Leadership and agency in algorithmic society

Abstract

Leadership, as a phenomenon, has a key function in society, mobilising individuals and driving them towards a certain goal. However, it is by now more than clear that leadership has been severely disrupted by digital innovation, not least by the advent of social media, big data, and algorithmic governance. Hence, the aim of this chapter is to explore the changes and to formulate a concept of leadership that is responsive to the modes of mobilisation, new affordances of data analytics, and the irruption of private business logics into the very core of leadership and campaigning strategies. Consequently, the very question of agency in leadership has become straightforward. To that effect, the chapter concludes by finding leadership to be diffused within more-than-human assemblages in which aspiring leaders continue to play a major role but by no means an unquestionably central one. Instead, leadership must constantly be performed, regardless of other considerations and formal conditions.