Each year a small portion of AoIR conference fees go toward several travel scholarships for junior scholars to attend the conference. We want to recognize our scholarship recipients and share with you a little bit about them and their research interests.
Who are you?
Hi! I am Sabina Civila from a very small (but paradisiac) city of Spain (Cádiz). Iam passionate about social media and communication and thrive on challenges and questioning. I am active on Instagram and Twitter (more on IG, although). If you want to follow me
IG: https://www.instagram.com/lamediaticadigital/?hl=es
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SCivila
What is your background??
Degree in Advertising and Public Relations and master’s in strategic Direction and Innovation. Currently, Phd candidate in the University of Huelva (Spain), leading a project on identifying interest, use and motivation of different groups on social media. I started my career in advertising agencies linked to customer relations, social media and communication strategies. In recent years, I am working on a research and development project, planning, and developing qualitative and quantitative studies from a participatory approach, data analysis, interpretation, reporting and presentation of results.
What is your current area of study?
Media literacy and Internet studies
Describe the research you will present at #AoIR2022.
“Moroccan-Spanish couples’ decolonial responses on TikTok”
Sabina Civila, Daniela Jaramillo-Dent
In this research we study which must face the cultural stereotype derived from the geographical, historical, and colonial confluences between these two nations (Fernández-Parrilla & Cañete, 2018). During colonialism, mixed couples between Spanish women and Moroccan men were considered a threat to colonial policies and the relationship between colonizer and colonized. These couples were completely prohibited for being a danger to the Spanish domination in Morocco (Zbida-Pol, 2020). Therefore, these couple have had to face discrimination and unfair treatment due to their characteristic. This study is focus on identifying the discursive strategies use by this group to face discrimination and spread a decolonized self-representation. So, we will answer the question how are the decolonized narratives on TikTok to face discrimination? As a result, we identify that they have to challenge attacks from both societies (Spanish and Moroccan). This occurs because in the case of the couples analyzed, the female partner is Spanish and Muslim (a minority within the Spanish culture) and at the same time a minority or “other” within the Moroccan culture, as a convert. On the other hand, the man is a foreigner and Muslim (within Spain) and for the members of his culture it can be seen as that he prefers the Spanish culture and does not follow their cultural or religious convictions. We observed that they use the function answer-comment to dismantle these ideas and at the same time build their own identity. They develop their own language within TikTok, giving an informative and explanatory value to the comments they receive. The main functions of “answer comment” are respond to stereotypes, inform about Islam and explain personal decisions. This research contributes to the understanding of how their answer contribute to decolonized Internet and give visibility to this identity.
Have you presented at AoIR in the past? If yes, what has been your experience? If #AoIR2022 Dublin is your first AoIR conference, what made you choose this conference? What do you expect from it?
No, I didn’t. This is my first time presenting at AoIR and I am very excited. We chose to
present our paper to AoIR because is one of the top conferences in the area. So, we
can connect with peers, get to know other research, and share our result with other
academics.
Looking forward to seeing you all in Dublin.
