[Air-L] Webinar: Digital Activism in times of pandemic - Thursday, May 7, 2020

[Gerbaudo, Paolo]

Dear Colleagues,


You are invited to the webinar organised by the Centre for Digital Culture and the International Sociological Association, Research Committee 47 on digital activism in the pandemic. The event will start tomorrow Thursday 7 May, at 3pm (UK time).

If you want to join https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/digital-activism-in-times-of-pandemic-tickets-104312682040

Details below.


Best,


Paolo


Webinar

Digital Activism in times of pandemic

Date: Thursday,May 7, 2020

Time: 10a.m. (New York Time), 11a.m. (Brazilian Time), 4p.m. (Central European Summer Time & South Africa Standard Time), 7:30 p.m (Indian Standard Time)

Duration: 1:30 h

Registration link and access:





Each discussant will give a 10-minutes presentation. The audience can ask questions via chat in the Video Conference. If you only want to watch, you can also use the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements (ISA RC47) Youtube channel, live or afterwards: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr-0ie11P6GSQEs9KGFGawg



About: Digital Activism has been an important trend in contemporary social movements, amid an era marked by rapid technological change. From the 2011 movements of the squares, to the Gilets Jaunes and the 2019 anti-government protests from Chile, to Ecuador and Lebanon have seen the use of new social media tactics, using platforms such as Facebook and Twitter for purposes of organization and mobilization. The 2020 coronavirus crisis makes digital activism even more important. Due to lockdown measures citizens cannot engage in traditional physical forms of protests, such as demonstrations, pickets, sit-ins, etc. However, the need to social action is not diminished, given the need for social solidarity amidst this crisis, and the emergence of new grievances, related to the economic effects of the crisis, which unveiling the enormous injustice at the heart of our societies. Thus, in the last weeks we have witnessed new forms of collective action organised online. This range from collective flashmobs such as #clapforourcarers in the UK and similar ones in other countries, which call citizens to express their solidarity towards doctors and nurses to all sorts of actual protest organised online such as ‘caceroladas’ (banging pots protests) called on social media, to the use of memes and other forms of online propaganda to express dissent at the way governments are managing the crisis. This webinar will bring together activists and social movement scholars around the world, to discuss the new forms of online activism that are developing in this difficult period. It will ask how activists are using the Internet and social media to mobilise against the injustices revealed by the crisis, and how activists are using online organizing tool to cope with the isolation produced by lockdown measures.





Participants

Paolo Gerbaudo is a sociologist and political theorist and the director of the Centre for Digital culture at King’s College London. He is the Author of Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism<https://www.plutobooks.com/9781849648011/tweets-and-the-streets/> (2012), The Mask and the Flag: Populism, Citizenism and Global Protest<https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-mask-and-the-flag/> (2017), and Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy<https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745335797/the-digital-party/> (2019)

Anastasia Kavada is a Reader in Media and Politics at the School of Media and Communication at the University of Westminster. She is Co-Director of the Arts, Communication and Culture Research Community. Her research focuses on the links between digital media, social movements, and social change. Her work has appeared in a variety of edited books and academic journals.

Mengying Li has recently completed her PhD at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London. She is currently writing a book on Weibo and WeChat’s involvement in Chinese online activism and is about to join the Journalism School at Shanghai Fudan University as a postdoctoral research fellow. Her research focuses on digital cultures, social media and online activism.

Marisa von Bulow is a political scientist and Associate Professor at the University of Brasilia. She is author of Building Transnational Networks (2010), Social movement dynamics: new perspectives on theory and research from Latin America (2015) and Social movements in Chile: organization, trajectories and political consequences. Her recent researches deals with social movements and digital activism Brazil and Chile.

Winnie Wong is an activist. She is senior political adviser to the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign.


Dr Paolo Gerbaudo,
Senior Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society,
Department of Digital Humanities

Director of the Centre for Digital Culture

King's College London,

Room S3.10, Strand Building, 3rd Floor,

Strand

London WC2, England

Phone: +44 (0)20 78481576