Fandom, Fear, and Feeds: Affective Politics in Algorithmic Southeast Asia

Speaker: Merlyna Lim, Carleton University

Moderator: Victor Seow, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University

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This talk examines the affective and algorithmic dynamics shaping contemporary public opinion formation in Southeast Asia. It argues that political power in the region is increasingly exercised through the convergence of algorithmic politics, affective fandom politics, and algorithmic marketing culture—not only during electoral campaigns, but in ongoing struggles over public issues, legitimacy, and authority.

Drawing on longitudinal research across Southeast Asian contexts, the talk shows how emotional attachment becomes political capital, how fan practices operate as durable political infrastructure, and how algorithmic visibility is inseparable from financial, organizational, and institutional resources. Within this ecology, platforms reward intensity, repetition, and emotional resonance, enabling political actors and aligned networks to cultivate intimacy, humor, fear, and moral polarization in order to shape public sentiment over time. These forms of algorithmic politics extend beyond elections into everyday governance and issue-based conflicts, influencing debates over national identity, policy, morality, and social order.

By foregrounding the co-agency of platforms, political actors, and networked publics, the talk shows how local cultures of intimacy, hierarchy, and moral obligation interact with algorithmic marketing culture to produce regionally specific formations of populism, authoritarianism, and participation.

Ultimately, the talk offers an affect-centered framework for understanding how power in algorithmic Southeast Asia is continuously produced, felt, and contested through everyday feeds.

About our speaker: Merlyna Lim is Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Canada Research Professor, and director of the ALiGN Media Lab at Carleton University. Born and raised in Dayeuhkolot, Indonesia, her research examines the dialectical co-shaping of digital technologies and society. Her notable publications include Social Media and Politics in Southeast Asia (2025) and Roots, Routes, Routers: Communication and Media of Contemporary Social Movements (2018).