At the roots of media cultures. Social movements producing knowledge about media as discriminatory workspaces

In this article we aim to contribute to the study of social movement media cultures by paying specific attention to the practices through which collective actors build specific knowledge about media as workspaces. More precisely, we analyze how knowledge about media and tech companies as discriminatory workspaces is produced starting from the very lived experiences and situated understandings of women and LGBT workers. We investigate this set of media knowledge practices by exploring the case of Unicorns In Tech (UiT), a network of queer and straight people working in the media and technology sector, through the lens of ‘movement knowledge repertoires’, which has been recently pushed forward within social movement studies to illuminate the knowledge work pursued by collective actors. Our analysis of the UiT case sheds light on how women and LGBT workers experience media and tech companies as a vast space that is characterized by gender imbalances. In turn, this situated understanding of media as discriminatory workspaces grounds UiT endeavor to achieve more diverse and inclusive spaces, where dissonant subjectivities can be made visible together with technical expertise, and where synergies with media and tech companies can be created to produce welcoming cultures in and beyond the workspace.