Description
Many academics agree that the primary advantage of the use of social media in activism is that it democratises the process of information gathering and communication among activists (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012; Mundt et al., 2018; Tufekci, 2017; Wolfsfeld et al., 2013). The communicative advantage of social media provides researchers with a unique insight into the diverse and individualperspectives that exist within movements. However, these perspectives are often generalised with respect to the movement as it is not commonly feasible to foreground multiple voices. My PhD research in social media activism uses social network models and film to create accessible approaches to highlight and foreground individual voices in research. I utilise the dataset I generated from the #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. #EndSARS is a hashtag created as rallying call for the end of police brutality in Nigeria. Particularly, the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) unit of the Nigerian Police. The movement participants generated millions of social media posts with the hashtag. I curated a selection of these individually created content on Instagram and created a digital artwork - Networked Narratives.
The digital artwork uses social network models produced from a collection of visual material shared on Instagram during the #EndSARS protests. The result is a multi-layered network of social media sourced content that provides individual and group understanding of the movement. Through this interactive digital artwork, viewers are encouraged to learn about the protests from the numerous and various views of the people using social media as activism and for activism. The advantage of using creative methods such as the creation of digital art and film to coalesce the individual creations of participants gives me an accessible way to study the movement at a macro- and micro-level.
| Period | 10 Sept 2024 |
|---|---|
| Event title | International Creative Research Methods Conference |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Manchester, United KingdomShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | National |