TEAM

Elena Pavan, Andrea Felicetti, and Arianna Mainardi

WEB SITE

START YEAR 2016

END YEAR 2018

This project aims at fostering and exploring the virtuous encounter between two vibrant research strands that have hitherto developed quite independently one from the other: movements as spaces for knowledge production and learning and the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) within collective action dynamics. It does so by focusing on two transnational action networks: the one coordinated by the Association by Progressive Communications Women’s Right Programme (APC) for reclaiming ICTs  to achieve gender equality, and the Transition Network for environmental sustainability.

By reconstructing the evolution of knowledge production and diffusion practices enacted over time within these two networks across the online/offline boundary, the project seeks to achieve two strictly interrelated aims.

On the one hand, it aims at clarifying the contribution of ICTs in relation to the practices of critical knowledge production and diffusion for the pursuit of social change.

On the other hand, it seeks to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of ICTs not only as organizational and knowledge tools but also as “contested objects”. More specifically, the project aims at providing a systematic and account of grassroots and critical views about the implications of ICTs usage for achieving gender equality and environmental sustainability.

The project leans on an ad-hoc analytic and methodological framework, which combines three traits of innovations.

First, it starts from a unique sociotechnical perspective for which ICTs are considered a preferred tool through which such knowledge is produced and diffused but also as an object of critical reflection in themselves.

Second, it innovates current approaches within movements’ knowledge studies and discussions on the role of ICTs as it considers simultaneously the contents and the practices of knowledge production and diffusion.

Third, it is supported by the triangulation of multiple analytical techniques that aims specifically at the simultaneous consideration of contents and practices within the APC WRP and the Transition Netwok. More particularly, the project combines in-depth interviewing with digital methods (a set of digital research techniques for deriving and analyzing digital data from several platforms, e.g., websites, social media platforms, search engines), qualitative and automated content analysis (a specific set of techniques for systematizing and analyzing the contents of a corpus of selected texts), and big data approaches to online social media and social network data.

*Project banner adapted from the Original Photo by Dhyta Caturani, included in the Multimedia Campaign Package of the Take Back The Tech! campaign.

FUNDING

Scuola Normale Superiore – Grant interno