[Commlist] CfP - Familiar Feeds, Unfamiliar Politics: Everyday Activism on Instagram (Special Issue for Digital Culture & Society)

CfP: Familiar Feeds, Unfamiliar Politics: Everyday Activism on Instagram
Special Issue for Digital Culture & Society
This special issue approaches Instagram activism from the perspective of 
everyday life (de Certeau, 1984; Gardiner, 2000; Lefebvre, 2004), 
foregrounding the digital creation and consumption of activism through 
the lens of the routine, the repetitive, and the mundane. With 3 billion 
monthly active users in 2025 (Statista, 2026), Instagram has become an 
important social media platform for entertainment and social connection, 
but also for encountering and discovering political life (Faveiro et 
al., 2026). As the visual, affective, and commercial logics of this 
platform come with opportunities and challenges for political activism, 
we are interested in what seemingly ordinary acts of posting, scrolling, 
and engaging with digital content can reveal about the reconfigurations 
of contemporary political imaginaries.

The special issue thus asks: How does the political infuse daily life 
through the mundane routines of Instagram use?

Inspired by Lefebvre's suggestion that "the strangest things are often 
the most trivial" (1991, p. 13), the special issue is interested in what 
makes the embedding of Instagram political activism in everyday 
practices seem trivial, why that may appear to be strange – and to whom. 
Political activism is broadly understood here as sustained actions meant 
to advocate and mobilize for social change, which may fall anywhere 
along the conservative/liberal spectrum. Furthermore, the special issue 
recognizes contemporary transmedia practices among activists and social 
movements, in which Instagram is an analytical starting point for 
investigating everyday digital activism (Caldeira, 2025; Dumitrica & 
Hockin-Boyers, 2023; Gonzalez et al., 2024; Hannouch & Milstein, 2025; 
Loyola-Hernandéz, 2026; Yuen & Tang, 2023); contributions are free to 
pursue connections with analogue and other digital sites of content 
production and consumption.

The following questions underpin the special issue’s interests: What 
kinds of political imaginaries, attachments, and subjectivities emerge 
when activism is not encountered primarily in organized spaces of 
deliberation or movement-building, but in the ordinary consumption of 
Instagram content? How does the political come to inhabit the routines 
of everyday digital life, and how do these routines, in turn, reshape 
what politics can look and feel like? Which power relations are 
naturalized in this process, leaving them outside the field of contestation?

Topics may include (but are not limited to):
- everyday political mediation on Instagram;
- activism, visibility and platformed legitimacy;
- everyday temporalities and the rhythms of activism;
- the importance of place and space in political activism on the platform;
- the relation between visibility and submerged networks;
- the commodification of political commitment;
- algorithm-aware tactics of the everyday;
- the influencer/activist hybrid and the monetisation of causes;
- invisible labour, care and exhaustion.

We welcome different methodological approaches sharing an interest in 
critically interrogating the intersection between everyday life, 
Instagram use, and political activism.

Submission process

Digital Culture & Society is a refereed, international journal, 
fostering discussion about how digital technologies, platforms and 
applications reconfigure daily lives and practices. It offers a forum 
for critical analysis and inquiries into digital media theory.

The special issue is tentatively scheduled for Spring 2028.

If interested, please submit a 300 words abstract with a clear 
description of the theoretical framing, research design and connection 
to the special issue’s focus to (familiarfeeds.submissions /at/ gmail.com) by 
December 1, 2026.

No APC from authors is required.

Key dates

- December 1, 2026: Abstract submisison
- December 15, 2026: Editors invite full-paper submsisions based on 
selected abstracts
- April 15, 2027: Full-papers submission
- July 15, 2027: First round of review
- September 15, 2027: Second round of review
- December 15, 2027: Completion of copy-editing and submission of the 
final manuscript to the publisher

Special issue editors

Dr. Delia Dumitrica is an Associate Professor in Political Communication 
and Digital Activism in the Department of Media and Communication at 
Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research focuses on the intersection 
between digital technologies and protest communication, social 
movements, and activism. Her work has appeared in journals such as New 
Media & Society; Media and Communication; Information, Communication & 
Society; European Journal of Communication; The International Journal of 
Communication; Convergence: The International Journal of Research into 
New Media Technologies; Media, Culture & Society.

Alessia Pensabene is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Political and 
Social Sciences at Scuola Normale Superiore. Her research focuses on 
feminist content creators on Instagram as emerging political actors in 
the digital public sphere, with a focus on the possibilities and limits 
of platform-based activism and the ways in which visibility itself 
functions as both a resource and a constraint for contemporary political 
action.

References
Caldeira, S. P. (2025). (Re)sharing feminisms: Re-sharing Instagram 
Stories as everyday feminist practices. New Media & Society, 27(7), 
4265-4284.
de Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. University of 
California Press.
Dumitrica, D., & Hockin-Boyers, H. (2023). Slideshow activism on 
Instagram: constructing the political activist subject. Information, 
Communication & Society, 26(16), 3318–3336.
Faverio, M., Park, E., & Gottfried, J. (2026, April 15). Teens’ 
experiences on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat. Pew Research Center. 
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/04/15/teens-experiences-on-tiktok-instagram-and-snapchat/
Gonzalez, A., Schmuck, D. & Vandenbosch, L. (2024) Posting and framing 
politics: a content analysis of celebrities’, athletes’, and 
influencers’ Instagram political content. Information, Communication & 
Society 27(8): 1605-1627. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2023.2285495
Hannouch, B., & Milstein, T. (2025). Activating Ecocentrism: How Young 
Women Environmental Activists Produce Identity on Instagram. 
Environmental Communication, 19(2), 198–217. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2024.2376697
Lefebvre, H. (1991). Critique of Everyday Life, vol. I. Verso.
Loyola-Hernández. L. (2026) Al Glitter de Guerra: cyborg movidas, 
Instagram and feminist protest in Mexico. Third World Quarterly 47(2), 
344-360.
Statista. (2026). Number of Instagram users worldwide from 2013 to 2025 
(in millions) [Graph], January 7. 
https://www.statista.com/statistics/183585/instagram-number-of-global-users/
Yuen, S., & Tang, G. (2023). Instagram and social capital: youth 
activism in a networked movement. Social Movement Studies, 22(5–6), 
706–727. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2021.2011189 
<https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2021.2011189>
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