Uganda's infamous state -sanctioned homo-hostility has resulted in intense international attention, development cooperation and Western funding to local lesbian, gay, bi- and transsexual (LGBT+) organisations. However, Western funders and allies in this context are becoming increasingly questioned. Researchers have highlighted the complexities, opportunities and constraints of an increasingly transnational LGBT+ movement, but how is this manifested on the ground in the Global South? Through an inductive and ethnographically inspired study, we set out to explore the Ugandan LGBT+ community and its intra-community relationships and relations with Western funders and allies in the unique setting of Uganda Pride 2022, to which we had rare first-hand access. The results reveal that security concerns, both from outside and within the community, shaped Uganda Pride 2022. The most salient finding is that competition for international funding distorts activists' relations, as it stratifies the LGBT+ community based on who has access to Western donors and international funders.

In this article, we study engagement on Ugandan LGBTI organizations and activist’s posts on three different platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Our aim is to study how a historically underrepresented community in the Global South navigates a complex information ecology in an uncertain socio-political situation. We ask: (1) Which posts emerge as more popular regarding user engagement on the different platforms respectively? (2) Are there similarities or differences concerning such popularity across the three platforms? (3) Did engagement patterns change after the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act? and finally (4) How can we understand these engagement patterns from the perspective of the community? We approach these questions using three different yet interrelated methodological approaches: (A) Social media analytics to identify highly engaged posts, (B) Qualitative analysis of these posts and (C) Qualitative interviews with community representatives. Our results show that engagement differs between the platforms. This has to do with platform characteristics, such as Instagram pushing for photos and scrolling, and political realities, such as Facebook being blocked. The audience also matters, in that Twitter is perceived as populated by international allies. Calls for action are not common because engaging with posts implies that not only that you have seen the post, but that the posting entity, and sometimes also the repressive state, have seen you. We thus conclude that engagement in this particular situation is governed by visibility.

The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies on the world of work is often framed in terms of broad, universal consequences. But to what extent do such narratives overlook the everyday negotiations, contestations, and adaptations through which technology is actually integrated into professional life? Prevailing perspectives tend to downplay human agency, instead attributing technological change to an abstract and often deterministic notion of economic or technological agency. In contrast, this paper examines how professionals at the forefront of digitalisation—particularly those in the digital and creative industries, including architects, designers, programmers, CEOs, and COOs—make sense of generative AI’s incorporation into their daily work. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews, we highlight how AI adoption is not merely a matter of large-scale structural transformation but unfolds through subtle, often contested, micro-level organisational shifts.

By situating these insights within the broader discourse on technological change, we challenge and problematise three key perspectives that have shaped scholarly and policy-oriented understandings of digitalisation’s effects on labour markets. First, the Skill Biased Technical Change (SBTC) hypothesis suggests that technological advancements primarily benefit highly skilled workers, fostering an overall upskilling of the workforce. Second, the Routine Biased Technological Change (RBTC) perspective points to job polarisation, whereby routine-based middle-wage occupations—regardless of skill level—are increasingly displaced by automation. Finally, a third, more disruptive perspective envisions a future in which AI and robotics extend beyond routine tasks to replace even highly qualified professionals, raising concerns about large-scale structural unemployment.

Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), sociology of expectations, and labour market sociology, we demonstrate that the impact of AI is not uniform. Instead, technological change is socially embedded and contingent upon a range of organisational imaginaries and interactional dynamics. Our findings reveal that the integration of AI is shaped by workplace negotiations in which professionals redefine and contest its role, often navigating tensions between creativity and efficiency. By shifting analytical focus from broad systemic shifts to the lived realities of AI adoption, this article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of digitalisation in practice and challenges deterministic narratives that portray technological transformation as an inevitable trajectory. In doing so, we provide insights relevant to policymakers, business leaders, and scholars seeking to better understand the future of work in an era of AI-driven change.

This article unpacks different meanings of visibility and adds to a more complex and nuanced understanding of visibility and its role in LGBT + activism in Uganda, a widely discussed case of political homophobia. Public visibility has a central, although contested, role here. The study aims to explore how visibility is understood and navigated by local LGBT + activists, unaffiliated people with same-sex desires, as well as international development partners. Interviews conducted in Kampala from December 2021-January 2022 reveal different and complex narratives surrounding visibility. Local unaffiliated individuals and activists agreed on the importance of making the LGBT + rights struggle more visible. This, however, did not translate into a wish to "come out" themselves. International development actors expressed a need for caution regarding their own visibility, mindful that explicit and visual support may generate accusations of neo-imperialism.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has recently been associated with numerous concerns about its impact for democracy. This article aims to assess this debate from the perspective of different normative conceptions of democracy. This article argues that a more theoretically grounded discussion is needed to guide current efforts to understand and regulate GenAI. By systematically reviewing the emerging literature on GenAI and democracy, the authors discuss what exactly it is that GenAI is seen to threaten. Finally, this article connects the concerns with three different normative perspectives on democracy, with an aim to illustrate how perceptions of the impact of GenAI on democracy depend on the normative lenses adopted.

