Activist capitals in network societies: Towards a typology for studying networking power within contemporary activist demands

Network societies are characterized by social media, media that are supposed to level out power hierarchies, making political participation more inclusive and equal. By developing a typology for studying networking power within activist demands in network societies, such technooptimistic/deterministic assumptions are questioned. This typology is based on Bourdieu’s conceptual framework of social fields, habitus and capitals and revolves around participating, mobilising, connecting, and engaging capital and how these intersects, overlaps and are used for negotiating recognition which I argue is of pivotal importance in for upholding core positions and thus in todays activist demands. Such core positions are related to networking power, i.e. knowing how and being in a position to network in order to decide about courses of events in the organisation of the demand/ social field and its actions. This largely theoretical account is exemplified from a (n)ethnographic study of a middle-class activist setting in southern Stockholm using online communication platforms in tandem with more traditional offline activist participation to organise and mobilise participation.