We are excited to announce a special talk by John Postill on Monday, November 10th, 2025, at 13:00 in FFB-05<\/p>\n
Title: \u2018The moral attention economy and the global culture war\u2019
\nSpeaker: John Postill<\/p>\n
Abstract:
\nIn this talk I introduce and develop the concept of moral attention economy, which I define as a sector of the attention economy (Goldfarb 1997) devoted to monetising moral issues. My case study is the current global culture war over gender and sexuality (Ayoub and Stoeckl 2024). To keep the inquiry manageable, I \u2018follow\u2019 four conservative influencers \u2014 or, as I call them, moral attention entrepreneurs \u2014 from as many corners of the world (Christopher Rufo in the United States, Agust\u00edn Laje in Latin America, Eric Amunga in Kenya and Felix Siauw in Indonesia) as they traverse their respective hybrid communication systems (Postill 2018) creating and spreading morally charged content. This digital content ranges from moral outrage to mild moral anxiety, with a variety of other kinds of content in between. Despite their differing backgrounds and unique personas, all four culture warriors share an aversion to liberal views on gender and sexuality and a knack for monetising this strong dislike, both online and offline. I conclude that the notion of a moral attention economy can shed light on current dynamics of political (de)polarisation (Wang 2025) worldwide, especially on digitally mediated conflicts triggered by perceived moral breaches of the societal order.<\/p>\n
Bio:
\nA well-known figure in media ethnography and digital anthropology, John Postill is a Senior Lecturer in Communication at RMIT University in Melbourne. He is the author of The Anthropology of Digital Practices: Dispatches from the Online Culture Wars (Routledge, 2024), The Rise of Nerd Politics (Pluto, 2018), Media and Nation Building: How the Iban Became Malaysian (Berghahn Books, 2008), and Localising the Internet: An Anthropological Account (Berghahn Books, 2011).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We are excited to announce a special talk by John Postill on Monday, November 10th, 2025, at 13:00 in FFB-05 Title: \u2018The moral attention economy and the global culture war\u2019 Speaker: John Postill Abstract: In this talk I introduce and develop the concept of moral attention economy, which I define [\u2026] <\/p>\n