At the roots of media cultures. Social movements producing knowledge about media as discriminatory workspaces

ABSTRACT

In this article we aim to contribute to the study of social movement media cultures by paying specific attention to the practices through which collective actors build specific knowledge about media as workspaces. More precisely, we analyze how knowledge about media and tech companies as discriminatory workspaces is produced starting from the very lived experiences and situated understandings of women and LGBT workers. We investigate this set of media knowledge practices by exploring the case of Unicorns In Tech (UiT), a network of queer and straight people working in the media and technology sector, through the lens of ‘movement knowledge repertoires’, which has been recently pushed forward within social movement studies to illuminate the knowledge work pursued by collective actors. Our analysis of the UiT case sheds light on how women and LGBT workers experience media and tech companies as a vast space that is characterized by gender imbalances. In turn, this situated understanding of media as discriminatory workspaces grounds UiT endeavor to achieve more diverse and inclusive spaces, where dissonant subjectivities can be made visible together with technical expertise, and where synergies with media and tech companies can be created to produce welcoming cultures in and beyond the workspace.

KEYWORDS:

• Social movements
• knowledge repertoires
• LGBT
• media as workspaces
• gender and media

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Elena Pavan is Senior Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Italy. Her current research interests focus on the nexus between digital media and social movements particularly in the field of gender-related mobilizations.

Arianna Mainardi is Postdoctoral Researcher Fellow at the Department of Sociology and Social Research of the University of Milano Bicocca, Italy. In her research she investigates political activism and gender issues, girls’ digital culture, youth and digital media consumption.

Notes

1 https://www.unicornsintech.com/about

2 Thanks to the collaboration of the festival organizers, the online form reached 49 people, and we received 11 answers. While these answers are not representative of the wide range of experiences and perspectives brought by speakers, they provide useful indications to understand the background of the speakers, their interests and motivations.