«Ao Sol» (session XVI): ‘On the algorithms of resistance to infrastructural resistance: contesting a computation without limits’ | Guest: Emiliano Treré

This talk is articulated in two connected movements. The first is derived from the book Algorithms of Resistance and examines how platform workers, creators, and activists learn to interpret, circumvent, and reorient the systems that organize their lives. These are forms of resistance that operate through algorithms and within their cracks, showing that algorithmic life does not constitute a space of total domination.

The second movement shifts and broadens the perspective: from the algorithms we interact with to the material infrastructures that make them possible. In the context of the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence, data centers consume energy, water, and territory, sustaining a computational regime that tends to present itself as inevitable and limitless. Drawing on the DataECO project, the talk addresses forms of resistance against these infrastructures and the struggles that question their environmental, social, and political costs.

Both movements allow for an exploration of the same problem on two scales: from everyday disputes within algorithmic systems to conflicts over the material conditions that sustain their expansion. This is not about abandoning the issue of algorithmic agency but rather about broadening the territory and scope of resistance.

About the speaker

Emiliano Treré is a distinguished ATRAE researcher in the Department of Communication Sciences at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, where he develops his work in the Faculty of Communication Sciences and is affiliated with the University Institute of Studies and Development of Galicia (IDEGA). At USC, he leads DataECO, a project dedicated to the environmental impact of digital infrastructures and emerging forms of environmental activism through and against data. He also leads the research team ADS —Algorithmic Cultures, Data Ecologies, and Synthetic Media— within the Novos Medios group.

He is also a Reader in Data Agency and Media Ecologies at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University, where he co-directs the Data Justice Lab. His research lies at the intersection of media studies, digital sociology, and critical data studies, with a particular focus on digital activism, data justice, and algorithmic cultures in Latin America and the Global South. He is also a co-founder of the initiative Big Data from the South.

Author of five books and more than eighty academic articles, his works include Hybrid Media Activism, Data Justice, and Algorithms of Resistance: The Daily Struggle Against Platform Power, co-written with Tiziano Bonini and published in Spanish by Lengua de Trapo. His work has received recognitions such as the ICA Outstanding Book Award and the MeCCSA Best Article Award, and he has collaborated with organizations such as the United Nations, UNICEF, and USAID. Before joining USC, he was a distinguished Beatriz Galindo Senior professor at the Universitat de València and a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Mexico.