ERMeCC Lunch Seminar

Speaking up on social media: Voice in activist collectives
Delia Dumitrica

Social media platforms have become go-to sites for citizens to voice their concerns and become involved in politics. Building on Couldry's (2010) discussion of voice as political value, I ask how voice is constructed in digitally mediated grassroots mobilizations. Data from three cases of grassroots mobilizations in Canada show that while voice is imagined as a means of 'speaking truth to power' and of facilitating community-building, the act of listening is often left out. This leaves grassroots activist collectives vulnerable to populist hijackings. 

Social Justice, Tactical Communication, and Law Enforcement Technologies
Sarah Young

A search of the term “how to engage with law enforcement” on YouTube yields a range of videos that could be considered sousveillance, from grassroots advocates instructing marginalized communities how to interact with law enforcement to individuals providing how-to instructions using their own arrest footage. Many of the videos can also be considered tactical, technical communication as per Kimball’s (2017a) description -- they are “visible, user-created, authentic, and personal” (p. 345) pieces of communication made by individuals. Answering Kimball’s (2017b) call to explore technical communication “from its surface to its depths” (p. 6), I will discuss the results of a preliminary study using content analysis of YouTube videos from the search terms “how to engage with law enforcement.” Overall, I conclude that not only is there a range of technological and mediated concerns addressed by the videos, the videos can promote matters of social justice by encouraging scholars “to take the lead in examining ways to promote agency in others as well as take action themselves” (Jones, 2016, p. 356).