How the Hashtag Revolutionizes the Way We Collectively Contend

• In Event: Building a Comparative Framework for Addressing the Role of Media in the Turkish and Brazilian 2013 Protests

Abstract

Political contention has entered a new age. Since 2010, unprecedented large-scale movements have challenged states across the globe, and social media has been an important component in their development and articulation. With the advent of social media sites, ordinary people have the technological ability to instantaneously transcend space, time and resources. Are we currently living in a historical moment where a new repertoire of contention is emerging? If so, how is social media changing the way we collectively contest for our interests? The theoretical framework I propose in this paper advances and elaborates a social geographic approach in the framing of political contention that emphasizes the importance of the spatiality and temporality created by the hashtag (#) in the development and articulation of today’s social movements. I claim that the hashtag creates a new space/time that fundamentally shifts the way social movement emerge, creating a new repertoire of contention. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in Rio de Janeiro during the 2013 Confederation's Cup protests, I begin to trace the contours of this new spatial/temporal configuration.

Author

• Eric Borja, U of Texas - Austin