IRC 22 – Proposed Session – # ActFromHome
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RAW
Admin
31 December 2020
Internet Researchers Conference 2022 – # Home – Call for Sessions
Session Type: Workshop or Collaborative Working Session
Session Plan
Objectives of the Session
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, nations across the world instituted a range of public health measures that limited mobility in many areas, while confining families to homes for indefinite periods of time. Poverty, unemployment and other forms of inequality rose – both within and outside the home. Further, angst against various issues rose- worsening climate injustices, racial violence, gender discrimination, arbitrary layoffs across workplaces, and silencing of minority voices. In a pre-pandemic era, such issues would have elicited physical protest movements by the groups concerned, but with limited mobility – the digital space has become an arena for home-based protests and movements.
This workshop seeks to answer a fundamental question: “Can democracies under crisis survive the home based protests across digital platforms?” It will highlight the role of emerging technologies in shaping the role of home-based digital protests across nations and cultures, with a specific focus on perspectives from Israel and India. Further, it will analyse the immense opportunities and pitfalls of driving home-based social movements on digital platforms. Moreover, the workshop will investigate the ambiguous positioning of online government surveillance and content moderation on collective human rights, with a specific focus on human rights within the home. In addition, it will examine the impact of digital home-based protests upon the aptness and scope of modern democratic regimes.
Course of the Session and Work Division
- Overview on the role of digital spaces and emerging technologies in promoting the role of the home as a space for protest
- Thought exercise involving participants in analysing the merits and demerits of digitising home-based social movements.
- Discussion on government surveillance and content moderation
- Discussion on the impact of digital home-based protests
- Group work involving participants in designing a digital social movement for a given cause (from a range of causes including climate action, gender equality, vaccine nationalism etc.)