The year of 2025 began with an engaging fellow talk by Dr. Daniela Mahl on January 14th at the Weizenbaum Institute, where she presented her work on Fringe Dynamics: Studying Anti-Democratic Movements at the Margins of Platform Ecosystems.
Her talk was inspired by the growing uncertainty surrounding the epistemic standards by which reality is approached marked by diagnoses of the era of “alternative facts” (Kamisar, 2019) and “post-truth politics” (Davies, 2016). When these standards compete and diverge, and when social upheavals undermine trust in established systems of knowledge production, societies enter an epistemological crisis—creating fertile ground for anti-democratic movements.
Dr. Mahl explored the role of digital platforms as accelerators of this dynamic, focusing on conspiracy and far-right movements at the margins of the platform ecosystem. She began by reflecting on a large-scale, cross-national research project on online conspiracy theories before shifting her focus to the concept of platformed conspiracism, an analytical framework to analyze “dark platforms”. She concluded with an analysis of the rise of a parallel platform ecosystem, discussing the rapid and dynamic shifts in this evolving landscape and the opportunities they present for anti-democratic movements. The evening wrapped up with an insightful Q&A session with the presenter.
We sincerely thank Dr. Daniela Mahl for sharing her work with us.
