Between Empathy and Solidarity. How Civic Activism Inhabits the Boundaries of Europe and Citizenship on Social Media Platforms

This study explores the potential of digital civic activism, considering the existing contributions of migration, political, social movements, and media studies on solidarity towards contemporary migration flows in Europe. The study investigates how the unbalanced techno-symbolic assemblage of power exercised on European borders can be challenged through spontaneous acts of online solidarity. It looks at bottom-up solidarity on social media platforms, holding together two dimensions: the communicative practices of specific singular makers of solidarity, seen as potential activation elements; the response of the users reached and involved by their content. To this end, two activists located on the real borders of the Balkan route and on the digital borders of the social media platform Facebook have been studied, namely Nawal Soufi and Lorena Fornasir. A quali-quantitative analysis was carried out on posts and related comments published in the last two years on the Facebook pages of the two activists. We argue that in today's fragmented digital public sphere, their communicative practices are acts of citizenship insofar as they represent a form of resistance to the European fortress system and re-appropriation of the use of social media. Indeed, they can empathically - emotionally and cognitively - connect networked citizens to the reality of migration flows, conveying awareness and soliciting the participation of a possible mediapolis that casts on/offline acts.

本研究探讨数字公民行动主义的潜力，同时参考移民研究、政治研究、社会运动研究及媒体研究领域中，关于欧洲当代移民潮相关团结议题的现有成果。研究旨在探究，如何通过自发的线上团结行动，挑战欧洲边境地区被施加的、失衡的技术-符号权力组合体。研究聚焦社交媒体平台上的自下而上式团结，涵盖两个维度：其一为特定个体团结行动发起者的传播实践（被视为潜在激活要素）；其二为其内容所触达及参与的用户反馈。为此，研究选取了两位行动者进行分析：一位身处巴尔干路线的实体边境，另一位位于社交媒体平台Facebook的数字边境，即Nawal Soufi与Lorena Fornasir。研究对两位行动者Facebook主页过去两年发布的帖子及相关评论展开了质化-量化分析。研究认为，在当今碎片化的数字公共领域中，这些行动者的传播实践可被视为公民行动——因其既代表对欧洲“堡垒体系”的抵抗，也体现对社交媒体使用价值的重新占有。事实上，这些实践能够通过共情（情感与认知层面）将网络公民与移民潮现实相连，既传递认知，也呼吁构建一个融合线上/线下行动的“中介城市”（mediapolis）并推动其参与。