Anger, hope and love: the affective economies of Indigenous social media activism

Social media is now a well-established platform for a range of creative forms of Indigenous activism in Australia. From the expression of diverse Indigenous identities, to the organisation on-the-streets activism, to the production of new forms of anti-colonial solidarity, social media has become an indispensable part of the Indigenous activist’s toolkit. Emotions figure centrally but complexly within Indigenous social media activism. Emotions are often effectively mobilised to galvanise and animate people into progressive action; but they can equally be leveraged against activists, with anger and hatred often being pathologised by reactionary groups.

In this paper, we draw on Sara Ahmed’s notion of ‘affective economies’ to explore the political affordances of emotions in Indigenous activism. For Ahmed, emotions are never private, but are always political—they “work to shape the ‘surfaces’ of individual and collective bodies” (Ahmed 2004, p.10). Building on Ahmed’s conceptual work, we follow three social media-driven cases of Indigenous activism in Australia (#SOSBlakAustralia, #IndigenousDads and #IHMayDay), interrogating what the emotions of anger, hope and joy ‘do’ in agitating for change this analysis, we argue that different emotions have different political affordances for Indigenous activists, and there exists a difficult balance between political expediency and care. While emotions are absolutely central in forging political solidarities and mobilising action, they are also highly volatile and even dangerous things, moving in unexpected ways and often leading to unforeseen and undesirable outcomes.