Vortrag Fabian Schäfer: Konnektiver Zynismus. Politik und Kultur im digitalen Zeitalter

In the organizer's words:

Fabian Schäfer is Professor of Japanese Studies at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg. He researches the digital transformation of the political public sphere, in particular the topics of social bots and hate speech as well as the linguistic normalization of new-right and right-wing populist discourses in Japan and Germany. In this lecture, he presents his concept of "connective cynicism".

Political discourse is brutalizing, trolls are rampaging on social media and cross-border jokes are booming. Right-wing populists and questionable influencers deliberately use linguistic vagueness and ironic nuances in order to be able to relativize what has been said in retrospect. Fabian Schäfer examines the particular attention economy and connectivity of 'liking' and sharing on social media that fuels the spread of political and cultural cynicism. Using the concept of connective cynicism, he shows how marginal humor is exploited and politics is made with anti-democratic discourse strategies.

His book Konnektiver Zynismus. Politics and Culture in the Digital World was published in 2023 by Transcript-Verlag as an open access publication.

Fabian Schäfer completed his master's degree in Japanese Studies, Philosophy and Journalism at the University of Leipzig in 2003. In October 2008, he completed his doctorate at the University of Leipzig with a dissertation entitled "The Origins of Media and Communication Studies in Prewar Japan. Early Theoretical Approaches to the Press, Journalism and Public Opinion, 1920-1937". From 2004 to 2005, he conducted research at the University of Tōkyō as a scholarship holder of the Japan Foundation. From 2005 to 2012, he worked as a research assistant at the East Asian Institute (Japanese Studies) at Leipzig University. From 2008 to 2009, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Modern East Asia Research Center (MEARC) at Leiden University. From 2012 to 2013, he was a senior researcher at the University of Zurich's University Research Priority Program Asia and Europe. Since September 2013, Fabian Schäfer has held the Chair of Japanese Studies I at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His habilitation with a thesis on "The medium as mediation. Media and media theories in Japan, 1920-2012" was completed in February 2016.

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Admission free