Beyond the Protest Square: Augmented Dissent in Ukraine's Euromaidan

Tetyana Lokot, Associate Professor in Digital Media & Society, School of Communications, Dublin City University
Moderated by Emily Channell-Justice, Director, Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program

Register for the Zoom Webinar or watch live on YouTube

Abstract

Beyond the Protest Square: Digital Media and Augmented Dissent examines how citizens use digital social media to engage in public discontent and offers a critical examination of the hybrid reality of protest where bodies, spaces and technologies resonate. The book argues that the augmented reality of protest goes beyond the bodies, the tents, and the cobblestones in the protest square, incorporating live streams, different time zones, encrypted conversations, and simultaneous translation of protest updates into different languages. 

The findings presented stem from more than 60 interviews with Euromaidan protest participants in Ukraine and abroad, including Ukrainian diaspora members, and ethnographic analysis of online content. In this talk, Lokot provides an in-depth look at how Euromaidan participants perceived the opportunities for protest offered by digital media and how these perceptions shaped protest repertoires, meaning-making, emotional connections and protest memories. 

The book provides a nuanced contribution to debates about the role of digital media in contentious politics and protest events in Ukraine, Eastern Europe and beyond.

About the Speaker

Tetyana (Tanya) Lokot is Associate Professor in Digital Media and Society at the School of Communications, Dublin City University. She researches protest and digital media in Ukraine and Russia, as well as internet freedom, censorship and internet governance in Eastern Europe. She is the author of Beyond the Protest Square: Digital Media and Augmented Dissent (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021). Her research has been published in Information, Communication & Society; Social Media + Society; Digital Journalism; Surveillance & Society; Misinformation Review; and Irish Studies in International Affairs. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The Moscow Times, among others. Lokot holds a PhD from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Previously, she was Assistant Professor and Head of New Media Sequence at Mohyla School of Journalism, National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy,” Ukraine. 

Moderator: Emily Channell-Justice, Director, Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University

Watch on YouTube

───◊───

Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access, please contact Megan Duncan Smith, HURI Programs Coordinator, at duncansmith@fas.harvard.edu in advance of the session (at least two weeks prior, if possible).

Watch videos of past HURI events on our YouTube Channel and subscribe to our email list to receive announcements about events and other activities.