Tāme Iti and Twitter: a voice from prison

Abstract

This is the first known study concerning the use of social media by an imprisoned campaigner of Indigenous rights. We used grounded theory to analyse Twitter messages of imprisoned Māori rights campaigner, Tāme Iti, who was arrested during the 2007 Terror Raids in Rūātoki, New Zealand. The approach undertaken is grounded in kaupapa Māori, a critical, anti-oppressive, emancipatory and decolonising Indigenous research methodology. Our grounded theory analysis categorised three themes within the data: (1) Māramatanga: Insights from Prison, (2) Māoritanga: Living Māori Culture and (3) Tōrangapū: Thoughts on the Outside. We show that social media can be used to dismantle the communication barriers of spatial confinement and as a tool to counter dominant narratives.