EmPoWer

Argentinian women constitute 51,1% of the country's population but are unequally affected by poverty, discrimination and violence. Since 2015, they have increasingly protested this state of affairs via collective mobilizations on International Women’s Day and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, by organizing to raise specific claims, such as the right to abortion or the denunciation of rape. But how does their political agency unfold in the in-between times and spaces when collective protests are not taking place? What communicative practices do they engage then? This project investigates if and how female citizens’ everyday uses of mediated communication for justice produce democratic resolution of their claims in the context of the dataification of governance, the deficient responses of social media companies to spiraling online violence and abuse against women and other challenges to their participation in digital citizenship. The case study is emblematic of citizen-driven technopolitical efforts taking place in the Global South to fix gender inequality and other broken elements of democracy. Through a multi-method design, the study will unpack the ways in which Argentinian female citizens appropriate and interpret mediated communication in everyday technopolitics, and to which democratic effect. Results will: a) provide actionable information for female citizens to refine their day-to-day communicative practices for justice; b) advance methodological tools for monitoring strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats pertaining to their communicative agency in a changing digital environment; c) and contribute potential solutions to omissions/shortcomings in reciprocal listening to their claims from governments, corporations and other accountable organizations. The study will thus inform a future governmentality that takes responsibility for addressing citizens’ claims for justice rather than counter them.