Paper short abstract:

This paper will present three empirical cases from Greece during the pandemic that show how the social media and digital infrastructures act as a "social panopticon", disclosing and disseminating wrongdoings of employers and the state, linking thus society to particular professional groups

Paper long abstract:

Amidst the general numbness of one the hardest covid-related lockdowns globally, Greece during the pandemic has seen some of the most massive and radical trade-union struggles and societal protests in the last decade. From the protests against police brutality to the struggle for labor rights of professional groups such as food platform riders and dockworkers, a steady pattern that link recent uprisings in Greece is the use of digital infrastructures and social media to communicate and disseminate at a break-neck speed wrong-doings on behalf of the state and the employers. The rise of this “social panopticon” as I call the impossibility of containing an illegality or the arbitrary exercise of power from employers in the narrow social space of the immediate affected social groups, invites us to rethink the relations between the social body and trade-unions and the possibility of “transfusing” solidarity and “resistance capital” to widely “invisible” workers and professional categories.