Repression and Resistance: Social Media Technologies and Social Movements

Talk by Assistant Professor Priyank Chandra from the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto and the Director of the STREET Lab, in the Tech in Movement (TiM) serial talks.

TiM serial talks organize talks and seminars on issues on the frontlines of technology and politics.

Abstract

Digital technologies play a crucial role in enabling social movements to communicate, mobilise supporters, coordinate resources, and disseminate information. However, these technologies also introduce new avenues for repression by both state and non-state actors. In this talk, I will examine how geographically distributed social movements have strategically used social media technologies to converge on common political goals. Drawing on the case studies of the 2020-21 Farmers’ Protest in India and the 2020 Belarusian diaspora protests, I will explore how repression—whether domestic or transnational—shapes the choices of technologies and strategies employed by these movements. To better understand and support such social movements, I argue for the need to look beyond digital counterpublics and consider alternative spaces, such as enclaves and satellite publics, that facilitate coalition building and the formation of social movement communities.

Bio

Priyank Chandra is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto and the Director of the STREET Lab, housed at KMDI, University of Toronto. He works at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW), development studies, and sociology. His research focuses on the resistance practices of marginalised communities and how they interact with technologies – specifically, how they reconfigure technologies to meet their unique needs and how our understanding of these interactions can inform the design of more ethical and inclusive technologies. His work has been published at leading HCI conferences, including ACM CHI and ACM CSCW, with several of his papers receiving awards.