Browsing by Subject "Digital activism"

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Hip-hop urbanism, placemaking, and community-building among Black LGBT youth in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
(2018-08) Oliver, Devin Antuan; Sletto, Bjørn; Faria, Caroline
The city of Rio de Janeiro has become a global gay tourist destination as well as political hub for the local and national LGBT movement. However, despite the city’s gay-friendly, racially diverse reputation and pro-LGBT political gains, violence has increasingly endangered LGBT Brazilians amidst the rise of extreme conservativism in both government and society. This violence is not only gendered but also racialized, disproportionately impacting Black women and LGBT youth. Rio has become particularly renowned for a dual, paradoxical legacy: that of Black spectacle, celebration, and sexual freedom as well as that of great inequality, violence, and Black premature death. According to Smith (2016), this paradox is intentional—an “afro-paradise”—which simultaneously fetishizes and threatens Black lives. Numerous structural forces have transformed Rio into a hostile racial-sexual terrain in which Black LGBT youth must survive and build community. This critical ethnographic study examines: 1) how Rio’s Black LGBT youth negotiate violence and exclusion in everyday life; and 2) how they use physical and virtual sites as well as their own creative expression to claim their stake in the production of urban space. I ask, how do young Black LGBT people build political power when virtually locked out of state institutions and formal politics? I contend that Black LGBT young people are consistent placemakers across many spatial realms and scales, creating sites of self-making and political intervention through new media, art, events, and popular education. I highlight three particular spatial tactics: 1) occupying physical urban spaces and claiming territory; 2) Diasporic self-making through digital activism; and 3) leveraging cultural labor as young entrepreneurs and kinfolk. The key to youth’s success has been the everyday strategic use of space, culture, and creative expression—a strategy of “infrapolitics”. Black LGBT youth enact a form of “hip hop urbanism”, in which they continuously make something out of nothing and quite literally put their creative expressions to work. Lastly, I argue that Black LGBT youth’s placemaking practices demonstrate alternative ways of building power and innovating communal support systems, all in ways that do not entirely depend on state institutions, party politics, or even spatial proximity.
Physical place matters in digital activism : investigating the roles of local and global social capital, community, and social networking sites in the occupy movement
(2015-05) Baek, Kang Hui; Reese, Stephen D.; Johnson, Thomas; Coleman, Renita; Straubhaar, Joseph; Chen, Wenhong
This case study of the Occupy movement examines how different geographic forms of individual-level resources—local and global social capital—and communitylevel resources varying by place of residence play a key role in political activism in the digital age. To overcome the limited approach based on blind faith, in which social networking sites are unreservedly treated as sole mobilizing agents, this dissertation includes the exploration of how local and global social capital influence the way the use of social networking sites affects participation in the Occupy movement. In doing so, this dissertation goes beyond the exclusive focus on the effects of social capital formed and shared through the strength of a personal tie (i.e., strong vs. weak ties) on political participation considered in much of the current literature. Moreover, acknowledging that on-the-ground activities taking place in physical communities continue to be essential determinants of political engagement, this dissertation is intended to determine whether the communities in which individuals reside produce unique or specialized resources or environments, and how they provide different opportunities for involvement in the movement. From an online survey and in-depth interviews with participants in the U.S., this dissertation found that local and global forms of social capital had distinct effects on participation in the Occupy movement. This suggests that local social capital induced local participation, while global social capital encouraged global participation. In this vein, the use of social networking sites contributed to both local and global participation indirectly, through its effects on local and global social capital, respectively. Indeed, communities with politically liberal environments and high poverty levels were found to be favorable places for mobilizing participation. Global cities, New York City in particular, served as an optimal political space for encouraging participation in the movement because they provided diverse human resources and substantial political infrastructure. This dissertation makes an important contribution to our knowledge of political activism in the digital era. It highlights the situation that social networking sites are not sole contributors leading to political participation, and therefore, that the geographic dimension of social capital and community should also be carefully considered when examining political participation.