Can the subaltern speak through WhatsApp?: Unearthing the labour/knowledge of digital methodologies

Journal article

Prompted by the challenges that Syrian refugees posed to a qualitative WhatsApp survey, this article dissects what researchers and research participants actually do when they ‘produce’ knowledge through digital methods like WhatsApp. While many refugee participants saw the survey as an opportunity to express their views on social tensions in Lebanon, others launched more fundamental challenges to the abstractions of digital knowledge production. Drawing on Marxist-feminist standpoint theory, I propose ‘knowledge/life-making’ as a more embodied, relational understanding of knowledge production in the context of the digital and the decolonial turn in socio-legal research. Viewing knowledge as intimately connected to the everyday, reproductive work of ‘border crossers’ could help create more affective knowledge at a time when even qualitative researchers increasingly use digital methods and Artificial Intelligence. Such a reproductive perspective also highlights the potential of ‘border crossing’ as a resistive strategy of knowledge production from below.

Authors: Ullrich, L

• Publication status: Accepted
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Journal of Law and Society
• Acceptance date: 2026-03-27
• EISSN: 1467-6478
• ISSN: 0263-323X
• Language: English