Christina Neumayer

• Professor (Associate) at IT University of Copenhagen

This research investigates the strategic use of protest imagery on social media by movement parties, bridging the gap between protest and institutional politics. We apply a mixed-methods analysis of 9584 Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram image posts by seven movement parties between 2015 and 2021. We find that protest images frequently serve to ampl...

This research explores mediated ritual interactions in the form of pictures taken using a mobile device in tandem with two critical designs: Probably Not and World to GIF. We take our point of departure in Rich Ling’s understanding of mobile interaction as a ritual of social cohesion and social bonding to explore sociotechnical interactions with mo...

This paper presents a critical discussion of the processing, reliability and implications of free big data repositories. We argue that big data is not only the starting point of scientific analyses but also the outcome of a long string of invisible or semi-visible tasks, often masked by the fetish of size that supposedly lends validity to big data....

This research quantitatively investigates the impact of violence on the propagation of images in social media in the context of political protest. Using a computational approach, we measure the relative violence of a large set of images shared on Twitter during the protests against the G20 summit in Frankfurt am Main in 2017. This allows us to inve...

This special issue emphasizes memes as an avenue for researching vernacular expressions of the political. Memes disrupt and reimagine politics in humorous ways. Spreading across platforms, they confirm, contest and challenge political power and hierarchies. In this introduction, we contend that playfulness connects the humorous and the political in...

Social media data are increasingly used to study a variety of social phenomena. This development is based on the assumption that digital traces left on social media can provide insights into the nature of human interaction. In this research, we turn our attention to what remains invisible in research based on social media data. Using Andrea Brighen...

In this research we ask which role humorous social media images play for the representation of political protest in social media. To do so, we collected tweets (n=678946) based on protest hashtags from the G20 protests in Hamburg July 6-8 2017. With a social network analysis we find that while we can see clusters around user accounts of activist co...

This article explores user motivations for sharing and creating internet memes in a crisis situation. For this purpose, we investigate the kitten memes in #Brusselslockdown on Twitter, following the Brussels security lockdown in November 2015 that resulted from information about potential terrorist attacks. We use a social network analysis to ident...

While political protest is essentially a visual expression of dissent, both social movement research and media studies have thus far been hesitant to focus on visual social media data from protest events. This research explores the visual dimension (photos and videos) of Twitter communication in the Blockupy protests against the opening of the Euro...

This research investigates activists’ social media tactics and how these tactics materialize at the intersection of social media materialities and protest. The argument is based on a case study of social media communication by activists involved in the Blockupy action against the opening of the new European Central Bank headquarters in March 2016 i...

This article investigates the relationship between the invention of new media technologies and scholarship concerning protest and political engagement. Building on an innovative approach that moves beyond a systematic literature review, this article contributes to our understanding of scholarship concerning digital communication technologies and ho...

This article examines current appropriations of social media by activists of the radical left in Greece and Sweden. Previous research has shown that the discourse concerning social media’s empowering potential is embedded in commercial values that contradict the value systems of many activists who engage in struggles against the current economic sy...

This article aims to develop a typology for evaluating different types of activism in the digital age, based on the ideal of radical democracy. Departing from this ideal, activism is approached in terms of processes of identification by establishing conflictual frontiers to outside others as either adversaries or enemies. On the basis of these disc...

Most activism in connected societies has an online component. Social media accompany corporeal demonstrations, occupations, and protest marches. It is argued that such social media platforms play an increasingly important role when mobilizing across different political positions, coordinating and producing visibility for a political demand. In this...

In this article we address the question of power in networked publics on Twitter in anti-fascist protests. The study is based on the results of an analysis of tweets, that are part of a data-set of three qualitative case studies about nationalist demonstrations in Germany, accompanied by counter-protests of anti-fascist groups, NGOs, and civil soci...

In this article we examine the different forms of activism using information and communication technologies as a means to represent different political positions. Within the framework of radical democracy we develop a typology of contemporary activism as a form of political participation. The results are based on three qualitative case studies of p...

This article examines the critical potential of YouTube-comments to foster the development of counter public (Negt and Kluge 1972). The argument is based on an analysis of YouTube-comments in anti-fascist protests taking place in East Germany in 2011. The comments represent political positions across the political spectrum and are analyzed as: [1]...

This paper argues, that the incorporation of eParticipation into political education at schools will broaden the chances of young people for political and societal engagement and strengthen civil society of a country or state. Frustration with traditional party politics especially of the younger generation is increasing in contemporary society. Sin...

Access to information and communication technologies and distribution of skills, literacy and capabilities to use ICTs for political engagement of young people are frequently discussed. New developments of the Internet, that foster interactive forms of communication and knowledge production, have the potential to increase participation. The emergen...

The papers in this volume reflect the debates that progressed during the 4th Global conference on Cybercultures: Exploring Critical Issues, held as a part of Cyber Hub activity in Salzburg, Austria in March 2009. The edited draft papers make up a snapshot for the actual publishing. This multi-disciplinary conference project is a successful reborn o...

The active involvement of youth in socio-political decisions by engaging them through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is a major objective in current politics. The emergence of Web 2.0 has produced new opportunities for participation, especially for youth who actively use new information and communication technologies....

The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of Social Software for networked political protest. We demonstrate grassroots activism on a current example: the anti-FARC-rallies in Colombia ( A Million Voices against FARC ), which found its origin in the social networking site Facebook. Our findings are based on four concepts that we state as charact...