AGORA Speaker Series:“Trump, Twitter, and the Short Circuits of Technoliberalism”

Donald J. Trump's use of Twitter during the 2016 campaign cycle was unprecedented. Never before had someone running for the highest office in the land maintained such a steady flow of public communication, circumventing the traditional press and engaging with everyday citizens in ways that broke most of the political operating rules and quite a few social conventions along the way. This talk will explore how Trump's use of Twitter contests conventional theories of publics and public deliberation, drawing on the work of Bernard Stiegler to show how short circuits of communication risk democratic togetherness. 

Presented by Damien Pfister, University of Maryland