The hidden power shaping our digital lives

From the moment we wake up to the notifications that accompany us throughout the day, digital platforms quietly shape how we move, think, feel and connect. According to University of Cape Town (UCT) Professor Tanja Bosch, understanding that influence is one of the defining challenges of our time.

Bosch, the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Digital Media Sociology and a professor in UCT’s Centre for Film and Media Studies, delivered their inaugural lecture on 29 July, tracing nearly two decades of research into the ways digital technologies shape everyday life and how scholars from the Global South can rethink the future of digital media studies.

Titled “Calibrated intimacies: Apps and decolonial refusal”, the lecture brought together years of scholarship on digital culture, platform power, social media activism and decolonial theory. It also reflected on Bosch’s own intellectual journey – one that began at 17 upon arrival at UCT in 1993, culminating in them becoming one of Africa’s leading voices in digital media sociology.

“This is a particularly special moment for me because things have really come full circle,” they told the audience as they started their talk.

Bosch recalled arriving at UCT during South Africa’s democratic transition, describing how the campus shaped both their political consciousness and academic interests.

“That period on campus really shaped my political consciousness and my intellectual commitments,” they said, explaining how those experiences later informed their research into digital activism during the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements.

The invisible power of apps

At the heart of Bosch’s lecture was a deceptively simple observation: apps do far more than help people communicate or complete everyday tasks.

Instead, Bosch argued, they increasingly organise emotional life itself.

“Our smartphones and apps don’t simply mediate everyday social life.They also organise power. They shape who can participate, who becomes visible or audible, and whose knowledge counts.”

Bosch introduced what they call “calibrated intimacies” – a concept that explores the evolving relationship between people and the digital platforms they use every day.

Whether recommending a playlist on Spotify, reminding users to leave home on time through Google Maps, suggesting a workout based on sleep patterns or tracking a loved one’s journey home, apps increasingly anticipate human behaviour in ways that feel personal and intuitive.

“The central argument of my work is that apps function as infrastructures of feeling,” Bosch explained to the murmurs and nods of the audience.

Rather than simply providing useful services, platforms shape how people experience reassurance, anxiety, recognition, motivation and connection.

Through notifications, recommendations and algorithms, they subtly influence behaviour without issuing direct commands.

Bosch described this as the “soft power” of apps – influence that feels voluntary, helpful and even caring, while quietly guiding everyday decisions.

“They don’t need to force us to do anything,” Bosch said. “They shape the conditions under which particular responses come to feel appropriate or necessary.”

Drawing on examples familiar to almost everyone in the audience, Bosch demonstrated how these digital relationships develop over time.

Streaming platforms recommend music before users realise what they want to hear. Shopping websites remind customers about abandoned carts. Fitness apps congratulate people for meeting daily exercise goals, while navigation apps predict destinations before journeys have even begun.

Individually, these interactions appear insignificant. Collectively, however, they become part of the routines through which people remember, anticipate, decide and move through everyday life.

Bosch argued that these repeated interactions gradually create relationships between users and platforms that feel increasingly intimate.

“The platform records what a user does, infers what may matter, and offers a response,” they explained. “The user reacts to that response, and the reaction becomes new data.”

The result is an ongoing feedback loop in which platforms appear to know users better over time, continuously refining recommendations and shaping emotional experiences.

Decolonising digital knowledge

While much of the lecture explored the emotional power of digital technologies, Bosch also challenged dominant approaches to studying them.

They argued that too much digital media scholarship continues to privilege theories developed in the Global North while treating Africa primarily as a source of data rather than a producer of theory.

For Bosch, genuine decolonisation requires more than updating reading lists or adopting the language of transformation. “Decolonisation is not a metaphor,” they said.

Instead, Bosch called for new forms of scholarship that recognise African researchers as producers of knowledge.

Among their proposals were more equitable citation practices, genuine co-theorisation between scholars and communities, and what Bosch described as “epistemic refusal” – rejecting intellectual traditions that position the Global South merely as evidence for theories developed elsewhere.

Bosch explained that when writing their forthcoming book, they deliberately resisted presenting South Africa simply as a case study.

“The future of digital media sociology lies in theory produced from the south, in creative and experimental forms of scholarship.”

Instead, they wanted the theoretical concepts to emerge from their experiences and intellectual traditions without constantly having to justify their relevance to international audiences.

One of the lecture’s most distinctive features was Bosch’s exploration of artistic practice as a legitimate form of academic inquiry.

The audience viewed Bosch’s experimental short film, Coastal, Interrupted, which combines field recordings, hiking data, voice notes and original music to question how technology shapes people’s relationship with landscapes.

Outside the lecture venue stood another unusual exhibit: RIP MacBook Neo, a conceptual installation built around a broken laptop.

Far more than a discarded piece of technology, the installation became a symbol of what Bosch called the “platform obituary” – a method for studying digital platforms through their decline, disappearance and afterlives.

Rather than focusing only on innovation and technological progress, Bosch encouraged audiences to consider what happens when digital platforms fail, disappear or become obsolete.

They also drew attention to the material realities hidden beneath seemingly seamless technologies.

Behind every smartphone and digital platform, Bosch reminded the audience, lie complex supply chains, environmental extraction and human labour that often remain invisible to users.

“The future of digital media sociology lies in theory produced from the south, in creative and experimental forms of scholarship, and in practices of refusal that make other ways of knowing possible.”

Looking ahead

Although the lecture marked an important career milestone, Bosch described it not as an endpoint but as the beginning of a new chapter.

Now leading UCT’s Digital Media Sociology Lab, they spoke warmly of the postgraduate students and emerging scholars who are helping shape the field's future.

“The future is already in the room,” Bosch said, pointing to a group of students in the audience.

They credited their parents, teachers, colleagues, collaborators, students and family for shaping their academic journey, reflecting on a childhood surrounded by books and political debate that instilled an enduring belief that knowledge and power are inseparable.

In closing, Bosch invited audience members to participate in their evolving installation by leaving anonymous messages about digital spaces they had lost – from social media platforms that disappeared to online communities that no longer exist.

In his welcome address, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Teaching and Learning Professor Brandon Collier-Reed acknowledged the important role of family, mentors, collaborators, colleagues, and students in shaping every academic career, noting that an inaugural lecture celebrates not only an individual’s achievements but also the collective support behind them.

He highlighted the significance of collaboration among universities in addressing complex societal challenges and emphasised that higher education institutions share a responsibility to advance knowledge and serve society. “Universities have always been places where difficult questions are asked, and new knowledge is created.”