Protesting in the Streets of Instagram

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Date

2018-11

Authors

Pearl, Ali Rachel

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

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Publisher

Fembot Collective

Abstract

Instagram, much like Twitter, is a vital site of social movement documentation and activist possibility. This image-sharing social media platform functions as a digital neighborhood populated with digital “citizens” who utilize its many avenues of photo presentation for a variety of purposes: selfies and feminist-self love, memes, marketing, and the sharing and preservation of one’s travels, one’s food, one’s life. But like physical streets, the digital “streets” of Instagram are also occasionally filled with protest. Protesters use Instagram to geotag photos of protest with the real world address where the protest occurred, thus indexing protest images alongside more mundane photos that are geotagged with the same location. Geotag archives for popular protest sites such as the Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters in downtown Los Angeles simultaneously visualize daily activities, weapons and police officers, and protest (protest against the police, state-violence, and racism, but also rallies in support of the police, the state, and the current presidential administration). This essay explores how Instagram geotags allow us to construct a “digitally networked public sphere” and how we might use those geotag archives as extensions of our physical presence when protesting police violence.

Description

14 pages

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Citation

Pearl, A.R. (2018) Protesting in the Streets of Instagram. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 14. https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/ada.2018.14.7