- About
- Message from the Chair
- History
- Facilities
- News
- Events
- Info Sci Colloquium
- Technopopulism and the Assault on Indian Democracy
- Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior
- AGI is Coming… Is HCI Ready?
- Algorithmic Governance: Auditing Online Systems for Bias and Misinformation
- Studying GenAI as a Cultural Technology: Provocations for Understanding the Cultural Entanglements of AI
- The State of Design Knowledge in Human-AI Interaction
- Amy Bruckman, Georgia Tech
- Jeff Bigham, CMU and Apple
- IS Engaged
- Graduation Info
- Ethics and Politics in Computing Colloquium
- Info Sci Colloquium
- Contact Us
- Courses
- Research
- Computational Social Science
- Critical Data Studies
- Data Science
- Economics and Information
- Education Technology
- Ethics, Law and Policy
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Human-Robot Interaction
- Incentives and Computation
- Infrastructure Studies
- Interface Design and Ubiquitous Computing
- Natural Language Processing
- Network Science
- Social Computing and Computer-supported Cooperative Work
- Technology and Equity
- People
- Career
- Undergraduate
- Info Sci Majors
- BA - Information Science (College of Arts & Sciences)
- BS - Information Science (CALS)
- BS - Information Science, Systems, and Technology
- MPS Early Credit Option
- Independent Research
- CPT Procedures
- Student Associations
- Undergraduate Minor in Info Sci
- Our Students and Alumni
- Graduation Info
- Contact Us
- Info Sci Majors
- Masters
- PHD
- Prospective PhD Students
- Admissions
- Degree Requirements and Curriculum
- Grad Student Orgs
- For Current PhDs
- Diversity and Inclusion
- Our Students and Alumni
- Graduation Info
- Program Contacts and Student Advising
Joyojeet Pal is an Associate Professor of Information at the School of Information at the University of Michigan. His work is on the role of technology in political outreach and polarization. He received his Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley.
Talk: Technopopulism and the Assault on Indian Democracy
Abstract: The idea of technocracy in politics, which presents rational management of policy and administration as a means of legitimacy has taken on new populist logic in the India’s digital age. In this talk, I argue that technology, and specifically the use of digital technology and its accompanying language of modernity has been presented as aspirational form of governance, and as a cover for charismatic leadership in the last three decades. I frame contemporary articulations of this Indian configuration of technopopulism within aspiration related to the technology industry and computing artifacts since the 1990s and trace its progress through the branding and public outreach of Indian politicians like Chandrababu Naidu and Narendra Modi. I propose that social media in particular has exacerbated the purchase of Indian technopopulism, in which a politician’s performance of the language of technological modernity is used to obfuscate underlying institutional capture. In conclusion, I discuss the ways in which technopopulism provides social elites normative cover for supporting a political system that works in their favor.