Revolutionaries will not be friended: 'owning' activism through social networking

Why would a revolutionary work to frame herself in a commercially owned window, allowing anyone, from her family to the police, to scrutinize, monitor, and judge her relationships? This project provides a critique of commercial social networking technologies as an organizational tool for social movements. The authors deepen past critiques through an analysis of three concepts related to anti-statist movements and community: semiocapitalism, precarious labour, and social capital. Secondly, various ways in which the notion of 'community' has been leveraged as a social networking instrument are explored. Finally, these conceptual investigations are applied to recent political action in Egypt and Canada. The work calls out the systemic tensions and ideological functions that result from using commercially owned social networking tools to support revolutionary social movements.

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