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Media, Markets, and Psychology under Conditions of Post-factual Democracy

Lecture by Danish scholar Mads Vestergaard on May 15, 2018

№ 096/2018 from May 14, 2018

The Danish expert on political opinion formation, media environment, and affective polarization, Mads Vestergaard, will give a lecture on May 15 at Freie Universität Berlin on the mechanisms of attention under the conditions of post-factual democracy. Entitled “Media, Markets, and Psychology: Structural Conditions of Post-Factual Democracy,” the lecture will be given in English. It is public, and admission is free. No registration needed.

The media landscape has evolved into an attention economy under the growing influence of digitization, in which fake news, conspiracy theories, and populist thought patterns of a “we against you” successfully compete for attention and set the pace. Both – disinformation and the demarcation against dissenters – threaten the achievements of the community and in the end democracy itself. In his lecture, Mads Vestergaard critically examines and questions these developments, drawing on central arguments that he and the Danish philosopher Vincent F. Hendricks developed in the recently published book Post-Factual: The New Reality in Times of Bullshit, Fake News, and Conspiracy Theories (published so far in Danish and German, "Postfaktisch. Die neue Wirklichkeit in Zeiten von Bullshit, Fake News und Verschwörungstheorien").

Mads Vestergaard is a doctoral student at the Center for Information and Bubble Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Institute of Sociology, Sociology of Emotions Research Group, Freie Universität, and the Collaborative Research Center Affective Societies.

Time and Location

  • May 15, 2018, 6 p.m.
  • Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, Room KL32/202, 14195 Berlin; subway station: Freie Universität/Thielplatz (U3)

Homepage

www.sfb-affective-societies.de

More Information and Interview Requests

Prof. Dr. Christian von Scheve, Institute of Sociology, Freie Universität Berlin (Sociology of Emotions Research Group); Collaborative Research Center Affective Societies, Tel.: +49 30 838-57695, Email: c.vs@fu-berlin.de

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