Cobertura colaborativa como tecnologia que nos UNE: imaginários, tecnicidades e resistências estudantis na disputa por territórios algorítmicos

Abstract

This study analyzes the practices of resistance and collaboration among Brazilian students based on the social uses of technologies, communication, and social media platforms, with an emphasis on Instagram. The overall objective of this research is to investigate how students participating in the collaborative coverage of the National Union of Students (UNE) imagine and tactically appropriate digital technologies and platforms to construct narratives and resistance. Furthermore, we seek to clarify the motivations that lead them to participate in collaborative communication practices, as well as how they evaluate the processes of mobilization and activist action mediated by platforms, data, and algorithms, and imagine the potential and limitations of digital platforms for social movements. We use the Map of Algorithmic Mediations (Winques, 2024) as a theoretical-reflective guide to help us consider the temporalities, citizenships, institutionalities, socialities, flows, imaginaries, technologies, and narratives of collaborative communication practices in social movements, specifically in the Brazilian university student movement. The methodological approach is based on an ethnographic approach with a combination of methods involving field notes, participant observation, questionnaire application, and in-depth interviews. The observation process, combined with data collected from listening and dialogue with eight student collaborators from different regions of Brazil, allows us to perceive nuances about the social use of communication and technology as a tactic organized by the UNE and appropriated by the students. In the current context, in which subjects are increasingly involved in algorithmic mediations, collaborative coverage emerges as a popular technology in the struggle for algorithmic visibility, belonging, citizenship, and political participation. In this sense, despite the perception of power asymmetries between the agency of subjects and the agency of platforms (Bonini and Treré, 2024), digital platforms are imagined by subjects as a contested territory.