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Title [sv]
Motståndets algoritmer: Att analysera och lära av antirasistisk aktivism i datafieringens tidsålder
Title [en]
Algorithms of Resistance: Analysing and harnessing anti-racist activism in the age of datafication
Abstract [en]
The aim of this project is to analyse and harness how social media platform logics, datafication, and algorithmic agency become tools for anti-racist digital activism in countering racism.The project relies on a combination of online ethnography, activist interviews, and data science methods to be able to both grasp the subtler and emergent strategies surrounding digital anti-racism, and to assess its impacts and mechanisms at a larger-scale level of networked society.The project has three research questions. The first one (RQ1) is interested in how these new forms of anti-racism are able to make a mark in the media landscape and political debate. The second research question (RQ2) is interested in how these forms of anti-racist activism are interactionally achieved and understood among its proponents, and in understanding activist motivations and experiences. These questions draw on an ethnomethodological approach where focus is directed towards how activists create meaning around their practices and experiences. The third research question (RQ3) is focused on using the knowledge generated within the project in order to develop design suggestions for how stakeholders (governments, schools, social media businesses, and others) should develop their online platforms, and their strategies on existing platforms, in order to benefit from affordances and algorithms that are emancipatory rather than oppressive.
Publications (1 of 1) Show all publications
Merrill, S., Gardell, M. & Lindgren, S. (2024). How “the left” meme: analyzing taboo in the internet memes of r/DankLeft. New Media and Society
Open this publication in new window or tab >>How “the left” meme: analyzing taboo in the internet memes of r/DankLeft
2024 (English)In: New Media and Society, ISSN 1461-4448, E-ISSN 1461-7315Article in journal (Refereed) Epub ahead of print
Abstract [en]

This article explores how “the left” meme and the character and emotional reception of taboo-breaking therein via the case of r/DankLeft—a USA-centric Marxist, Anarchist, and Democratic Socialist Internet meme community. It asks: what themes do popular r/DankLeft Internet memes relate to, how does taboo feature within popular r/DankLeft Internet memes, and can any differences in the ways in which taboo-related r/DankLeft Internet memes are received be discerned. In turn, it carries out a thematic analysis of 366 popular memes, a multimodal critical discourse analysis of 41 taboo-related popular memes, and a comparative sentiment analysis of the comments these and other memes have received in r/DankLeft. The article finds that popular memes in r/DankLeft primarily relate to perceived threats to its community of users. It also shows that taboo-breaking does feature in r/DankLeft memes and that when it does correlative patterns emerge in terms of popularity and emotional reception.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2024
Keywords
Digital culture, discourse analysis, Internet memes, left-wing, radical left, Reddit, sentiment analysis, taboo-breaking, thematic analysis
National Category
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology) Media and Communication Studies
Research subject
Sociology; media and communication studies
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-221499 (URN)10.1177/14614448241232144 (DOI)2-s2.0-85185943739 (Scopus ID)
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2019-03351
Available from: 2024-02-26 Created: 2024-02-26 Last updated: 2025-02-11
Principal InvestigatorLindgren, Simon
Coordinating organisation
Umeå University
Funder
Period
2019-12-01 － 2021-12-31
National Category
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Identifiers
DiVA, id: project:2166Project, id: 2019-03351_VR
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