This year, the RC22 conference will happen in Szeged, Hungary. The organizers are:

International Political Science Association RC10 – Electronic Democracy

International Political Science Association RC22 – Political Communication

Legal, Political Aspects of the Digital Public Sphere Research Group of the Centre of Excellence for Interdisciplinary Research, Development and Innovation of the University of Szeged

Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, University of Szeged

 

The conference brings together scholars working at the intersection of digital democracy, political communication, and the transformation of the public sphere under platformized and data-driven conditions. The program explores how political meaning is produced, circulated, contested, and institutionalized in contemporary digital environments, with particular attention to algorithmic mediation, artificial intelligence, short-form video platforms, media visibility, and the changing logics of political leadership and participation. Across different national and comparative perspectives, the papers address a broad range of interconnected questions, including how digital publics are shaped by identity formation and conflict, how AI increasingly influences democratic resilience and political agency, how machine learning can be used as a methodological tool in political communication research, how short-form video reconfigures attention and political subjectivity, how electoral campaigns unfold in hybrid and platform-dependent media environments, and how democracies respond to hybrid threats and new communicative vulnerabilities. By combining conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions, the conference aims to deepen our understanding of the digital public sphere as a dynamic arena in which political actors, citizens, technologies, and institutions continuously negotiate legitimacy, visibility, and power.

For more information, see the attached program.