Activists in the Data Stream. The Practices of Daily Grassroots Politics in Southern Europe

The book is about the subtle, daily interactions that Southern European activists have with digital media and digital data during their ordinary political activities, that is, when they are not involved in massive demonstrations in the streets. Beyond the short-lived moments in which they manage to involve hundreds of thousands of people in protests, they are constantly immersed in the daily activities that sustain the engagement of their organizations in the political realm. In order to do so, they speak with other activists, write reports, engage with journalists, and talk with their supporters. These and the other countless actions that activists perform on a daily basis take place thanks to a wide array of media. While some of these media are analogue, most of them are digital: together they immerse activists in what the book conceptualizes as a heterogeneous, ubiquitous, and perpetual data stream with which activists have to come to terms. Casting a light on the agency that activists exert not so much over digital media as such, but over the whole data stream, the book illustrates that such an agency can come in many shapes, bringing along and answering to a variety of challenges depending on who the activists are, what their movement organizations do, and where they are located. Despite these differences, the book identifies one common aspect: no matter where activists are situated, their agency over the data stream is particularly important for them and their movement organizations to perform the practices related to their grassroots political engagement.