Start Date
10-12-2017 12:00 AM
Description
The use of social media in social movements is generating questions about technology’s role in social change. Challenging the resource-based view of extant research that casts social media as a tool, in this paper we accord the technology a more agential role by applying a sociomaterial lens. We view social media as a space where ordinary individuals perform courageous acts of protest by enacting material-discursive practices such as generating and posting content. Through these actions, they become activists. This new identity not only carries over into their ‘real’ lives, but also (re)creates the social movement’s collective identity. Drawing on a qualitative case study of a Facebook page where Iranian women protest the compulsory hijab by publishing their hijabless photos, we investigate how social media produce E-movements. Our findings indicate that the specific configuration of cyberactivism’s material-discursive practices produce a sense of bravery that accumulate into an activist identity.
Recommended Citation
Stewart, Maya and Schultze, Ulrike, "A Performative Identity Perspective of Cyberactivism: The Case of My Stealthy Freedom" (2017). ICIS 2017 Proceedings. 16.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2017/IT-and-Social/Presentations/16
A Performative Identity Perspective of Cyberactivism: The Case of My Stealthy Freedom
The use of social media in social movements is generating questions about technology’s role in social change. Challenging the resource-based view of extant research that casts social media as a tool, in this paper we accord the technology a more agential role by applying a sociomaterial lens. We view social media as a space where ordinary individuals perform courageous acts of protest by enacting material-discursive practices such as generating and posting content. Through these actions, they become activists. This new identity not only carries over into their ‘real’ lives, but also (re)creates the social movement’s collective identity. Drawing on a qualitative case study of a Facebook page where Iranian women protest the compulsory hijab by publishing their hijabless photos, we investigate how social media produce E-movements. Our findings indicate that the specific configuration of cyberactivism’s material-discursive practices produce a sense of bravery that accumulate into an activist identity.