Technology and Development Seminar: Algorithmic Illusions

Technology, Inequality and Development Research Group Seminar

This new event in the Technology and Development Seminar Series examines the evolution of Israel’s Hasbara, a hybrid of propaganda and public diplomacy, in the contemporary digital media landscape. Revisiting earlier analyses through the lens of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, the paper argues that while Hasbara has become increasingly professionalised, data-driven and technologically sophisticated, it is also marked by deep contradictions. Digital infrastructures that once promised narrative control now expose
imperial violence in real time, rendering propaganda both more aggressive and less persuasive. Drawing on digital anthropology, social media analysis and critical political economy, the seminar explores how images, algorithms and platforms simultaneously support genocide, suppress Palestinian voices, and fuel unprecedented global solidarity. It concludes that Hasbara’s digital “illusions” increasingly give way to political delusions, revealing Western complicity in settler colonialism rather than concealing it.

Miriyam Aouragh is Professor of Digital Anthropology at the University of Westminster and a leading scholar of media, technology, and colonial power. Her work examines digital infrastructures, propaganda, and resistance, with a sustained focus on Palestine, imperialism, and global solidarity movements. Combining ethnography, critical media theory, and digital data analysis, she has made foundational contributions to the study of Hasbara, cybercide, and digital activism. She is widely published in international journals.

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Host or Publisher Department of International Development, KCL