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This article explores the contribution of the concept of ‘minimal politics’ to understanding contemporary blogging. Politics is often used to refer only to state actions or to very rare ruptures to existing formations; citizens’ and social media are often only considered successful if they influence political leaders or lead to radical social change. The perspective adopted in this article, drawing on theories of agonistic democracy and hegemony, foregrounds the apparently quotidian ways in which current formations are destabilized. To explore the smallest radically democratic practices of contesting what appears to be a current hegemonic formation, the article analyses blog coverage of the publication in Germany of Thilo Sarrazin’s book Deutschland schafft sich ab. The book, celebrated by some sections of the media and population, argued that the genetic transmission of intelligence and the high number of Muslim immigrants in Germany was leading to the demise of the country. Analysis identified three strategies utilized by blogs to contest the Sarrazin case: rebutting, reflecting, re-articulating. The political aspect of blogging, it is argued, should not be reduced to moments of rupture or moments of consensus, but also encompass the practices of tearing apparently tiny fissures in current media/social constellations.

If financial markets are taken as the main measure of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on education since early 2020, then education technology ('edtech') has finally arrived with disruptive and transformative force in education systems around the world. With reports of over $16billion USD venture capital investment in edtech in 2020 alone, and spectacular valuation claims of prospective returns to come, financial investors and edtech companies are not just seeking to increase their profit margins, but investing in 'a vision to transform how the world learns' (HolonIQ 2021). These are new speculative 'investments in forms' of unique digital education (Decuypere, Grimaldi, and Landri 2021) that produce digital assets promising generous prospective market returns (Komljenovic 2021). For financial specialists, the disruptions of Covid-19 have inspired a 'digital transformation' of education, at all levels, and they are investing further to fully realize this valuable vision of the future of post-pandemic education. In other words, through speculative financial valuations and market-making devices, investors are 'betting upon and hedging against future educational developments … and even shorting educational futures' in the pursuit of 'wealth extraction' (Facer 2021, 6).Markets, of course, are neither the only measure of the impact of the pandemic on education systems, outcomes, policies and practices, nor the only means for imagining and investing in education futures, however speculative and spectacular their valuation claims may be. Local and national governments have tried to build their own, independent, infrastructures for education. Nonprofits have leapt into action, developing and distributing resources. Radio has turned up again. Countless research studies, press reports, assessments by learned societies, education agency reports, consultancy and think tank analyses, and more, have sought to identify both the positive and negative effects of the crisis on learners, educators, and institutions. These range from optimistic outlooks on 'best practices' of 'what works' and 'what we have learned' in terms of digital educational provision, to more sombre analyses of effects such as 'learning loss', 'Covid slide', 'unfinished learning', 'digital poverty', widening inequalities, commercialization and privatization, and the challenges of well-being and mental health, as well as many others. Many practitioners working in education have had to develop new 'lockdown literacies' to manage the processes of teaching at a physical distance from students, lecture theatres, classrooms, science labs and practice studios (Gourlay et al. 2021). For some, this has felt dysfunctional and disorientating, while for others it has enabled experimentation and innovation in the practices, spaces, and relationships through which teaching and learning occur (Watermeyer et al. 2021). These effects will have been experienced very differently in diverse contexts, and remain to be fully examined and understood as education systems set out ...

As digital data become increasingly central to education, hopes for educational equity are pinned more strongly on educational technology providers. This paper examines the data practices of edtech providers who are not simply making token gestures towards justice and equality. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and Berlant's notion of cruel optimism, it presents three data stories. The paper suggests that datafication in education provides a showcase of cruel optimism, i.e., when the object of desire is blocking one's flourishing. The conclusion considers the constitutive paradoxes of datafied education, and implications for education in the current phase of edu-technical transformation.