Abstract
The Bogazici University Protests, a leaderless social movement that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, heavily relies on digital technologies. The relationship between digital technologies and social movements has been explored from various perspectives, including social media usage, online storytelling, identity struggles, values, and organizational forms. Our focus on the Bogazici University Protests aims to uncover how protesters employ technology both on and off campus while challenging the university administration appointed by an authoritarian government. Our study attempts to reassess the use of digital technologies in social movements within the context of neoliberal authoritarianism.
We ask an important question: How does technology mediate the understanding and experience of memory work in hybrid activism in authoritarian contexts? To address this question, we engage with scholarship from two fields: socio-political memory studies and human-computer interaction (HCI), and analyze data gathered from in-depth interviews with protesters affiliated with Bogazici University, including faculty, students, and alumni. We argue that the protesters have been engaging in various forms of memory work since the beginning of the Bogazici University Protests. However, this memory work has its own limitations, mainly stemming from the authoritarian political context as well as technological factors.
Our findings help us identify the roles of shared and conflicting values and tactics in hybrid activism. They also enable us to explain different layers of memory work as well as its political and technical limits. In this way, our work adds to the existing knowledge of the HCI-activism connection, emphasizing the significance of memory work within authoritarian contexts. More than a decade has passed since the initial studies of HCI and activism, and during this time, authoritarianism has permeated nearly every political system worldwide. In this global landscape, it is imperative to reevaluate the opportunities and challenges presented by digital technologies for social movements. Secondly, we recognize the need to diversify our points of reference and enrich our understanding by incorporating non-Western perspectives on HCI and activism. Our study contributes to this diversification at the technology and social movements nexus.
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