Ilkin Mehrabov
Researcher
Moving beyond Mediatized Activism for Social Justice: Creating Visual Safe/Brave Spaces for Activists
Author
Summary, in English
The large-scale mass mobilizations and colossal demonstrations of the last decade have shown that digital and social media platforms, globally, now play significant roles in early formation and further facilitation of activist movements, interested in progressive causes and societal changes. However, the repercussions of the very same events have also clearly shown the shortcomings of mediatized activism: i.e., a very specific type of mediated activism, which is professed by individuals using the corporate media platforms (such as YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok) and commercial tools – who, instead of investing time and resources to develop the arsenal of their own, rely on the infrastructure of networked digital technologies and private online communication channels, over which activists have very little or no control at all.
This study focuses on a proposal to form a new alternative non-commercial social media site that can facilitate the revival of the sense of responsibility, that the late Roger Silverstone argued was eroded by media technologies (2007) – by providing a platform where all different types of progressive activists can meet and discuss; work on strategies of mobilizing and recruiting new members; and work out various ways of collaborating with each other and forming new alliances. This online space will require settings that are different from those of for-profit social media (systematically propagating the so-called culture of transparency and openness, only to commodify the generated user data) in order to function as brave spaces – spaces that could foster activist courage and resilience, thus balancing building ‘safe spaces’ and at the same developing critical thinking capacity (Gayle et al., 2013).
This study focuses on a proposal to form a new alternative non-commercial social media site that can facilitate the revival of the sense of responsibility, that the late Roger Silverstone argued was eroded by media technologies (2007) – by providing a platform where all different types of progressive activists can meet and discuss; work on strategies of mobilizing and recruiting new members; and work out various ways of collaborating with each other and forming new alliances. This online space will require settings that are different from those of for-profit social media (systematically propagating the so-called culture of transparency and openness, only to commodify the generated user data) in order to function as brave spaces – spaces that could foster activist courage and resilience, thus balancing building ‘safe spaces’ and at the same developing critical thinking capacity (Gayle et al., 2013).
Department/s
- Department of Strategic Communication
- Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
- MECW: The Middle East in the Contemporary World
Publishing year
2024-06-25
Language
English
Document type
Conference paper: abstract
Topic
- Media and Communication Studies
- Information Systems, Social aspects (including Human Aspects of ICT)
Conference name
ICA (International Communication Association) Post-conference & IAMCR (Interna-tional Association for Media and Communication Research) 2024 Preconference: “The Ascent of Community and Activist Media: Theorising the turn to counter-power me-dia and communication.”
Conference date
2024-06-25 - 2024-06-25
Conference place
Gold Coast, Australia
Status
Unpublished