Ambivalence in the (Private) Public Sphere: How Global Digital Activists Navigate Risk

This study examines the accounts of a global network of digital activists to understand how they view their relationships with social media platforms and negotiate risk in digital environments. Through semi-structured interviews with a geographically diverse group of activists, all of whom write for the citizen media platform Global Voices, the paper considers how the activists negotiate an ambiguous and shifting landscape of online threats in the conduct of their work. It uncovers a deep vein of ambivalence around digital practices, particularly with regard to the role of social media companies. It also aims to contribute a better comparative understanding of risk across a number of digital environments: surveillance and censorship take different forms and are experienced in different ways depending on the activists’ geography. I find while activists are innovatively using these platforms to create new spaces for speech and dissent, they are also spaces of ambiguity and ambivalence, and may be as dangerous as they are generative. I explore the forms of user agency taken up by activists as they negotiate networked privacy in the (private) public sphere.

[1]  M. Wendy Hennequin,et al.  The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It , 2011 .

[2]  D. Hindman The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier , 1996 .

[3]  Vern Paxson,et al.  Social Engineering Attacks on Government Opponents: Target Perspectives , 2017, Proc. Priv. Enhancing Technol..

[4]  Kainan Chen No place to hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. surveillance state , 2017 .

[5]  Amy Johnson,et al.  Reporting, Reviewing, and Responding to Harassment on Twitter , 2015, ArXiv.

[6]  Karine Nahon,et al.  Going Viral , 2013 .

[7]  Henry Jenkins,et al.  Up, up, and away! The power and potential of fan activism , 2012 .

[8]  Shaojung Sharon Wang China's Internet lexicon: Symbolic meaning and commoditization of Grass Mud Horse in the harmonious society , 2012, First Monday.

[9]  M. Castells ”Networks of Outrage and Hope. Social Movements in the Internet Age”. , 2019 .

[10]  Siva Vaidhyanathan,et al.  The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry) , 2011 .

[11]  P. Gerbaudo Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism , 2012 .

[12]  Sarah Myers,et al.  Ronald J. Deibert, Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace , 2013 .

[13]  R. García CONSENT OF THE NETWORKED. The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom , 2012 .

[14]  Wendy H. Chun Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics , 2005 .

[15]  Ronald J. Deibert,et al.  Access Controlled - The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace , 2010, Access Controlled.

[16]  Daniel Field,et al.  Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. , 1992 .

[17]  P. Howard,et al.  Digital Activism and Non‐Violent Conflict , 2013 .

[18]  S. Milan Mobilizing in Times of Social Media: From a Politics of Identity to a Politics of Visibility , 2015 .

[19]  J. Dean Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics , 2005 .

[20]  Clay Shirky Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations , 2008 .

[21]  Riccardo Mauricio-Cardilli,et al.  Always Already New: Media, History and the Data of Culture , 2008 .

[22]  Jillian C. York,et al.  Social Media and the Activist Toolkit: User Agreements, Corporate Interests, and the Information Infrastructure of Modern Social Movements , 2012 .

[23]  E. Goffman The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[24]  Marvin Ammori The 'New' New York Times: Free Speech Lawyering in the Age of Google and Twitter , 2014 .

[25]  Zeynep Tufekci,et al.  Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest: Observations From Tahrir Square , 2012 .

[26]  L. Tanczer Book review: the coming swarm: DDoS actions, hacktivism, and civil disobedience on the internet , 2015 .

[27]  Antonio Negri,et al.  The Politics of Subversion: A Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century , 2005 .

[28]  Stephen Green A PLAGUE ON THE PANOPTICON: Surveillance and power in the global information economy , 1999 .

[29]  Lokman Tsui A journalism of hospitality , 2010 .

[30]  E. Goffman Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience , 1974 .

[31]  Marc Silverman,et al.  Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous , 2018 .