This thesis examines the field of pro-Palestine digital activism in Germany through qualitative interviews, focusing on the resources that shape its configuration under conditions of repression and the ongoing criminalisation of voices in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The study adopts a resource-based analytical perspective grounded in Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, drawing on the concepts of field, capital, and habitus, while engaging with recent scholarship on the transformation of habitus during movement emergence and the development of digital forms of capital.
Empirically, the analysis is based on nine semi-structured interviews with activists in Germany who use social media as an arena for mobilisation.
The findings are structured around three interrelated clusters of resources: motivational, digital, and network-based. Motivational resources include biographical experiences of political socialisation, migration but also racism and discrimination which function as key drivers for entering and sustaining activism despite heightened risks. Digital resources comprise platform-specific knowledge, content production skills, and strategic awareness of algorithmic governance, enabling activists to balance visibility and vulnerability while navigating censorship and shadow banning, but also offline risks such as job losses. Network-based resources refer to activist group affiliations, informal coalitions, transnational ties, and audience relationships that shape activists´ positioning within the field.
The results show that these resources collectively structure a semi-autonomous digital field of pro-Palestine activism. This field provides a venue for activist, professional, journalistic, affected, and marginalised voices that are largely excluded from mainstream civic and media spaces in Germany. Through digital practices, activists document police violence and state repression, articulate discourses absent from dominant public narratives, and amplify first-hand accounts from Gaza. At the same time, the digital field remains highly vulnerable to distinctive forms of repression, requiring constant defensive strategies and careful calibration of visuals and language. Furthermore, legitimacy and visibility within the digital field are unevenly distributed along lines of race, citizenship, professional security, and privilege, reflecting hierarchies embedded in the broader social field.
Overall, the thesis demonstrates that pro-Palestine digital activism in Germany constitutes a field of contention that exposes the limits of democratic pluralism in the country while highlighting digital spaces as crucial arenas of resistance under contemporary conditions of repression.