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A Cyberspace of One’s Own: The New Belarus (App)
“Can democracy be coded into an app? This talk examines how Belarusian IT professionals in exile have attempted to build democratic futures through a bespoke mobile application and reveals the contradictions embedded in that effort. Designed to enable civic participation and national community-building, the app instead produces what Alana Felton calls “simulated democracy”: a digital environment where citizens become consumers, political participation becomes user experience, and national identity becomes a UX problem to be solved. Through close readings of the app’s interface, promotional videos, and crowdfunding features, alongside analysis of interviews with co-founder Pavel Liber, this presentation will trace how democratic aspirations get translated—and transformed—by technocapitalist platform logics.
About the speaker: Alana Felton is assistant director of college writing at Pomona College, where she oversees the Center for Speaking Writing and the Image and supports the College’s students through writing and communication instruction. Her interdisciplinary research explores how digital technologies shape political imagination, resistance and communication practices. Her current book project, Futurecraft: Technologies of Belarusian Resistance, examines how oppositional actors—IT workers, activists, artists and hackers—use digital tools to organize dissent and envision alternative political futures under authoritarian rule. Alana holds a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures from Yale University.