Veronica Barassi

Does Web 3.0 come after Web 2.0? Deconstructing theoretical assumptions through practice

Current internet research has been influenced by application developers and computer engineers who see the development of the Web as being divided into three different stages: Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. This article will argue that this understanding – although important when analysing the political economy of the Web – can have serious limitations when applied to everyday contexts and the lived experience of technologies. Drawing from the context of the Italian student movement, we show that the division between Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 is often deconstructed by activists’ media practices. Therefore, we highlight the importance of developing an approach that – by focusing on practice – draws attention to the interplay between Web platforms rather than their transition. This approach, we believe, is essential to the understanding of the complex relationship between Web developments, human negotiations and everyday social contexts.

Ethnographic Cartographies: Social Movements, Alternative Media and the Spaces of Networks

Research on social movement networks has been defined by an emphasis on structural determinism and quantitative methodologies, and has often overlooked the spatial dimension of networking practices. This article argues that scholars have much to gain if (1) they move beyond the understanding of networks as organisational and communication structures, and analyse them as everyday social processes of human negotiation and construction, and (2) they pay attention to how networks between different organisations create multiple and overlapping spaces of action and meaning that define the everyday contexts of social movements. Drawing on ethnographic research within the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, this article explores the everyday dimension of political and communication networks. It shows that everyday networking practices are embedded in processes of identification and meaning construction, and are defined by a politics of inclusion and exclusion; introducing the concept of ethnographic cartography, it demonstrates that social movement networks are incorporated into everyday practices and narratives of place-making.

Activism on the Web : Everyday Struggles against Digital Capitalism

Activism on the Web examines the everyday tensions that political activists face as they come to terms with the increasingly commercialized nature of web technologies and sheds light on an important, yet under-investigated, dimension of the relationship between contemporary forms of social protest and internet technologies. Drawing on anthropological and ethnographic research amongst three very different political groups in the UK, Italy and Spain, the book argues that activists’ everyday internet uses are largely defined by processes of negotiation with digital capitalism. These processes of negotiation are giving rise to a series of collective experiences, which are defined by the tension between activists’ democratic needs on one side and the cultural processes reinforced by digital capitalism on the other. In looking at the encounter between activist cultures and digital capitalism, the book focuses in particular on the tension created by self-centered communication processes and networked-individualism, by corporate surveillance and data-mining, and by fast-capitalism and the temporality of immediacy. Activism on the Web suggests that if we want to understand how new technologies are affecting political participation and democratic processes, we should not focus on disruption and novelty, but we should instead explore the complex dialectics between digital discourses and digital practices; between the technical and the social; between the political economy of the web and its lived critique.

When materiality counts: The social and political importance of activist magazines in Europe

This study examines the social and political importance of printed magazines at a time of social and mobile media. It draws on a cross-cultural ethnographic research amongst two different political organisations in Britain and Spain. Although differing in political cultures and strategies, both organisations invest their few economic resources in the production of printed activist magazines, as well as in the development of web platforms. This study investigates why for these political groups’ materiality matters. It argues that looking at why people – and especially grassroots political organisations – remain attached to material forms of communication, whilst at the same time developing online ones, can raise critical questions on the connection between subjectivity, political association and new technologies, as well as on the difference between individualised and collective forms of communication.

BabyVeillance? Expecting Parents, Online Surveillance and the Cultural Specificity of Pregnancy Apps:

The rapid proliferation of self-tracking pregnancy apps raises critical questions about the commodification and surveillance of personal data in family life while highlighting key transformations in the social experience of pregnancy. In the last 2 years, we have seen the emergence of significant research in the field. On one hand, scholars have highlighted the political economic dimension of these apps by showing how they relate to new practices of quantification of the self. On the other hand, they have focused on users’ experience and on the affective, pleasurable, and socially meaningful dimension of these technologies. Although insightful, current research has yet to consider the cultural specificity of these technologies. Drawing on a digital ethnography of the 10 most reviewed pregnancy apps among UK and US users at the beginning of 2016, the article will show not only that the information ecologies of pregnancy apps are extremely varied but also that users’ interaction with these technologies is critical and culturally specific. By discussing pregnancy apps as complex ethnographic environments—which are shaped by different cultural tensions and open-ended processes of negotiation, interaction, and normativity—the article will argue that—in the study of infancy online—we need to develop a media anthropological approach and shed light on the cultural complexity of digital technologies while taking into account how users negotiate with digital surveillance and the quantification of the self.

Digital citizens? Data traces and family life

ABSTRACT In the last decades, different scholars have focused on how political participation has been transformed by digital media. Although insightful, current research in the field lacks a critical understanding of the personal and affective dimension of online political participation. This paper aims to address this gap by looking at the interconnection between digital storytelling, identity narratives and family life. Drawing on an ethnographic research, the paper shows that activists construct their political identities online through complex practices of digital storytelling that involve the reinterpretation of early childhood and family life. These processes of digital storytelling have an un-intended consequence: they enable the political profiling of different family members. The paper argues that these digital practices, which produce politically identifying digital traces, are transforming political socialisation in family life and introducing new ways in which we can think digital citizenship across the life course.

Contested Visions: Digital Discourses as Empty Signifiers from the ‘Network’ to ‘Big Data’

This article engages with two key concepts that have come to define our digital cultures: the ‘network’ and ‘big data’. It critically considers how these concepts have largely been framed by techno-utopian or techno-dystopian political understandings of historical transformation. In the last few years, the relationship between technological discourses and political visions has led to the emergence of critical research in the field. This research has shown that we cannot fully understand digital discourses without considering the very Western belief that technological innovation necessarily leads to new political possibilities. By drawing on the findings of a cross-cultural ethnographic research among three different political groups in Europe, this article argues that current research in the field has focused too long on how digital discourse is shaped by Western meta-narratives of technological progress. This is to the detriment of a careful consideration of the fact that different political actors discursively construct digital technologies with reference to different political visions. Understanding these contested visions, as this article shows, is of central importance as it could enable us to appreciate that digital discourses have become today ‘empty signifiers’, which define the basis of contemporary hegemonic struggles.