What once appeared as the promise of technocratic governance – the potential for rational, efficient, and neutral politics – is increasingly revealing itself as a playing field for new authoritarian systems. Digital infrastructures such as social media and AI-based applications are developed, operated, and controlled by tech monopolies. One consequence of this enormous concentration of power is that a small elite can heavily influence public opinion and political decision-making. These actors increasingly use algorithmic control, content visibility, and prioritization to spread right-leaning libertarian views that serve their own market interests. At the same time, new data-driven systems increase the potential for behavioral manipulation and surveillance, giving authoritarian and proto-fascist regimes the infrastructure they need to consolidate and maintain their power.

Against this backdrop, Anna-Verena Nosthoff and Paul Feigelfeld will first offer insights into the origins, ideologies, and logics of the autocratic use of technology through keynotes. In a subsequent panel discussion moderated by Christine Watty, participants will discuss, among other things, how new forms of control, standardization, and subjectification are emerging within this techno-political framework, and what cultural strategies and political regulations could be used to counter them.

Free admission

Participants

Paul Feigelfeld is a cultural and media scholar. He is Professor for Digitality and Cultural Mediation and a faculty member at the Institute for Open Arts at Mozarteum University in Salzburg, as well as co-director of the Data Arts Forum. From 2021–2024 he was Professor for Knowledge Cultures in the Digital Age at the Institute for Design Research at Braunschweig University of Art (HBK), and a guest professor at the Chair of Media Theories at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (2024–2025). His work explores transcultural and transmedia approaches to the history of media and knowledge, as well as critical perspectives on technologies and their intersections with politics, art, and design. He works as an advisor for art institutions such as Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Vitra Design Museum, and MAK – Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he was guest curator for Uncanny Values: Artificial Intelligence & You during the Vienna Biennale 2019.

Anna-Verena Nosthoff is Junior Professor for the Ethics of Digitization at Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg and Co-Director of the Critical Data Lab (Humboldt-Universität / University of Oldenburg). Previously, she was a lecturer, guest researcher, and fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Princeton University, the University of Vienna, and the Weizenbaum Institute, among others. Her research focuses on digitization and democracy, platform-based economic forms of power and governance, the politics of social networks, as well as the history and critique of cybernetics. In February 2026, her book Kybernetik und Kritik. Eine Theorie digitaler Regierungskunst was published by Suhrkamp.

Christine Watty is a journalist based in Berlin. Her areas of focus are culture, society, and digital technology. After years as a freelance author and presenter, she has been working at Deutschlandfunk Kultur since 2016, where she was editorial director of Digitales Audio. She is also a culture editor and presenter, and co-develops and oversees podcast formats for Deutschlandfunk, such as Tech Bro Topia.