workshop at Concordia University, Wed 16 March 2016, convened by Laurence Parent, hosted by Critical Disability Research group

1. ‘New Digital Repertoires for Social
Justice, Politics, and Culture?:
Exploring Disability Activism &
Mobile & Social Media’
Gerard Goggin @ggoggin
Dept of Media & Communications
University of Sydney
Workshop for
Concordia University Critical Disability
Studies group, 16.03.2016

2. disability activism is one of the most interesting,
and perhaps least appreciated, areas of political,
social, and cultural innovation when it comes to
digital technology
emerging trends, issues, challenges, and
possibilities internationally arising from disability
activism as it unfolds in the dynamic area of mobile
and social media
esp. interesting dynamics of disability & digital
media as cosmopolitan forms of activism &
citizenship cf. disability’s fraught relationship with
nation state (increasingly tense under
neoliberalism)

3. ‘whilst not negating the role of more traditional
protest and the need for a plurality of tactics to
be used in combination with one another, the
role of digital activism is now embedded in
disability protest culture and set to play a crucial
role in future disability politics more generally.’
Charlotte Pearson & Filippo Trevisan, ‘Disability Activism in the
New Media Ecology: Campaigning Strategies in the Digital Era’,
Disability & Society (2015), p, 937

4. Source: Violeta Blue
Ayalay Facebook post

9. disability activism …
long complex genealogies & debates
area that needs research – international accounts
now coming from outside anglophone world &
dominant centres of disability research &
production
Models of activism & disability movements are
various, culturally, historically & political specific
For instance, the description of disability
movements as ‘last civil rights’ movement is a
framing that works for the US context – but not
necessarily elsewhere (e.g. Bolivia)
Might talk of ‘climates of disability politics’ (Sandell,
Dodd & Garland-Thomson, Re-presenting Disability)

16. ‘Youth are engaging in different forms of
activism on different issues. Many young leaders
with disabilities are involved in cross-issue
movements, such as the Quebec student
movement, the Occupy movement, and Idle No
More. The approach of these leaders is very
different from the approaches documented in
historical accounts of Canadian disability
movements.’
Christine Kelly Disability Politics and Care (2016), p. 159

17. ‘Youth leaders and contemporary activism
operate more on the level of cultural meaning
making – or what Garland-Thomson calls ‘visual
activism’ – than on the level of policy making,
and work with and across diverse identities …
The disconnect between the founding
generation of Canadian disability activists and
the emerging cultural, cross-issue approaches of
youth leaders represents both a maturing and a
divison of the movement ... there are many
strands of disability organizing in Canada.’
Christine Kelly Disability Politics and Care (2016), p. 159

18. Activism on/for digital technology
‘… disability activists experimenting with uses of
digital technologies, and availing themselves of
the ‘democratic affordances’ they offer … Yet the
very fact of the use of digital technologies by
people with disabilities opens up another
contradictory area to do with the technologies
themselves and the philosophies and values
inscribed in, and affiliated with, them.’ (Ellis, Goggin &
Kent, ‘Disability’s Digital Frictions’)

21. media play dual role — in both
shaping and enforcing disability and
its closely related counterpart,
normalcy; but also in offering
different cultural platforms and social
models for how we might re-imagine
society

25. media (including new media) has as
significant issues with disability as it
does with other, interlinked issues of
indigeneity, race, gender, sex, class, age -
media won’t cover many disability
stories
but disability critiques of media ableism
are very much a minority affair
(‘why don’t you put that on the disability
activism page’? - #JointDestroyer saga
#criparmy ping @katharineannear )
See Ellis & Goggin, Disability & the Media (2015)

26. Communication & media matter in disability &
social futures … but these are also framed by
neoliberalism
e.g. social media is lauded for its role in
information, political & social participation; but
most platforms are commercially owned -
which at times (often) poses significant issues
& the ‘social imaginaries’ of new media are
often very neoliberal (e.g. ‘sharing’ = Uber) &
don’t include disability
except myth that technology will be the
salvation of disability

28. disability activism in UK
welfare reforms –
‘disability benefit scroungers’

33. Disabled people have taken social media and
made it into their own medium, where they can
have a voice on equal terms with their non-
disabled counterparts, something not often
afforded by society as a whole…The computer
provides a freedom for those with disabilities, it
is much easier to protest online than in the
centre of London when the Tube is not
accessible (quoted in: Ryan, 2014).

34. Many of us wouldn’t be able to campaign at all
without social media … I barely get out of the
house, and I’ve given up going into London at
all, it’s just too exhausting with my pain-based
disability. No matter how many marches on
parliament are called, I’m physically excluded by
the realities of disability, and that’s true for so
many disabled people. Social media lets me
campaign while lying flat on my back if I can’t sit
up, never mind march on parliament (quoted in:
Ryan, 2014).

36. For about 30 years, I’ve been aware that I operate
in two starkly different modes … One is public,
where I try and come across as energetic and
animated and engaged and good at what I do. It’s a
way of being that’s approved of socially. But what
people don’t see is the other side, where I spend
most of my time at home, a great deal of it lying
down in my bed. That’s in order to prepare for the
public thing, and to recover from it. I’ve always kept
that hidden because it feels dangerous to make it
public. It feels like I’d be misinterpreted and people
won’t see me as the whole person that I am
(quoted in: Adewunni, 2013).

37. ‘tendency for online media – especially social
networking platforms – to blur the distinction
between ‘private’ and ‘public’ … and the need
for innovative campaigning groups to also
become visible in traditional media debates in
order to be able to foster concrete policy
change’
Pearson & Filippo Trevisan, ‘Disability Activism in the New Media Ecology:
Campaigning Strategies in the Digital Era’, Disability & Society (2015), p, 937

38. ‘[[in UK Disabled People Against Cuts/DPAC 2012
campaign] emergence of personal stories of
disability discrimination as both online
campaign tools and newsworthy material
contributes to the politicisation of the private
sphere in a way that promotes a more ‘inclusive’
form of citizenship (Lister 2007) for disabled
people’
Pearson & Filippo Trevisan, ‘Disability Activism in the New Media
Ecology: Campaigning Strategies in the Digital Era’, Disability &
Society (2015), p, 937

39. Recent Australia cases of
disability activism & social media

40. Closure of ABC
Ramp Up disability blog

44. TEDx Sydney 2015 & #stellaschallenge

49. #JointDestroyer -
Nov 2015 Destroy the Joint controversy

55. ‘Facebook and Twitter in these protests were often
part of the now typically cross-referenced (and to
some extent commercially integrated) ecology of
convergent, online, social, mobile, and locative
media technologies and applications—including
YouTube, Vimeo, Pinterest, Flickr and Instagram’
‘… widespread availability of mobile digital devices
such as smart phones and tablets that allow for the
rapid dissemination of these platforms to people
both involved in protests but also to others in a
timely fashion’
(Ellis, Goggin & Kent, ‘Disability’s Digital Frictions’)