This volume proposes "speaking up" and "talking back" as new theoretical access points for studying feminist activism in digital spaces.
Drawing on the influential work of bell hooks, it highlights social justice interventions by feminist/queer/decolonial actors, groups, and collectives who recover the digital as a space for activist organizing and campaigning. In presenting a variety of sociocultural issues, such as gender violence, queer discrimination, or migrant hostility, the book centers empowerment practices in their digital forms, showcasing interventions in Asia, Europe, and the Americas--thereby critically examining the conditions for marginalized voices to speak up, talk back, and be heard in digital publics. In focusing on activist practices, formats, experiences, and scholarship, the contributions analyze many facets of digital feminist contention, including resistance storytelling, hashtag activism, grassroots journalism, or diaspora podcasting.
This international and interdisciplinary volume will interest students and scholars of Media and Communication, Social Movements and Activism, Cultural Studies, Gender and Queer Studies, and Race and Ethnicity.
Giuliana Sorce (PhD, Penn State University) is a postdoctoral scholar in the Institute of Media Studies at the University of Tubingen, Germany. She researches digital media and society with a specialization in activism and social movements. She is the editor of Global Perspectives on NGO Communication for Social Change (Routledge, 2022) and currently serves her second term as chair for the Communication and Democracy section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). Her research has appeared in journals such as Media and Communication, Convergence, Journalism Practice, or Environmental Communication.
Tanja Thomas (PhD, University of Tubingen) is Professor of Media Studies with a focus on Transformations in Media Cultures at the University of Tubingen, Germany. She researches media and migration; memory culture in the media society; right-wing violence, racism and media; participation and protest from a gender, and memory and cultural (media) studies perspective. Her projects on media, migration, and memory have received multiple grants from German and international research foundations (Volkswagen Foundation, German Research Foundation, and the German Israeli Foundation). She is co-editor of Media and Participation in Post- Migrant Societies (2022). Since 2013, she co-edits the interdisciplinary journal feministische studien.
