Unveiling the affective digital counterpublic: A rhetorical ecological analysis of the #JusticeForNaqib movement in Pakistan

The paper traces the emergence of the #JusticeForNaqib digital counterpublic that arose in response to the tragic killing of a young man from an ethnically marginalized Pakistani community. Drawing upon a corpus of tweets spanning a year, I elucidate how the stickiness of the hashtag #JusticeForNaqib is shaped by the circulation of diverse emotions, affective encounters with other sticky hashtags, and contact with past histories of oppression and resistance within the Pashtun community. Through a rhetorical analysis of tweets containing the hashtag #JusticeForNaqib, I demonstrate how the affective counterpublic not only provided a collective space for grieving the loss of another young Pashtun man but also enabled activists to challenge prejudicial discourses portraying Pashtuns as terrorists and to mobilize support for offline protests by circulating calls to action and fostering a space to commemorate the social movement's achievements. The study advocates for a deeper understanding of the affective dimensions of the digital counterpublic, particularly in the context of marginalized communities.