ERC Consolidator Award for Prof Dr Sahana Udupa

 Prof Dr Sahana Udupa © Andreas Focke

Professor of Media Anthropology at LMU, Sahana Udupa has already received European Research Council funding for her work on the politics of digital media through an ERC Starting Grant and subsequently a Proof of Concept Grant.

For many years, the large social media platforms were the main focus of societal debates surrounding hate speech and threats to democracy. But ever since Elon Musk drove many users on to smaller platforms such as Mastodon with his maverick policies on free speech, these platforms have attracted greater attention as alternative avenues for progressive discourses. In the meantime, small platforms in some contexts have also facilitated exclusionary narratives, for instance, the far-right movement Britain First has grown its influence on the microblogging site Gab. In the project SMALLPLATFORMS (Beyond the Big Tech: Contentious Speech on Small Platforms), LMU Professor Udupa Sahana will investigate these small platforms in a cross-cultural context for the first time. Her study will include on-site and online explorations and will encompass Germany, Britain, Kenya and India. Using a unique conceptual model, the project will explore whether and in what way forms of contentious speech are associated with practices particular to small platforms. In this way, Udupa will bring the discourses on small platforms into anthropological investigation at both empirical and theoretical levels, using ethnography, algorithm auditing and computational methods.