Weekly lab meeting: research project about young activists

PhD student Nadezhda Iankelevich presented her research project exploring the strategies of young social media activists. The proposed study (as part of STUDACT) examines how young activists from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom leverage social media to advance their causes across issues of gender inequality, anti-war movements, and migrant rights advocacy. Based on interviews with activists aged 18-25 and a thematic analysis of their social media accounts, the project aims to investigate activism at multiple scales. The research emphasizes that the relationship between global and local activism isn’t binary but rather represents a fluid and interconnected system of interactions. Using Thorson’s Citizenship Vocabulary model as its theoretical framework, the study maps activist accounts across four quadrants: hyperlocal-individual, global-individual, global-collective, and hyperlocal-collective.