Digital Dissensus

This books discusses the idea of Digital Dissensus , a concept that proposes rethinking the relationship between social media and politics through a different understanding of democracy. This is because the way we approach the relationship between social media and politics is largely shaped by how we understand democracy and the political. To date, approaches seeking to explain this relationship have predominantly taken liberal democracy as their point of departure, evaluating political experiences emerging in digital spaces within this framework. By contrast, this book treats democracy not as one of the criteria for analysing social media, but as its point of departure. Rather than judging political experiences in digital spaces according to the established standards of liberal democracy, it asks what forms of inequality, exclusion, and contradiction these experiences render visible within the existing order. Could rethinking democracy lead us to see the relationship between social media and politics differently?

Starting from this question, the book takes Jacques Rancière's understanding of politics and democracy, shaped around the concept of dissensus, as its theoretical point of departure for understanding the political experiences of the digital age. However, the digital sphere is not regarded merely as a field in which Rancière's theory can be applied. Rather, the book argues that the new political experiences emerging in the digital age raise new questions that both extend and require a reconsideration of this approach. The Gezi Park protests, the Mahsa Amini protests, and the Occupy Wall Street movement are therefore approached not simply as examples of social movements, but as political experiences that invite reflection on the question of what digital dissensus renders visible.