Abstract
Digital Ecologies of Hope is a collaboratively produced field guide that documents how people use media to sustain care, resilience, and imagination in the face of technological, political, and social constraints. Drawing inspiration from naturalist field guides and critical fabulation, the project reinterprets everyday practices as “specimens” of digital hope, each annotated with classifications, habitats, conservation statuses, field notes, and illustrations. These specimens span diverse contexts—from Sudanese youth defending theses during civil war to Afro-Brazilian students reclaiming identity in elite institutions, to transgender voice archives on TikTok and youth activist networks resisting surveillance in schools. Rather than reinforcing dominant techno-pessimism, this guide foregrounds how digital practices foster agency and solidarity, often emerging most vividly in conditions of constraint. By offering an accessible, multimodal archive, the project reimagines media research as an act of care, collective meaning-making, and future-oriented scholarship.
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