Information and Communication Technologies as Contentious Repertoire

Abstract

AbstractThis study advances an original theoretical framework to understand the deployment of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in political contention. It argues that we should not look only at the use of ICTs in contention, as technologies are not “born” to be used in and for political activism. Rather, people appropriate and manoeuvre technologies—some but not others—for such purposes, in specific contexts. This study proposes a relational understanding of ICT uses in contention, taking into account their technicalities and their sociality, as well as the transformation and actualisation that occurs between them. It suggests that an investigation necessitates the perception of communication technologies as a repertoire of contention on the basis of affordances that structure the possibilities of the use of technology. The study further presents an application of the framework in cases of protests in mainland China. Through fieldwork and in-depth interviews, this study indicates that the choice of (certain functions of) mobile phones as protest repertoire derives from a confluence of (a) a given social group’s habitus of media use that manifests particular affordances, and (b) the learned experience of the contested means of the past in official mass communication. It concludes that what people do and do not do with ICTs in political contention is significantly shaped by affordances and habitus, thereby revealing the dynamics behind repertoire selection and constraint.