[Air-L] 27 February "How the Far Right and Social Media Mobilize Working-Class Emotions" by Rosana Pinheiro-Machado

[Ülker Sözen]

We kindly invite you to the online lecture:

*“How the Far Right and Social Media Mobilize Working-Class Emotions” by
Prof. Dr. Rosana Pinheiro-Machado (University College Dublin & DeepLab)*

*Date and time: 27 February 2026, Friday 16:00-17:30 CET *

You can find more on the lecture and the zoom link here
<https://ecpr.eu/news/news/details/905>.

You can keep updated and get registered to our online seminar series here
<https://ecpr.eu/Events/337>.

Warm regards,

ECPR Research Network on Digital Authoritarianism

Steering Committee

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Abstract

Working-class support for reactionary politics is as old as capitalism
itself, yet it remains one of the most paradoxical features of modern
democracy. Long celebrated as the vanguard of progressive change,
significant segments of low-income groups are now aligning with illiberal
regimes, authoritarian populists, and far-right movements across the globe.
This talk explores why. Drawing on twenty-five years of ethnographic
research with workers in Brazil, and more recently in India and the
Philippines, it argues that this alignment cannot be explained by economic
deprivation, resentment, or cultural backlash alone. Instead, digital
technologies emerge as pivotal in reshaping working-class political
subjectivities. By introducing the concept of the authoritariat, the talk
shows how platform labour, gig work, and the promise of self-employment
destabilise democratic bonds while fostering new desires for recognition,
autonomy, and self-worth. These dynamics are rooted in long histories of
colonial marginality yet amplified in the 21st century by the deregulation
of digital labour and the rise of Big Tech. Far from being trapped in
nostalgia, reactionary politics derives its strength from projecting an
imagined future—one that offers both rage and dreams to those historically
excluded. In reframing debates on working-class politics toward the Global
South, the talk theorises a new, deeply ambivalent political formation—part
authoritarian, part conservative, part libertarian—that is profoundly
consequential for the future of democracy.

*Rosana Pinheiro-Machado*, an anthropologist, is a Professor of Global
Studies at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland. She is the Director of
the Digital Economy and Extreme Politics Lab (DeepLab) and the Principal
Investigator of the European Research Council- funded project Flexible
Work, Rigid Politics in Brazil, India, and the Philippines. Her
ethnographic research explores the intersection of reactionary politics and
precariousness in the emerging economies of the Global South.