plural, and in digital contexts- with their affordances for participation, circulation, and crosspollination-new and sometimes surprising forms of political mobilization can develop, reaching far beyond what we usually think of as traditional social movements.At the same time, we cannot understand digital politicization without looking at platforms. Platforms are the infrastructures that make the formation of publics possible in the first place. They vary in their design, their algorithmic control systems, their political economies, and the specific affordances they provide to users. From global giants like Meta or X to smaller, more specialized platforms, each generates its own cultures, interactional forms, and political dynamics. Yet platforms are never isolated: content, networks, and actors circulate across them, constantly weaving new interconnections and reshaping the broader media ecology.Throughout the course, we will work with these concepts to address the following research questions:- How are digital publics constituted, and what forms of politicization are possible within them?- Which actors, networks, and forms of circulation shape digital publics in the platform economy?- What does "digital culture" play-understood as the intertwining of discourses, affects, and infrastructures-drive political participation?- How do digital publics intersect with the "analog" world?- And what does the proliferation of digital publics mean for our understanding of "the political" itself?