ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

Emiliano Treré

Routledge

This book is an extensive investigation of the complexities, ambiguities and shortcomings of contemporary digital activism. The author deconstructs the reductionism of the literature on social movements and communication, proposing a new conceptual vocabulary based on practices, ecologies, imaginaries and algorithms to account for　the communicative complexity of protest movements. Drawing on extensive fieldwork on social movements, collectives and political parties in Spain, Italy and Mexico, this book disentangles the hybrid nature of contemporary activism. It shows how activists operate merging the physical and the digital, the human and the non-human, the old and the new, the internal and the external, the corporate and the alternative.

The author illustrates the ambivalent character of contemporary digital activism, demonstrating that media imaginaries can be either used to conceal authoritarianism, or to reimagine democracy. The book looks at both side of algorithmic power, shedding light on strategies of repression and propaganda, and scrutinizing manifestations of algorithms as appropriation and resistance.

The author analyses the way in which digital activism is not an immediate solution to intricate political problems, and argues that it can only be effective when a set of favourable social, political, and cultural conditions align.

Assessing whether digital activism can generate and sustain long-term processes of social and political change, this book will be of interest to students and scholars researching radical politics, social movements, digital activism, political participation and current affairs more generally.

Table of content

• Introduction: the quest for communicative complexity within social movements
  
• PART I. Ecologies
  
• Chapter 1. Media ecologies and the media/movement dynamic　
  
• Chapter 2. An ecological exploration of the ‘Anomalous Wave’ movement
  
• Chapter 3. An ecological exploration of the #YoSoy132 movement
  
• PART II. Imaginaries　
  
• Chapter 4. Media imaginaries and the media/movement dynamic
  
• Chapter 5. The authoritarian sublime of the Five Star Movement
  
• Chapter 6. The technopolitical sublime of the Spanish Indignados
  
• PART III. Algorithms
  
• Chapter 7. The mutual shaping of algorithms and social movements　
  
• Chapter 8. Algorithm as propaganda, repression, and paranoia
  
• Chapter 9. Algorithm as knowledge, appropriation, and resistance
  
• Conclusions: hybrid media activism
  

Gender Studies 2019 Conference: On Violence

24th of October – 26th of October 2019

University of Helsinki, Finland

What is violence? How is violence normalized in some contexts? How do gender, sexuality, race, and class, among other axes of power, intersect making some bodies more prone to experiencing violence? How to subvert and challenge different forms of violence, and what are the respectful and nuanced forms of solidarity and activism that take the specificity of people’s experiences into consideration?

We warmly invite scholars from a variety of locations in the Global North and South to participate in the discussions on violence. This conference in Helsinki will approach multiple aspects of violence across the wide multidisciplinary field of gender, sexuality, queer, trans, disability, postcolonial, and critical race studies. The conference is organized and hosted by the Gender Studies Discipline of The University of Helsinki together with the Association for Gender Studies in Finland (SUNS), Incorporating Vulnerability and WeAll projects.

We open workshop submissions from the 7th of January until the 15th of February. We invite you to submit proposals for workshops in English, Finnish or Swedish. In addition to traditional workshop contributions we also welcome other forms of creative collaborations/presentations/performances.

We welcome workshop proposals particularly in (but not limited to) the following themes:

• Theorizing and understanding violence in feminism, queer, trans, postcolonial and disability and critical race studies
• Debates on what counts as violence in feminism and in multidisciplinary gender studies
• Methodology, methods and ethics in researching violence and vulnerable groups
• Approaches and methods for countering, resisting and transforming violence
• Concepts and conceptualizations of gender, violence and agency
• Power/knowledge –violence
• Violence within feminist movements and scholarship
• Normative violence and violence of norms
• Structural violence, colonial and racialized violences and violations, including microaggressions
• Institutional and institutionalized violence, e.g. in organizations, schools, institutions of higher education, hospitals, military, prisons
• Violence(s) and violations as discrimination in working life and in organizations
• Hate speech and violence on-line
• Narrations and representations of violence in fiction, film, literature, art, media
• Political violence, social movements and violence
• Policy and politics on violence
• Mobility, migration, borders
• Experiences of violence
• Compassion and witnessing of violence
• Secondary trauma and self-care of the researcher
• Violence and vulnerabilities in the context of climate change
• Violence against non-human animals
• Societal impact of research on violence: how to influence positive change

Guidelines for Workshop Organizers:

Workshop organizers will be responsible for selecting papers to be presented in the workshops, planning and organizing the workshop, and communicating with the conference team as well as workshop participants. Sessions will be 90 minutes each; which could be divided on three to four paper presentations as well as group discussions. Alternatively, workshop organisers could utilise time differently according to their specific plans. Please note that paper proposals will be submitted directly to workshop organizers to the email provided in the submission form. Organizers will select the papers for the workshops and inform conference team as well as the participants.

Structure of the Conference Application Process:

1) Workshop organizers submit their workshop proposals by the end of 15th of February and are informed of the acceptance by the 21st of February.

2) Confirmed workshops will be published on the conference website on the 28th of February and the call for papers will open on the 1st of March and close on the 31st of March. The conference team will circulate the call for papers and advertise the conference widely.

3) Paper proposals are sent to the workshop organizers directly and they will inform the participants and conference team of the accepted papers by the 17th of April. The accepted abstracts will be submitted to the conference team for the book of abstracts.

Workshop Submission Details:

Submit an abstract of your workshop (max 2000 characters with spaces), title, keywords, short bio (max 1000 characters with spaces), a chair/chairs, a discussant, and a list of themes for potential papers. Fill in the submission form: 

https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/94401/lomake.html

Important Dates:

• Workshop submission deadline: 15th of February 2019
  
• Workshop acceptance notifications: 21st of February 2019
  
• Call for papers: 1st of March 2019 – 31st of March 2019
  
• Paper acceptance notifications to the participants and conference team 17th of April
  

For more information and updates, please visit the conference websites.