Tame iti and twitter: A voice from prison

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 Maori rights campaigner, Tame Iti, who was arrested during the 2007 Terror Raids in Ruatoki, New Zealand. The approach undertaken is grounded in kaupapa Maori, a critical, anti-oppressive, emancipatory and decolonising Indigenous research methodology. Our grounded theory analysis categorised three themes within the data: (1) Maramatanga: Insights from Prison, (2) Maoritanga: Living Maori Culture and (3) Torangapu: 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.