LASA/EANLAS: Rethinking Trans-Pacific Ties: Asia and Latin America

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P(R)OTESTAS: The Politics and Aesthetics of Digital Authoritarianism and Protest

Sat, February 19, 11:30am to 1:00pm, Virtual Building, VR106

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

P(R)OTESTAS is an interdisciplinary, trans-Pacific comparative research on protest, power, and digital authoritarianism, focused on the recent massive anti-government protests and their hard-handed repression in Latin America and South-East Asia. Over the past two decades, both regions have experienced what has been termed a “new authoritarian turn”, with democratically elected governments deploying increasingly authoritarian techniques to remain in power and quell dissent. Addressing the increasing digitization of protest and policing, our research’s main scope is the political and aesthetic content produced and/or distributed through the digital realm during and in the aftermath of mass protests. As such, we trace how both activists and state actors produce, share, and re-use multi-mediated political messages on digital platforms; what kind of discursive and visual counternarratives arise, and what broader popular and/or historical repertoires they draw on. In addition, we investigate when and how the state seeks to intervene in or control the digital sphere. What are the consequences of such digital authoritarian measures for protest, and how do activists respond?
To answer these questions we take an interdisciplinary approach, combining methodological and theoretical insights from the social sciences and humanities. We thereby approach the digital holistically, as embedded in extant power structures, people’s daily physical lives and environments, their moral worlds, and modes of cultural production. During this roundtable we bring together research on Indonesia, Thailand, Colombia and Nicaragua, comparatively engaging digital policing and cyber laws; memorialization practices; and the emergence of exile/diasporic and trans-Pacific solidarities.

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