27 May 2020
At the International Communication Association Annual Conference 2020, Sahana Udupa has organized a panel, “Aggressive Emotion, Precarious Labour and Colonial Continuities: Theoretical Debates on Disinformation and Extreme Speech Online”. The panel contributes to debates around online vitriol and disinformation by advancing theoretical insights into aspects of emotionality, cultural variation and political economy in a contextually rooted and historically sensitive global framework. In the panel, Jayson Harsin (Department Chair, Global Communications, The American University of Paris and Chair, Philosophy, Theory and Critique Division, ICA) speaks about “conjuncturally specific emotionality” of post-truth politics. Jonathan Corpus Ong (Associate Professor, Global Digital Media, UMass Amherst) and Jason Vincent Cabanes (Associate Professor in Communication, De La Sella University-Manila) offer insight to how fake news is not just a matter of political leadership, angry populist fervor, or technological innovation, but crucially an issue of political economy. Sahana Udupa’s paper, “Beyond “regressive rancor”: Continuities and multiplicities in online extreme speech” builds a decolonial critique of global extreme speech, highlighting the global process of racialized colonialism.