An increase in international funding for LGBT+ rights advocacy in Uganda has resulted in not only a mushrooming of organizations but also intra-community competition for visibility, attention, and limited resources. Against this backdrop, we set out to study how organizations relate to each other in the Ugandan LGBT+ Twittersphere. Following an analytical framework around rationalities of mediated participation, we study with whom Ugandan LGBT+ organizations relate through mapping retweets and @mentions emanating from selected Twitter accounts. The resulting network maps reveal a dividing line between more well-funded and internationally connected organizations and lesser established organizations. By supplementing the network analysis with qualitative readings of key accounts and semi-structured interviews, we conclude that access to international funds and negotiating visibility explains the network structures. The article thus reveals interesting Twitter practices, showing LGBT+ organizations use the platform as a means for negotiating and claiming space inside the Ugandan LGBT+ community.

Ten years ago, we proposed the concept of network media logic. In this chapter, we explore how political actors have adapted to it. We attend to the importance of intermediaries, activism in the global south, and how technology firms and data have become active agents. We argue that the concept needs to better account for the lack of professional editing, data-driven production and distribution, the emergence of affective publics, the outsized role of superspreaders, and the rise of participatory propaganda. In conclusion, we suggest that network media logic can help us understand the challenges with generative AI as campaigning depends not only on the technology but also on how parties decide to play this game.

Ugandan urban same-sex desiring individuals frequently encounter and navigate competing understandings of sexuality and sexual identity. Western essentialist understanding of sexual identity introduced by international development partners and transnational LGBT+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi- and Transsexual) activism, as well as media, offer an alternative to Ugandan non-essentialist and fluid subject positions. This article seeks to understand how young individuals with same-sex -desires in Kampala navigate tensions between Western and local understandings concerning sexuality. We have interviewed 24 young individuals with same-sex desires (unaffiliated and individuals working in LGBT+ organizations) and asked how they approach their sexuality and experiences living with same-sex desires in contemporary Kampala. The results reveal how interview participants engaged in a complex navigation between local community expectations, their own same-sex desires, and embeddedness in a global LGBT+ culture. Although the participants engaged in what Westerners would label as a "double life," the article problematizes the prescriptive norms of authenticity and "coming out." The conclusion is that the fluid vs essentialist dichotomy is too simplistic to be helpful when trying to understand the lives and aspirations of young people with same-sex desires.

A new generation of transnational anti-gender actors are framing themselves as human rights champions and protectors of the rights of the “natural family”. To better understand these actors’ norm diffusion, including their re-styling of anti-gender narratives in contemporary iterations of heteroactivism and its potential threat to LGBTIQ+ rights, in this article we analyse the social media tactics of a key transnational anti-gender actor: the International Organization for the Family (IOF). The analysis is focused on the organisation’s Twitter (now X) account and we draw on theories of network media logic, connective action, and connective emotions. Two periods of activism – the first a low-intensity period in 2021 and the second a high-intensity period in 2022 – were purposefully selected for the analysis. In this article, we identify differences between the two periods, noting that the period covering the flagship event, the World Congress of Families (WCF) in 2022, was markedly less LGBTIQ-hostile and adversarial than the first period. IOF thus appears to be inspired by heteroactivist frames during the WCF and abides by logic that should trigger user interaction and content spreading. The lack of interactions and engagement with IOF Twitter content in either period indicates the need for more research on which logics apply to anti-gender audiences. We discuss the findings and what they may imply in a context like Sweden, a country whose self-image as a global champion for women’s and LGBTIQ+ rights may make it ill-equipped to counter the onslaught of transnational actors’ norm entrepreneurial activities.

Departing from popular imaginations around artificial intelligence (AI), this presentation engages in the I in the AI acronym but from perspectives outside of mathematics, computer science and machine learning. When intelligence is attended to here, it most often refers to narrow calculating tasks. This connotation to calculation provides AI an image of scientificity and objectivity, particularly attractive in societies with a pervasive desire for numbers. However, as is increasingly apparent today, when employed in more general areas of our messy socio-cultural realities, AI- powered automated systems often fail or have unintended consequences. This article will contribute to this critique of AI by attending to Nicholas of Cusa and his treatment of intelligence. According to him, intelligence is equally dependent on an ability to handle the unknown as it unfolds in the present moment. This suggests that intelligence is organic which ties Cusa to more contemporary discussions in tech philosophy, neurology, evolutionary biology, and cognitive sciences in which it is argued that intelligence is dependent on having—and acting through—an organic body. Understanding intelligence as organic thus suggests an oxymoronic relationship to artificial