[Commlist] Call for Abstracts: Everyday Forms of Digital Activism and Resistance: An International Symposium

Call for Abstracts:

Everyday Forms of Digital Activism and Resistance: An International 
Symposium

April 18-19, 2024

Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

As an academic field, social movement studies tend to focus on 
large-scale and organized movements. Many of its influential concepts 
and theories are developed on the basis of analyzing movements in North 
America and Europe (Fadaee 2017). Yet many movements are not organized, 
or organized in informal or indigenous ways; they may even be movements 
of non-movements (Bayat 2017). All over the world, countless people 
engage in mundane activism and resistance which contribute to the 
collective wellbeing and sustainability of their communities. Although 
they carry on their daily activities without necessarily presuming to be 
activists, their work produces the effects of activism. Everyday forms 
of activism and resistance are an essential part of social justice 
struggles, and yet their contributions are not fully recognized (but see 
Horton and Kraftl 2009; Liu 2017). The lived experiences of people in 
their everyday activism remain little known.

The internet and social media add new possibilities and vulnerabilities 
to the practices of everyday activism and resitance, reconfiguring 
established practices and giving rise to new, digital forms. For 
example, food delivery workers who work via digital platforms negotiate 
their own spaces between resistance and compliance. Feminist activists 
build safe spaces and collective solidarities through everyday practices 
in private Facebook groups (Clark-Parsons 2022). During the COVID-19 
pandemic, the collection and archiving of personal narratives and 
COVID-related artefacts contribute to the documenting and preserving of 
historical experiences. Encrypted communication on alternative social 
media such as Telegram, Signal, and Mastodon calls for fine-grained 
analyses of the everyday dimensions of political and communication 
dynamics as the backstage of activism. At the same time, in their daily 
use of social media apps and platforms, activists are exposed to new 
risks ranging from digital surveillance to datafication and more.

We invite submissions of extended abstracts of research papers on 
everyday forms of digital activism and resistance around the world. We 
welcome papers which explore innovative theoretical and methodological 
approaches, especially papers which center alternative and indigenous 
perspectives, methodologies, and activist practices from the Global South.

Topics to be covered include but are not limited to the following:

The multiple meanings of everyday digital activism

Activists’ narration of their digital experiences

Digital affordances and activist tactics and vulnerabilities

Creative forms of digital organizing and participation

Digital publics and hashtag activism

Affect, emotion, and performativity in digital activism

Everyday uses of digital data for social, racial, gender, and 
environmental justice

Online mutual aid and community building

Digital laborers’ everyday resistance

Disability activism and digital media practices

The aesthetics, genres, and styles of digital activism

The mundane and the extraordinary in digital activism

Everyday digital activism during the COVID-19 pandemic

Activist practices of digital archiving, storytelling, and remembering

Please submit your 800-word abstract to (cdcs /at/ asc.upenn.edu) before 
October 15, 2023.

Notification of acceptance will be sent by November 15, 2023. Complete 
papers are due three weeks before the symposium. The symposium will take 
place at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of 
Pennsylvania on April 18-19, 2024. Conference organizers will cover 
hotel and travel to paper presenters (pending budget availability). 
Final papers presented at the conference will be edited for a special 
journal issue. This symposium is organized by the Center on Digital 
Culture and Society at University of Pennsylvania and co-sponsored by 
the Independent Research Fund Denmark Sapere Aude Grant “To Use or Not 
to Use? A Relational Approach to ICTs as Repertoire of Contention.”


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