Book reception and panel debate
10 April 2025, 15.00-17.00 at Tempelriddersalen
Ny Kongensgade 9C, 1472 København K
How do we sustain controversies in a digitalized society? That’s the key question of Controversial Encounters in the Age of Algorithms by Sine N. Just. The book explores how digital technologies shape public debate, diagnosing a ‘closing of the rhetorical mind’ that stems from mutually intensifying forces of personalization and polarization. If we lose the ability to encounter disagreement, democracy is plunged into deep communicative and societal crisis. Drawing on the ancient art of arguing all sides of a case, Controversial Encounters offers ways in which we might revive public debate and ‘make disagreement great again’.
Program
Opening statement: Controversial encounters of the third kind
Sine N. Just
Panel debate: Algorithmic organizing and affective politics
Discussants: Julie Uldam, Copenhagen Business School, Ike Picone, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Susanna Paasonen, University of Turku, and Tony Sampson, University of Essex.
Moderators: Ib T. Gulbrandsen, Roskilde University
About the book
Controversial Encounters is available open access at Bristol University Press: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/controversial-encounters-in-the-age-of-algorithms
About the author
Sine N. Just is Professor of Strategic Communication in the Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University. She is the principal investigator of Algorithms, Data & Democracy (the ADD- project), a ten-year (2021– 2031) interdisciplinary research and outreach project that aims to strengthen digital democracy. A rhetorician by training, Sine remains convinced that persuasion may hold democracy together by tearing it apart.
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