Dr Elisabetta Ferrari

  • Affiliate Researcher (School of Social & Political Sciences)

Biography

I am a Lecturer in Sociology (Digital Media). I teach in and convene the Digital Society MSc.

In 2023/2024 I was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum, Germany. 

My research addresses the social and political implications of digital technologies, with an emphasis on activism, social movements, and social justice. In general, my work explores how the ways in which people use and think about digital technologies play a role in their struggles for social justice.

I am currently working on a project on mutual aid activism, which is funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grant. I am investigating the experiences of grassroots solidarity activism that emerged in (and after) the Covid-19 pandemic to help communities access food and medicine. Drawing on interviews with activists and digital data, my research examines (post)pandemic mutual aid projects in the United Kingdom, Italy, and the United States, focusing in particular on how activists navigated the potentialities and limitations of digital technologies to organize for solidarity. You can read more about the project on my website.  

My first book (to be published in November 2024 by the University of California Press) examines how contemporary leftist activist groups in Italy, Hungary and the United States constructed their own technological imaginaries to appropriate, negotiate or challenge Silicon Valley’s dominant techno-optimist ideas; my book highlights the political and contested nature of the ideas we hold about technology, and their connection to social change. My PhD thesis, on which the book is based, won the 2020 Dissertation Award from the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). 

I have also developed a drawing-based research method, the visual focus group, through which I seek to facilitate conversations about the politics of technology and encourage civil society actors to imagine better digital technologies. My research been published in peer-reviewed journals, presented at major conferences, and has received awards and competitive funding.

I serve as Secretary of the Activism, Communication and Social Justice (ACSJ) Interest Group of the International Communication  Association (ICA).

Before joining the University of Glasgow, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Digital Studies Institute, University of Michigan (2020/2021) and at the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania (2019/2020), where I remain a Research Affiliate. I gained my PhD in Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in 2019. I also hold a B.A. in International Studies from the University of Bologna (Italy) and an M.A. in Political Science, with a specialization in Political Communication, from Central European University (Budapest, Hungary).

For more information about my current and past work: https://elisabettaferrariphd.com 

Research interests

My research addresses the social and political implications of digital technologies, with an emphasis on activism, social movements, and social justice.

 

  • social justice activism (contemporary and historical cases)
  • digital activism
  • social justice and digital technology
  • technological imaginaries
  • politics of digital technology
  • history of technology & politics

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2022 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016
Number of items: 9.

2022

Ferrari, E. (2022) Visual focus groups: stimulating reflexive conversations with collective drawing. New Media and Society, (doi: 10.1177/14614448221136082) (Early Online Publication)

Ferrari, E. (2022) Sincerely fake: exploring user-generated political fakes and networked publics. Social Media and Society, 6(4), (doi: 10.1177/2056305120963824)

Ferrari, E. (2022) Latency and crisis: mutual aid activism in the Covid-19 pandemic. Qualitative Sociology, 45(3), pp. 413-431. (doi: 10.1007/s11133-022-09513-7) (PMID:35966137) (PMCID:PMC9362100)

2020

Ferrari, E. (2020) Bodies that matter, bodies that don’t: selective disembodiment in the early Wired magazine (1993–1997). Internet Histories, 4(3), pp. 333-348. (doi: 10.1080/24701475.2020.1769891)

Ferrari, E. (2020) Technocracy meets populism: the dominant technological imaginary of Silicon Valley. Communication, Culture and Critique, 13(1), pp. 121-124. (doi: 10.1093/ccc/tcz051)

2019

Ferrari, E. (2019) ‘Free country, free internet’: the symbolic power of technology in the Hungarian internet tax protests. Media Culture and Society, 41(1), pp. 70-85. (doi: 10.1177/0163443718799394)

2018

Ferrari, E. (2018) Fake accounts, real activism: political faking and user-generated satire as activist intervention. New Media and Society, 20(6), pp. 2208-2223. (doi: 10.1177/1461444817731918)

2017

Clark, R., Erdener, J., Ferrari, E. and Yang, G. (2017) Activist media. In: Moy, P. (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Communication. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199756841 (doi: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0182)

2016

Ferrari, E. (2016) Social media for the 99%? Rethinking social movements’ identity and strategy in the corporate web 2.0. Communication and the Public, 1(2), pp. 143-158. (doi: 10.1177/2057047316642608)

This list was generated on Sun Dec 22 00:51:36 2024 GMT.
Jump to: Articles | Book Sections
Number of items: 9.

Articles

Ferrari, E. (2022) Visual focus groups: stimulating reflexive conversations with collective drawing. New Media and Society, (doi: 10.1177/14614448221136082) (Early Online Publication)

Ferrari, E. (2022) Sincerely fake: exploring user-generated political fakes and networked publics. Social Media and Society, 6(4), (doi: 10.1177/2056305120963824)

Ferrari, E. (2022) Latency and crisis: mutual aid activism in the Covid-19 pandemic. Qualitative Sociology, 45(3), pp. 413-431. (doi: 10.1007/s11133-022-09513-7) (PMID:35966137) (PMCID:PMC9362100)

Ferrari, E. (2020) Bodies that matter, bodies that don’t: selective disembodiment in the early Wired magazine (1993–1997). Internet Histories, 4(3), pp. 333-348. (doi: 10.1080/24701475.2020.1769891)

Ferrari, E. (2020) Technocracy meets populism: the dominant technological imaginary of Silicon Valley. Communication, Culture and Critique, 13(1), pp. 121-124. (doi: 10.1093/ccc/tcz051)

Ferrari, E. (2019) ‘Free country, free internet’: the symbolic power of technology in the Hungarian internet tax protests. Media Culture and Society, 41(1), pp. 70-85. (doi: 10.1177/0163443718799394)

Ferrari, E. (2018) Fake accounts, real activism: political faking and user-generated satire as activist intervention. New Media and Society, 20(6), pp. 2208-2223. (doi: 10.1177/1461444817731918)

Ferrari, E. (2016) Social media for the 99%? Rethinking social movements’ identity and strategy in the corporate web 2.0. Communication and the Public, 1(2), pp. 143-158. (doi: 10.1177/2057047316642608)

Book Sections

Clark, R., Erdener, J., Ferrari, E. and Yang, G. (2017) Activist media. In: Moy, P. (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Communication. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199756841 (doi: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0182)

This list was generated on Sun Dec 22 00:51:36 2024 GMT.

Grants

2022-2024 British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant. Project: "Digital Mutual Aid: A comparative analysis of activism in the Covid-19 Pandemic in the United Kingdom, Italy and the United States"

Supervision

I am interested in supervising projects in any of the following areas:

 

  • activism and social movements
  • digital activism
  • activist media / media activism
  • politics of digital technologies
  • critical approaches to digital culture

Teaching

2022/2023

Course Convenor: Digital Society Theory & Substantive Issues (PGT)

Lecturer: Digital Society: Digital Technology, Inequality and Culture (Hons)

2021/2022

Lecturer for MSc Digital Society: Digital Society Theory & Substantive Issues; Living Lab

Additional information

For up to date information, please have a look at my website: https://elisabettaferrariphd.com