Philosophy and New Media

Gilles Deleuze described the condition of thought as a "slow motion of time"—a temporality that is dilated and prolonged. Philosophers have often been seen as placing comprehension and depth over speed. In contrast, modern media, and particularly new social media, accelerate every aspect of life, turning slowness from a virtue into a frustration. This process has left a mark on philosophy itself. For instance, the book—philosophy’s paradigmatic medium—is increasingly supplanted by more compact formats, such as articles that inform the reader in advance of their expected reading time. Like everything else, philosophy is compelled to keep pace with the accelerating rhythms of contemporary media. In this landscape, there seems to be neither space nor, more crucially, time for philosophy

At the same time, despite the slow temporality of thought, philosophy has never hesitated to embrace diverse media. From the pre-Socratics to Nietzsche, philosophers have relied on the aphorism—concise, fragmented reflections that circulated much like today’s Instagram posts or TikTok clips. Similarly, from Socrates to Kierkegaard, we often encounter not the "authentic thinker" but a carefully crafted persona. Even the book, philosophy’s paradigmatic medium, has never occupied the same central role as it did in literature, always pointing beyond itself—to correspondence, notes, or preparatory outlines. Today, this is evident more than ever, when philosophy converges with new media: Instagram and Facebook overflow with philosophical quotations, while YouTube channels introduce ideas to audiences far beyond those reached by academic texts or lectures.

The conference Philosophy and New Media aims to explore this relationship between thought and emerging media. We welcome contributions that explore the place of philosophy and related disciplines within the landscape of new media, as well as those that engage with new media from philosophical and other interdisciplinary perspectives. Topics of interest include—but are not limited to—the temporality of new media and philosophy, the role of new media in democratizing philosophical discourse, the impact of fragmentary presentation on thought, transformations in perception through new media and its new relation to thinking, philosophical and sociological analyses of new media, and the intersection of new media and learning, among other possibilities.

The conference will take place from 13-15 October 2025 at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau. The presentations from the conference will be published in a special issue of Philosophy and Society in 2027.

If you are interested in participating please send an abstract of 300 words until June 30 to [email protected].