Power Relations in Digitally-Mediated Communication: Exploring Inequalities, Discrimination, and New Forms of Injustice

The plastic and highly pervasive nature of digitally-mediated communication has been shaping and affecting interpersonal communication at all levels and in all contexts of human interaction (Herring 2004). In the last few decades, the construction of power relations in digital media has shifted from traditional configurations observable, for instance, on television, radio, and newspapers, making asymmetries and imbalances in the relation between dominant and dominated groups subtler and less visible (KhosraviNik 2017). As a consequence, new modes of perpetrating social injustice, as well as discrimination and hate speech have emerged (Balirano and Hughes 2020), also informed by the controversial assumption “that cyberspaces are intrinsically different from real interactions” (KhosraviNik and Esposito 2018: 47).