Suchergebnisse

Many scholars discuss the role of social media in the context of social movements, but there remain major disagreements regarding the precise role that social media plays. One area that deserves more in-depth study is the affordances of social media for constructing collective identity. This article examines the case of an Iranian women's rights campaign page on Facebook, "My Stealthy Freedom," using an analysis of textual and visual content. The article examines how online campaign pages on Facebook contribute to the formation of collective identity and the construction of a campaign narrative. Following the analysis, the authors discuss how photobiographic campaigns—social media users sharing personal photos and adjoining personal narratives in support of a cause—illustrate two affordances of social media for construction of collective identity: affordances for discourse and affordances for performance. Affordances for discourse contribute to the collective action framing process through sharing of grievances and collectively negotiating meaning. These affordances also contribute to a collectively and incrementally constructed narrative by sharing personal stories that resonate with the group. Affordances for performance focus on the enactment of protest through transgressive photobiographies deliberately staged to convey the movement message to broader audiences. Here, transgressive photobiographies are defined as modular performances that can be adopted for the repertoires of contentious politics through protesting of laws and norms, such as the mandatory hijab. These transgressive performances create group solidarity through engagement in risk, thereby contributing to the formation of group identities.

The spread of the Internet coupled with knowledgeable users has led to the use of digital media as a tool for advocacy and activism. Building on theoretical foundations of eventful histories and digital formations, this article investigates the interrelated nature of contentious politics and digital technologies. Our analysis documents the eventful history of changing digital repertoires of contention in the context of messaging, blogging, and social networking sites in Iran. We argue that investigating single moments of protest offers only snapshots of how digital technologies are used in contentious politics, and entails the risk of focusing on a single platform rather than the mosaic of online and offline repertoires. We demonstrate that documenting event histories challenges the assumptions of the emancipatory nature of a specific technology by revealing the changing efficacy of repertoires during different moments of contention; therefore, we should avoid assigning stable causal relations between digital technologies and the democratization processes of societies.

In July 2016, Turkey was shaken by a bloody coup attempt. Although the would-be putschists failed, their insurgency led to an unprecedented reshuffling of Turkey's political economic and socio-cultural landscapes. Notwithstanding the critical reverberations on the army, judiciary, law enforcement and civil society, the abortive coup set in motion a massive purge of civil servants, closure of media outlets, arrests of journalists, and blocking of websites and social media accounts. This report offers an examination of the evolution of internet policy in Turkey from the early 2000s to the post-coup conjuncture. It begins with an overview of internet legislation in Turkey during the 2000s under the AKP government (Justice and Development Party), and proceeds to discuss the deployment of different forms of control between 2013-2016 to contain the fallout from political and security crises and the potentially disruptive affordances of social media platforms. The report then focuses on the emerging policy developments and online restrictions in the aftermath of the coup attempt, which include 1) the closure of the TIB—Turkey's telecommunications authority, 2) direct government control of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and interception of digital communications by way of decree laws, 3) facilitation of social media censorship by means of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube content removals and 4) coordinated online harassment campaigns by pro-government users against alleged coup planners, Kurdish activists and government critics in general.