Dear AoIR colleagues, If you are working on topics related to political activism and Instagram, and you are interested in approaching these topics from the perspective of everyday life theories, please consider submitting to the special issue below. We are inviting 300 word abstracts by December 1, 2026. For additional questions about the special issue, feel free to contact me directly. CALL FOR PAPERS, Special Issue for Digital Culture & Society Familiar Feeds, Unfamiliar Politics: Everyday Activism on Instagram 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@gmail.com<mailto:familiarfeeds.submissions@gmail.com> by December 1, 2026. 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-... 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