Technologies of solidarity: Digitally mediated Covid-19 mutual aid across Italy, the UK and the US
My project investigates the experiences of grassroots solidarity activism that emerged in the Covid-19 pandemic to help communities access food and medicine. These grassroots efforts chose to call themselves mutual aid, using a label which has a long history for social movements, and which describes a form of activism that creates political solidarity while offering material support to prople. Drawing on interviews with activists and digital data, my research examines 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. In doing so, I hope to contribute to ongoing debates about the politics of digital technologies and their role in contemporary activism. During the fellowship I aim to write a proposal for an academic monograph about this research and work on drafting two journal articles.
Research Results
During my stay at CAIS, I advanced my research on digitally mediated mutual aid activism by comparing how mutual aid groups across the United States, Italy and the United Kingdom utilized digital technologies. First, I found that Covid-19 mutual aid was simultaneously online and offline – digital, material, and embodied. These facets cannot be separated: there would be no mutual aid activism to speak of without its material component, and yet its materiality was made possible through digital technologies. Second, while mutual aid groups all relied on digital technologies in their organizing, this varied significantly: some groups adopted highly complex and sophisticated technological systems, based on interconnected and customized apps, as in the case of many US-based mutual aid groups, while others adopted more “low tech” approaches, which they thought were more friendly for the people they hoped to reach. My work will continue to build on these insights.
Conference Presentations
- Ferrari, E. (2024). The offline strikes back: complicating the role of digital technologies in Covid-19 mutual aid activism. Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Annual Conference. Sheffield (UK). October 30-November 2.
- Ferrari, E. (2024). Digital technologies and Covid-19 mutual aid activism: complicating the online/offline divide. American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting. CITAMS Roundtables. Montréal (Canada). August 9-13.
- Ferrari, E. (2024). “‘Oh God, next time we have to take pictures’: Mutual aid activism on Instagram”. Everyday Forms of Digital Activism and Resistance: An International Symposium. University of Pennsylvania (United States). April 18-19.
Guest Lecture
- Ferrari, E. (2023). (Post)pandemic mutual aid: Solidarity activism & digital technologies. Guest lecture for the undergraduate course “Communication, Activism & Social Change, University of Pennsylvania (United States). 16 November.
Successful funding applications
- AIAS-AUFF Fellowship, Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies (AIAS), Aarhus University, Denmark. 2024-2026. Title of the research project: “Don’t abandon each other: mutual aid activism in the (post)pandemic”.
Main Research Topics
- activism
- social justice
- digital technologies
- qualitative and creative methods
Publications and Lectures
- Ferrari, E. (2022). Latency and Crisis: Mutual Aid Activism in the Covid-19 Pandemic. Qualitative Sociology, 45(3), 413–431. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-022-09513-7