From Chiapas to Palestine: Historicizing Social Movement Media Before and Beyond the Arab Uprisings

Critical scholarship investigating media and the Arab uprisings has called for “a return to history.” This article argues that researching the contemporary constraints and opportunities of social movement media in the Arab region requires historicizing such practices. Reflecting on the role of media activism within the Arab uprisings necessitates broadening the historical context of social movement media in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region by investigating the diversity of media tactics and alternative political economies mobilized to resist the military-industrial communications complex. This article develops a political economy framework to historicize social movement media practices from Chiapas to Palestine and provides a critical reflection on the use of media for revolution before and beyond the Arab uprisings. Learning from the long and global history of revolutionary media struggle is beneficial to media activists and researchers working in the MENA region.

Understanding digital disconnection beyond media studies

Digital disconnection or ‘digital detox’ has become a key reference point for media scholars interested in how media technology increasingly gains influence on our everyday lives. Digital disconnection from intrusive media is often intertwined with other types of human conduct, which is less highlighted. There is a potential for media scholars to engage with what seems to be a mainstreaming of digital disconnection from self-help literature via mobile applications to media activism and public debate. In this article, we therefore aim to examine digital disconnection beyond media studies by distilling five common positions: disconnection as health, concentration, existentiality, freedom and sustainability. An underlying theme in all five positions appears to be the notion of responsibilisation, although some of the positions attempt to portray disconnection as a way to ultimately resist such responsibilisation. The article thus aims to spur media scholars to treat digital disconnection as part of broader cultural trends.

Women Journalists and Social Media Activism: An Analysis of the Hashtags #DeixaElaTrabalhar and #LasPeriodistasParamos on Instagram

The social media collective actions through the hashtags #DeixaElaTrabalhar and #LasPeriodistasParamos raised problems that women journalists were suffering in both Brazil and Spain. While the representation of feminism has long been studied, less attention has been paid to comparative studies and the more personal representation. Focusing on a combination of visual and textual qualitative content analysis, we explore 90 Instagram posts from women journalists within the two hashtags and how they portray themselves in relation to their profession. At the time of writing, Instagram is one of the most popular social networks focused on the publication of audiovisual content. This makes it suitable for the study of online self-representation. The article identifies using the Documentary Image Analysis and the Critical Discourse Analysis the recurrent demands and denunciations regarding journalism gender-related issues and finds common visual vernaculars in #DeixaElaTrabalhar and #LasPeriodistasParamos posts. This study makes a comprehensive analysis of how women journalists construct their identity on Instagram images concerning the topics they talk about and the elements they use to insert themselves in the female journalists’ collectives and connects it with the theories on feminism and social media activism. The results reported here shed new light on how female journalists take control over their situation and find empowerment, feminism, non-violent protest, and professional/private life to be common points regarding the identity construction in relation to these online groups.

RETHINKING VISIBILITY, PERSONALIZATION AND REPRESENTATION: DISABILITY ACTIVISM IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media enable marginalized activists to create alternative narratives that challenge mainstream discourse through personal storytelling, a performance that emphasizes personalization and visibility. Disabled activists, however, struggle in creating their online counter-narrative due to inability to conform with able-bodied notions of activism. These notions mark online disability activism as separated from able-bodied activism, ignoring the individual considerations of disabled activists. This paper addresses these gaps by presenting the individual decision-making process of users with concealable communicative disabilities regarding activist performance of disability in social media. The three stages of this process were raised during a thematic analysis of 31 in-depth interviews with autistics, stutterers and hard of hearing users, of whom seven also kept social media diaries. First, interviewees had different perceptions of disability activism in social media. These perceptions mirror the inseparable connection between a person’s self-perception as dis/abled, and one's perceived risk of performing a disabled identity in public, which differed between experienced activists and other interviewees. Second, the interviewees' motivations manifested their risk-benefit calculations regarding public disability exposure for the potential benefit of other disabled people, and the different forms of 'private' disability activism in social media. Third, the design of the activist performances was influenced by interviewees' constant awareness of the presence of their offline acquaintances on social media, and by seeing disability as a social, rather than political, issue. This three-staged process demonstrates personalization, visibility and representation not only as essential to social media activism, but also as conflictual for activists with concealable communicative disabilities.

Resistência civil, ativismo (folk)midiático e ciberativismo: o caso da sociedade boliviana

É na teoria da folkcomunicação, proposta pelo autor Luiz Beltrão, na década de 1960, que este artigo sustenta seus aspectos teóricos e metodológicos, pois o ativismo folkmidiático cria mecanismos de leitura, identificação e ações em canais próprios, capazes de superar a pós-verdade — a distorção deliberada da realidade. Dessa forma, objetiva-se evidenciar o papel dos ativistas folkmidiáticos nas rupturas democráticas da sociedade boliviana, num contexto no qual o ciberespaço parece ser uma maneira eficaz de construir novas formas de interação social, que, em conjunto com a participação cidadã nas ruas, pode produzir ações e efeitos na realidade. Resistência civil; Ciberativismo; Ativismo (folk)midiático; Folkcomunicador. It is in the theory of folk communication, proposed by the author Luiz Beltrão in the 1960s, that the following article supports its theoretical and methodological aspects. For folk activism creates mechanisms of reading, identification, and actions in its own channels capable of overcoming post-truth, that is a deliberate distortion of reality. In this way, the objective is to highlight the role of folk activists in the democratic ruptures of Bolivian society, in a context where cyberspace seems to be an effective way of building new forms of social interaction, which together with citizen participation in the streets can produce actions and, effects in the reality. Civil resistance; Cyberativism; (Folk)media activism; Folk communicator. Es en la teoría de la Folkcomunicación, propuesta por el autor Luiz Beltrão en el decenio de 1960, que el siguiente artículo apoya sus aspectos teóricos y metodológicos. Para el activismo popular crea mecanismos de lectura, identificación y acciones en sus propios canales capaces de superar la post-verdad — la distorsión de la realidad que se hace de manera deliberada. De esta manera se pretende destacar el papel de los activistas populares en las rupturas democráticas de la sociedad boliviana, en un contexto en el que el ciberespacio parece ser una forma eficaz de construir nuevas formas de interacción social, que junto con la participación ciudadana en las calles pueden producir acciones y efectos en la realidad. Resistencia civil; Ciberativismo; Activismo (folk)media; Folkcomunicación.