The Next Stage of Digital Activism? Reviewing Practices and Concepts in the Era of Datafication

Abstract

Emerging at the intersection of organized collective action and the internet, over the last two decades digital activism has become increasingly popular amongst protesters and scholars alike. Transnational mobilizations like #Occupy and the so-called Arab Spring, nebulous online communities like Anonymous, and the pro-democracy ‘Umbrella Movement’ of Hong Kong, to name just a few, share an emphasis on social and mobile media as the backbone of the mobilization. Electronic civil disobedience, e-campaigning, hacktivism, clicktivism, connective action, cloud protesting… are just some of the labels that have been used over the years to try to grasp the peculiarities of this multifaceted, diverse phenomenon. These manifestations of digital activism emerge and strive to thrive in an increasingly complex society, where the state-industry surveillant complex exerts novel pressures on citizenship rights and alters the possibilities of political action. To be sure, digital activism is changing the very same nature and the mobilization dynamics of social movements, including networking practices and action repertoires. It calls for an update of the conceptual toolbox at our disposal to analyse contemporary protests: notions like ‘collective identity’ and ‘organization’ are occasionally considered out of date, in favour of more flexible and elusive concepts. Finally, digital activism invites a much-needed methodological reflection as to what are the best tools to understand contemporary forms of mobilization that originate and unfold online as much as on the squares. This panel takes stock of the state of the art of social science research on digital activism—including cyberactivism, social media activism, and connective action—in view of exploring emerging forms of digital activism. Departing from novel empirical cases which bring digital technology to the core of mobilization and protest and/or repurposing concepts and methods, the panel asks what concepts and notions, disciplines and methods we need to bring into play if we are to fully grasp the dynamics of contemporary digital activism. It dissects our theoretical and methodological tradition in view of looking forward and imagining the next stage of digital activism. It examines the role that digital activism can play in the present and future structures of the democratic state, including its implications on citizenship and governance. More specifically, the panel focuses on cases such as ‘leak activism’, ‘civic tech activism’, ’contentious branding’, ‘networked feminism’ and ‘data activism’. It takes an interdisciplinary perspective that combines social movement studies and political sociology, media studies, and development studies, among others, and addresses methods as diverse as qualitative interviewing, digital methods and computational quantitative analysis. The panel includes the following papers, submitted autonomously by authors: #1 Davide Beraldo: Contentious Branding. Occupy and Anonymous between the connective and collective #2 Kersti R. Wissenbach: Governance from the grassroots: Digital activism for government accountability #3 Silvia Semenzin and Stefania Milan: Hacking the patriarchy: Networked feminism as feminism 3.0? #4 José Manuel Robles: Political big data and alternative strategies for digital activism #5 Arne Hintz: Towards digital democracy? Digital citizenship in an era of datafication Discussant TBA