Abstract:

This talk moves from everyday attention demands, notifications, news feeds, and social media, to the large platforms that profit from them. Over the past two decades, digital technologies have transformed public discourse: increasing interconnectedness has enabled more self-organized debate, while platforms, their algorithms, and now generative AI have gained unprecedented influence over what we see and share. I argue that power over discourse lies less in direct content control and more in the structural design of platforms. Drawing on complexity and behavioral science, the talk explores why platforms can support democratic outcomes in some contexts while fueling polarization, mistrust, and autocratic resilience in others. Finally, I discuss how we can measure these effects and what alternative platform designs might look like.