Contentious Platforms

Date: January 27, 2026 (Tuesday)

Time: 1pm – 2pm

Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong

Speaker: Isak Ladegaard (Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong)

In this talk, Ladegaard presents evidence from ongoing research on two normatively distinct cases in which actors are empowered by platform technology in analogous ways: “hacktivist” developers of anti-censorship software in China, and the digital far-right in the United States. Each domain sustains organizational life, even in the face of coercive regulation, by leveraging the state-like administrative capabilities of platforms, which enable population building, resource distribution, and mass communication. This empowerment of the underground contributes to contemporary reconfigurations of state power.

Isak Ladegaard is a sociologist and criminologist whose research combines qualitative and computational methods. His work has been published in journals such as British Journal of Criminology, Social Problems, and Social Forces. His book, Open Secrecy: How Technology Empowers the Digital Underground, was published by the University of California Press.

Before returning to the University of Hong Kong, where he earned his undergraduate degree, Ladegaard was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a lecturer at Monash University in Melbourne. He also spent six years at Boston College, where he completed his Ph.D. He was born in Oslo.

Moderator: Benjamin Chen, Associate Professor & Director of Law and Technology Centre, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law

To register, please go to https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=104654.