Digital Voices
Moroccan Activists' Online Participation Narrative: Discourses in Cyberspace from February 20 Movement
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hamdi Echkaou
In this paper, I address February 20 Movement (F20M) narratives of the digital activists who provide the motives that drove them to adopt and believe in various social media as mobilizing factors, the techniques they used to diffuse their messages, and the communication strategies they utilized to convince, argue, and shape their demands online. This paper presents the steps F20M activists followed in order to structure their movement's discussion and demands within the online borders. Using a qualitative research method, this study reveals how F20M has effectively created a mass movement from the ground up that managed to voice and shape national discourses regarding the social and political change necessary for a country like Morocco. In fact, the participation of the Moroccan activists online defied the mainstream narratives propagated by the national media and managed to spread their calls not only in the urban well-connected areas, but also to disenfranchised areas in rural Morocco.
Community Media and Popular Movements: The Politics of Participatory Power in Contemporary Latin America
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lee Artz
The experiences community-based popular organizations in Venezuela and Bolivia provide startling examples of effective media strategies and tactics by social movements arising from and contributing to robust participatory democracy. This paper outlines several unconventional norms and practices characteristic of social movements in contemporary Venezuela and Bolivia, based on observations of community media operations, interviews with media workers and Ministry of Communication officials, analyses of media reform, and insights of other research. Evidence suggests that locally-based political organization, actions, education, and independent media (e.g., micro broadcasting, newsletters, graffiti, street radio and video, and participatory street theater) directly contributed to mass mobilizations in both Venezuela and Bolivia—overturning the coup against Hugo Chavez and leading to a radical opening for public and community media in Venezuela; and blocking privatization of water and gas in Cochabamba and El Alto, Bolivia, leading to constitutional provisions for public media. Media laws in both countries include articulations of communication as a human and civil right. The preexistence of social movements exemplified by community media such as CatiaTVe and Radio Primero Negro in Venezuela and indigenous and miners’ radio in Bolivia contributed to the realization of these laws, providing national resources for access to technology and participatory infrastructure for training in media skills and techniques. In both cases, well-organized and politically confident social movements secured more open, democratic media practices than even those espoused by EU civil society’s calls for the right to information.
Perceptions of Mobile Phone Alerts in the Context of Cultural Norms About Gatherings, Interruptions, and Respect: Study in Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Janice Webster
Scholars have different views about how mobile phone use has modified human cultures in the context of our increasingly globalized, linked-up world. Morley (2017:165-167) emphasizes human agency, the mundanity of new technologies, and the difference in adaption patterns across cultures in suggesting that the mobile phone is simply a new tool for achieving pre-existing, often cultural and local, needs. Similarly, Castells et al (2006:71) suggest that both mobile phone use and acceptance of public phone conversations is high in nations with ‘collective, sociable cultures’, while the norms of individualistic cultures may inhibit public phone conversations. In this research, I will apply Morley and Castells et al’s ideas to investigating how people perceive mobile phone use in the context of existing cultural norms about gatherings, interruptions, and respect in Tehran, Iran. In particular, I am interested in how individuals describe the experience of their meetings and gatherings with friends, family members, and colleagues being interrupted by their own and others’ mobile phone alerts, especially incoming calls. Qualitative data was collected from semi-structured face-to-face interviews with mobile phone users in Tehran until theoretical saturation is observed. The results of this research, comprising a discussion of the key themes raised in the interviews, is relevant to wider debates about mobile phone use and the culture of Iran, communications technologies in different cultural contexts, and cultural stability and change in an interconnected, globalized world.
