Workshop: "Digital Power and Democratic Futures: Critical Perspectives on Governance in the Digital Age"
Workshop on June 5, 2026
(participation by invitation only // please email us if you with to participate)
The final conference of the research group “Politics of Digitalisation” brings together researchers and practitioners to critically examine the digital transformation as a field of political struggle, institutional change, and normative contestation. Across two days, the event reflects on how digitalisation reconfigures power, governance, and democracy – and what it means to study these processes critically. After the evening event on June 4, the workshop on Friday is structured into four thematic sessions. Across them, we ask:
How can we conceptualize and investigate power and domination in digital societies? Have their manifestations changed – and if so, how? How did we move from Internet governance to digital geopolitics? What role does the state play in regulating, enabling, or reshaping digital infrastructures and public spheres? And how does the digitalisation of the state itself affect public authority and accountability?
Each session features four input contributions, including one from a practitioner, followed by an open debate designed to foster exchange across academic and policy communities.
Session 1
This session, entitled From Global Internet Governance to Digital Geopolitics examines the shift from early cyberlibertarian imaginaries of horizontal coordination toward state-centered projects of digital sovereignty and security. It interrogates how geopolitical and geoeconomic framings redefine the “goods to be protected” and reconfigure relations between states and corporations.
Session Chairs:
Julia Pohle & Jeanette Hofmann
Input givers:
Julia Pohle, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Joanna Kulesza, University of Lodz
Daniel Voelsen, German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP)
Adam Peake, ICANN
Session 2
This session on Power and Domination reflects on conceptual and methodological resources for critical digitalisation research. It explores architectural, economic, and discursive forms of power, and discusses how domination is stabilized through technologies, regulation, and institutional practice.
Session Chairs:
Florian Irgmaier & Sebastian Berg
Input givers:
Sebastian Berg, Weizenbaum Institute
Vincent August, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Theresa Züger, Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG)
Lena Ulbricht, Universität Hildesheim
Session 3
This session on Critical Perspectives on Digital Regulation and Statecraft focuses on the evolving interplay between platforms, algorithms, and regulatory authority. Rather than assuming regulatory erosion, it investigates how states recalibrate legal frameworks, enforcement capacities, and forms of statecraft under conditions of algorithmic governance.
Session Chairs:
Eliška Drápalová & Lena Ulbricht
Input givers:
Eliška Drápalová, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Wolfgang Schulz, Leibniz Institute of Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) & Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG)
Christian Katzenbach, Universität Bremen
Genia Koska, Freie Universität Berlin
Benjamin Seibel, City Lab Berlin
Session 4
This session on Communication and Platforms addresses platform governance, legal responses to disinformation, and transformations of the public sphere. It explores how digital communication infrastructures reshape democratic discourse and how regulatory interventions seek to safeguard – or redefine – the conditions of public debate.
Session Chairs:
Clara Iglesias Keller & Rob Gorwa
Input givers:
Clara Iglesias Keller, Weizenbaum Institute
João Magalhães, University of Manchester
Trisha Meyer, Brussels School of Governance
Torben Klausa, Agora Digitale Transformation
To celebrate the end of our workshop day and - more importantly - the end of our research group, we invite all workshop participants to join us for a small party with food and drinks at a bar close to the WZB, starting from 18:00pm.
This evening reception is kindly supported by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).