Dear All, I am organising a panel on digital activism at the International Sociological Association (ISA) 3rd Forum of Sociology in Vienna, Austria, July 10-14 2016 and this is a call for abstracts from researchers working on this issue. The session titled "From Indymedia to #Occupywallstreet and Anti-Austerity Protests in Europe: Three Generations of Digital Activism Logics" aims at exploring the cultural and technological evolution of digital activism in the last decades. You find a description abstract of the panel below. To submit an abstract for the conference, please use this link https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/forum2016/webprogrampreliminary/Session68... The deadline is September 30th 2015. Please contact me if you need further information on the session. Best, Paolo Gerbaudo -----------
From Indymedia to #Occupywallstreet and Anti-Austerity Protests in Europe: Three Generations of Digital Activism Logics
Across the last few decades the logic of activism, and of digital activism in particular, has changed dramatically. We have experienced what could be regarded as three waves of protests from the early 1990s to the present. Each of these waves is connected both by the transformations in global capitalism and the rise of the digital age, while still displaying differences or rather developments in movement-based organizing. Together, however, we can conceive these three waves as part of one broader epoch of contention. Those particular waves of contention are: Global Social Justice, Occupy/Arab Spring, Syriza/Podemos. In this session, we propose to look at the logics of these waves of protest (or generations of digital activism) in order to explore their similarities and differences. The goal would be to mine history assuming a diachronic perspective, but more concretely to understand the strengths and weaknesses of this epoch of contention as we watch the current wave of struggle unfold. Some of the questions that will be tackled in the session are: * How have capitalist transformations informed the emergence of the current epoch of contention and how has the activists relation to communication technologies evolved and shaped the logics of protests and mobilizations? * Can we conceive of an underlying meta-logics of movement politics informing the waves of protests and how are they best conceptualized, similar as well as differently enacted? * What has been the evolution of the role of alternative media in an oversaturated media environment where corporate social media are increasingly dominating the digital activism scenario? * What are the challenges that social movements and their communication face when they crystallize into political parties? * What lessons have we learned from the analysis of this epoch of contention and what are the future horizons of digital activism and protest? Dr Paolo Gerbaudo, Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society, Culture, Media and Creative Industries Department, Room 217A, 2nd Floor, Norfolk Building, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, England Phone: +44 (0)20 78481576 NEW BOOK: Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism (Pluto, 2012) - www.tweetsandthestreets.org