XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

JS-67

Digital Experiences and Narratives of Networked Activism

RC47 Social Classes and Social Movements (host committee)
RC38 Biography and Society

Language: English

The popularity of social media and mobile technologies bears witness to thriving networked activism among connected individuals in different regions. The advent of information and communication technologies provides accessible multimedia platforms that allow self-joining and self-organized individual activists to create and share alternative discourses in advocating for diverse social agendas. Moreover, digital experiences and narrations as political performance in turn transform individuals’ identities and values. They influence the individuals’ civic-political activities and awareness both during and after social movements. While networked individuals and their connective efforts have been considered at the forefront of recent movement protests, less has been known about how they construct movement experiences and narratives with social media and mobile technologies, and the impacts of digitally-enabled experiences and narrations on their life histories in the long run. In order to address these issues, this session solicits submissions that analyze how individual activists construct movement experiences with mobile social media; the role of images and videos, likes and tweets, and other forms of representations in digital narrating; how digital experiences and narrating shape the individuals’ civic-political agency and biographical outcomes. Contributions are welcome from different methodological approaches and socio-cultural contexts.