“Leave the body at home.”

Digital ethnography of an anti-repression protest in times of COVID-19

Abstract

This article aims to describe the incidence of the social isolation health measure derived from the COVID-19 pandemic in a mobilization against the public security policies of the Government of the Province of Cordoba (Argentina). This mobilization has been carried out through the streets of the city of the same name for more than a decade. The methodological strategy consisted of a digital ethnography based on three observation scenarios (virtual assembly, social networks and live broadcast on YouTube) and three interviews with activists, using technological media. In the universe of meaning of these activists, the excluding space of struggle is the street, thus protest on public roads is a defining characteristic of collective action. The virtual modality is defined as “necessary” for adherents affected by the health crisis, but it does not replace collective action in the street and is far from being considered a cyberactivist strategy. Ethnographic tools allowed me reconstruct the experience lived by the researcher in the live broadcast of the protest action, identifying a complex of sensations linked to the absence of physical co-presence that the technologically mediated communication cannot overcome: disconnection between the virtual world and the real, passivity, alienation and loneliness.