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Digital Resistance: Call for papers

Special thematic issue of the Journal of Resistance Studies

Editors: Nora Madison & Mathias Klang

In many spaces, mobile digital devices and social media are ubiquitous. These devices and applications provide the platforms with which we create, share and consume information. Many obtain much of their news and social information via the personal screens we constantly carry with us. It is therefore unsurprising that these devices also become integral to acts of social activism and resistance.

This digital resistance is most visible in the virtual social movements found behind hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter, #TakeAKnee, and #MeToo. However, it would be an oversimplification to limit digital resistance to its most popular expressions. Video sharing on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have revealed abuses of police power, racist attacks, and misogyny. The same type of device is used to both record, share, and view instances of abuse. The devices and platforms are also used to organize and coordinate responses, ranging from online naming and shaming, online protests, physical protests. The devices and the platforms are then used to share the protests and their results. More and more the device and the platform are the keyhole through which resistance must fit.

Our devices and access to platforms enable the creation of self-forming and self-organizing resistance movements capable of sharing alternative discourses in advocating for diverse social agendas. This freedom shapes both the individual’s relationship to both power and resistance, in addition to their identities and awareness as activists. It is somewhat paradoxical that something so central to the activist identity and the performance of resistance is in essence created and run as a privatized surveillance machine.

Digital networked resistance has received a great deal of media attention recently. The research field is developing, but more needs to be understood about the role of technology in the enactment of resistance. Our goal is to explore both the role of digital devices and platforms in the processes of resistance.

This special edition aims to understand the role of technology in enabling and subverting resistance. We seek studies on the use of technology in the acts of protesting official power, as well as the use of technology in contesting power structures inherent in the technology or the technological platforms. Contributions are welcome from different methodological approaches and socio-cultural contexts.

We are looking for contributions addressing resistance, power, and technology. This call is interested in original works addressing, but not limited to:

Problems with the use of Digital Resistance
Powerholders capacity to map Digital Resistance-activists through surveillance
How does Digital Resistance differ and/or function compared with Non-digital Resistance?
Problems and advantages with combinations of Digital Resistance and non- Digital Resistance?
Resistance to platforms
Hashtag activism & hijacking
Online protests & movements
The use of humor/memes as resistance
Selfies as resistance
Globalization of resistance memes
Ethical implications of digital resistance
Online ethnography (testimonials/narratives provided by online participants)
Issues concerning, privacy, surveillance, anonymity, and intellectual property
Effective rhetorical strategies and aesthetics employed in digital resistance
Digital resistance: Research methods and challenges
The role of technology activism in shaping resistance and political agency
Shaping the digital protest identity
Policing digital activism
Digital resistance as culture
Virtual resistance communities
The affordances and limitations of the technological tools for digital resistance

Abstracts should be 500 – 750 words (references not included).

Send abstracts to noramadison@gmail.com

Important Dates

Abstracts by 15 January 2019

Notification of acceptance 15 February 2019

Submission of final papers 1 April 2019

Max 12000 words (all included)

Sampling and remixing, mash-ups and appropriation, wikis and podcasts are part of the digital creative milieu of the twenty-first century. Sites such as YouTube, Flickr and deviantART have offered new outlets for creativity and become hubs for innovative forms of collaboration thus playing their part in challenging modernist notions of what it means to be a creator as well as a consumer. User-generated content has draw upon the reuse of existing texts as well as new creations, bringing forward possibilities for new audiences and meanings while also raising questions about how digital texts are controlled through copyright and how intellectual property is managed.

Drawing on this background, papers are invited for the two-day workshop – Mashing-up Culture: The Rise of User-generated Content – which will take place at Uppsala University, Sweden on May 13th-14th, 2009. The event will be the first organised by the European research project COUNTER which explores the socio-economic and cultural impacts of the consumption of counterfeit goods and will bring together COUNTER researchers with scholars and stakeholders to explore the current state and dilemmas surrounding copyright and the production, consumption and distribution of culture.

Papers are invited which explore the possibilities and pitfalls surrounding the creative use of copyrighted materials with possible themes including but not limited to:

Sampling, mash-ups, and appropriation
Creativity and collaborative practices
Creative industries and intellectual property
Copyright, Cultural Heritage and Cultural Policy
Regulating intellectual property (formal and informal protection)

The aim of the workshop is to provide a creative and stimulating forum for an interdisciplinary and international discussion. We especially invite researchers at the earlier stages of their career to submit proposals coming from across the humanities and social sciences. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings and further publishing outlets will be explored following the workshop.

Abstracts must be no longer than 1000 words and should consider key questions addressed in the paper, data used, theoretical perspective, as well as key findings and/or contribution to the field. The title, author(s) names, email contact(s), institutional affiliation(s) and references cited must be clearly given in the submission but is not included in the 1000 word limit. Further a 200 word biography of each author should also be appended to the abstract.

Abstracts must be submitted as word processing files (not PDFs) to Eva Hemmungs Wirtén – ehw@abm.uu.se – no later than Wednesday 7th January 2009.

Proposals will be evaluated on the basis of originality, quality of research, theoretical innovation and relevance to the central themes of the COUNTER project. Accepted authors will be notified by email by 30th January 2009. Successful applicants will be invited to attend the workshop at no fee and receive significant reimbursement of travel costs and workshop accommodation.

Delegates are expected to participate in the whole of the two-day event.

Key dates:

7th January: Deadline for submission of abstracts and author biographies
30th January: Successful authors notified by email
10th April: Full papers submitted for inclusion in proceedings
24th April: Papers circulated to workshop delegates and discussants
13th-14th May: Mashing-up Culture workshop

A document picturing some of the venues to be used for the workshop and the social events is available online. For further information on the workshop please cotact the workshop chair, Eva Hemmungs Wirtén – ehw@abm.uu.se.