From ciberactivist mobilization to a biopolitic in digital networks

Abstract

This article proposes the subsumption of the concept of ‘cyberactivism’ —which is reduced to the strategic use of digital technologies for political mobilizations— in that of ‘digital biopolitics’ understood as incessant production of the common, in and through networks. In order to operate this conceptual displacement, the main concepts of cyberactivism are discussed and it is argued that, although these visions help to understand how the networks facilitated the emergence of a general culture of mobilization, they do not problematize the possibilities of catching the mobilizations own network, nor the existence of a digital activism of a reproductive/conservative nature. Thus, this paper presents the idea of a digital biopolitics to think of manifestations —provoked by events— as possibilities that emerge from an immanent process of production of the common in the networks. To support this idea, the strategies of two Brazilian social movements are analyzed.