Socialist Counterpublics and Their Conflicted Engagement with Digital Technologies

The first speaker in the post-lunch session at AANZCA 2024 conference is Ian Anderson, who is interested in the emergence of socialist counterpublics in the present context. Such counterpublics are in a conflicted space: they are fundamentally sceptical about social media (and especially Twitter, even pre-Musk) but also acknowledge social media’s importance for message amplification and community connection; for this reason they combine social media work with more conventional activist practices, such as doorknocking.

Social media thus serve as a kind of unavoidable frame for politics, whether they are fetishised as a utopian communicative space or not. The Victorian Socialists, for instance, now have similar engagement on Facebook as the Australian Greens, but also continue substantial doorknocking efforts, also supported by tools which they use to track their outreach efforts. The disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic further hastened this trend towards digitisation, of course; the need to modernise communication efforts, and to extend them to non-election periods, was strongly perceived during this time.

Two months into the pandemic, for instance, the Victorian Socialists held their first all-online members’ meeting; this adaptation to changed communicative environments was crucial to the movement’s survival in this time. It also shows the leadership’s response to organisational dynamics, and produced a qualitative shift to how the organisation used digital media. Some members saw this shift as a mere temporary setback, however, and moved to return to more conventional and offline practices for decision-making and campaigning. (The importance of such campaigning was demonstrated by electoral results, too.)

The organisation form was thus challenged but not fundamentally transformed by the pandemic. Distinct practices emerged at least for the time, and some continued; yet the organisation did not transcend its existing form. Its digital campaigning did result in some electoral success at the local government level, but organisation beyond the digital remains essential.