Multiple accelerated cultural and social changes have been attributed to social media, from mobilizing social movements to problematizing or normalizing terms and concepts. Digital platforms are considered a vital element in the ecosystem for realizing change in societies, yet the focus is often on overtly sociopolitical content and the issue-driven or identity-driven networked society content. However, and despise the ubiquitous nature of digital media, the accumulative impact of mundane casual interaction has rarely been scrutinized beyond its ability to support rapport building. This research explores the influence of the mundane content in communities’ cultural repertoire. It positions it in the schema of narrative (re)building and meaning (re)making tools, processes that contribute to making lasting impactful change in society. The research especially highlights how the mundane content serves to aid the cultural evolvement of marginalized communities annihilated from the public sphere. Utilizing Paolo Freire’s critical consciousness, Andrea Brock’s work on Black cyberculture, and Zizi Papacharissi’s affective public thesis, this research explores how cultural and digital practices of the (stateless) Bidoon community in Kuwait intertwine in their everyday usage of Twitter. Through digital ethnography that involved discourse analysis of tweets and in-depth interviews with eight participants from the Bidoon community, this research exhibits how mundane Twitter usage has allowed the Bidoon community to reinterpret and recontextualize their cause through weaving their interpersonal grievances into a collective narrative, and how regaining power over their story and using the platform to spread their voice empowered a sense of agency to not only imagine a new world but also find creative ways to realize it. Mundane Twitter has allowed Bidoons to create counternarratives, penetrate the public sphere, control the advocacy rhetoric, and regain power over cultural symbols and thus their relationship with their collective memory. Through highlighting how what appears to be inefficient mundane tweets actually intertwine cultural with digital practices and motivate critical dialogue and reflective processes, this research identifies the importance of raising critical consciousness as an affordance of mundane Twitter, and it encourages extending the scoop of what is considered critical action to be inclusive of the accumulative digital efforts of communities suffering from cultural erasure. / Media & Communication
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/9546 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | ALDUAIJANI, Noura Abdullah |
| Contributors | Wenzel, Andrea, 1977-, Shaw, Adrienne, 1983-, Creech, Brian, Hill, Marc Lamont, Boling, Kelli S. |
| Publisher | Temple University. Libraries |
| Source Sets | Temple University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 216 pages |
| Rights | IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/9508, Theses and Dissertations |
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