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Digital Solidarities of U.S. Muslim Women
Abstract
This paper traces a solidarity group of multi-racial U.S. Muslim women activists in the Pacific Northwest, mapping their online networks during the historic era of protest for Black Lives Matter and Immigration Rights, starting in 2019. Although there have been a proliferation of images of the “Muslim female protester” in mass media, U.S. Muslim women activists are rarely recorded. And these digital activists are employing their own images—an oppositional media and a kind of “citizen journalism,” redefining mass media’s image and accompanying propaganda about needing to be “rescued,” while (re)constructing multiracial solidarities in virtual communities of U.S. Muslim women. The central question this paper asks is: what is the importance of their protest pictures, and how are they being situated in social media, used as a “digital tactic”? The case study of this paper is based on data from a protest workshop and studies of Facebook and of Instagram. This paper further argues that the group photo and its Facebook captions have been part of a re-territorialization—political claims and multi-racial bonds in digital images—connections between Arab American and South Asian and Black and multi-racial U.S. Muslim activists. Analyzing data of images of patriotic hues and of superheroes, this paper suggests how these images have been re-deployed alongside captions in order to re-imagine national inclusion, to deploy anti-racist strategies to re-imagine “Arab America,” and to press for specific kinds of legislative change for immigrant rights. These online images re-position multi-racial solidarities in resistance aesthetics and creative strategies that refuse mass mediations. And these Facebook icons have been grounded in individual histories and in Black protest traditions—a radical base for their online icons. Following these internet icons in social media, this paper theorizes the ways in which digital activists and their online icons are doing important political work—a heteroglossic virtuality—and the tensions, pressures, and potentials of these digital solidarities.
Discipline
Media Arts
Geographic Area
North America
Sub Area
None