[Last modified: October, 6 2024 08:47 PM]
Draft Research Proposal
Topic: Reposting and aesthetics as a form of political activism in London
Questions:
- What do forms of shorthand digital activism e.g. infographics do?
- How does this relate to self-presentation online?
- How is it engaged with by different people?
- What is the balance in engagement with this form of news/education and the mainstream media?
- What’s the difference between an epistemic bubble and and echo chamber?
- What’s the variation of use depending on the platform used? Who’s using what?
- How do politicians now use social networks?
- To what degree do we engage with aesthetics as much as content?
Methods:
- Participant observation: Interview varying participants, particularly their engagement with activism online but also into offline spaces; hanging out with organisers and groups formed from the online space; interviews with creators of specifically political spaces online, etc;. Finding people who may be creators for more official political accounts.
- Engaging with the virtual space: Take on new forms of virtual ethnography, reach out to people through the digital sites themselves and engage with construction of online persona as a whole participant, not just offline self. This could include anonymous accounts who exist – for purposes of this research – only online.
- Multi-sited ethnography: This takes place amongst the dispersed and varying site of London on different digital platforms. How do older people use Facebook to repost political memes they see? How do people use Instagram stories as a way of displaying political allegiance? How do both content creators and casual viewers on TikTok create and receive information regarding politics? Is a retweet on X endorsement? What are the implications that we can no longer see what people ‘like’?
Potential findings:
- Digital spaces can be both democratising platforms in both education and voice, but can also be a homogenising and reductive source of information.
- People may feel variously positive and negative about the political moving to largely online spaces: this may particularly be a subject of interest to older activists.
- Different age groups use different platforms but both with the intention of constructing online performance of identity. Older groups – as a generalisation – may engage more with Facebook, whilst the younger adults and kids may be largely on TikTok.
- Reposting/retweeting, etc. and its lack of time consumption may make some feel they fall short on deeper analysis. Some may feel that it disperses a large amount of information for all audiences where they might otherwise not know where to find it.