Mediation and Protest Movements

Description

Over the past year, international and national media have been full of stories about protest movements and tumultuous social upheaval from Tunisia to California. But scholars have not yet fully addressed the connection between these movements and the media and communication channels through which their messages spread. Correcting that imbalance, Mediation and Protest Movements explores the nature of the relationship between protest movements, media representation, and communication strategies and tactics.

In a series of fascinating essays, contributors to this timely volume focus on the processes and practices in which contemporary protesters engage when acting with and through media. Covering both online and offline contexts as well as mainstream and alternative media, they consider media environments around the world in all their complexity. They also provide a broad and comparative perspective on the ways that protest movements at local and transnational levels engage in mediation processes and develop media practices. Bridging the gap between social movement theory and media and communication studies, Mediation and Protest Movements will serve as an important reference for students and scholars of the media and social change.

Introduction 

Chapter 1: Bridging research on democracy, social movements and communication – Donatella della Porta

Chapter 2: Repertoires of communication in social movement processes – Alice Mattoni

Chapter 3: Mediation, practice and lay theories of news media – Patrick McCurdy

Chapter 4: Internet cultures and protest movements: the cultural links between strategy, organizing and online communication – Anastasia Kavada

Chapter 5: Transmedia mobilization in the Popular Association of the Oaxacan Peoples, Los Angeles – Sasha Costanza-Chock

Chapter 6: Mediated nonviolence as a global force: an historical perspective 115 Sean Scalmer

Chapter 7: Walk, talk, fax or tweet: reconstructing media-movement interactions through group history telling – Charlotte Ryan, Karen Jeff reys, Taylor Ellowitz and Jim Ryczek

Chapter 8: Calling for confrontational action in online social media: video activism as auto-communication – Julie Uldam and Tina Askanius

Chapter 9: Activists’ communication in a post-disaster zone: cross-media strategies for protest mobilization in L’Aquila, Italy – Cinzia Padovani

Chapter 10: Imagining Heiligendamm: visual struggles and the G8 summit 2007 – Simon Teune

Chapter 11: Social movements, contentious politics and media in the Philippines – Lisa Brooten

Chapter 12: Protest movements and their media usages – Dieter Rucht

Sujets

• Energie & environnement
• General
• Engineering
• Media studies
• Technology
• General officer
• Advocacy group
• Sciences et techniques
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Public Policy
• Power Resources

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 19 mars 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783200665
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2013 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2013 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production manager: Tim Mitchell
Typesetting: Planman Technologies
ISBN 978-1-84150-643-2
eISBN 978-1-78320-066-5
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: Bridging research on democracy, social movements and communication
Donatella della Porta
Chapter 2: Repertoires of communication in social movement processes
Alice Mattoni
Chapter 3: Mediation, practice and lay theories of news media
Patrick McCurdy
Chapter 4: Internet cultures and protest movements: the cultural links between strategy, organizing and online communication
Anastasia Kavada
Chapter 5: Transmedia mobilization in the Popular Association of the Oaxacan Peoples, Los Angeles
Sasha Costanza-Chock
Chapter 6: Mediated nonviolence as a global force: an historical perspective
Sean Scalmer
Chapter 7: Walk, talk, fax or tweet: reconstructing media-movement interactions through group history telling
Charlotte Ryan, Karen Jeffreys, Taylor Ellowitz and Jim Ryczek
Chapter 8: Calling for confrontational action in online social media: video activism as auto-communication
Julie Uldam and Tina Askanius
Chapter 9: Activists’ communication in a post-disaster zone: cross-media strategies for protest mobilization in L’Aquila, Italy
Cinzia Padovani
Chapter 10: Imagining Heiligendamm: visual struggles and the G8 summit
Simon Teune
Chapter 11: Social movements, contentious politics and media in the Philippines
Lisa Brooten
Chapter 12: Protest movements and their media usages
Dieter Rucht
Notes on Contributors
Foreword
Historically, protest movements of various kinds have played a central role in most of democracy’s major gains around the world, even if liberal political theory and mainstream political science tend not to emphasize this fact. Today in the older, established democracies, as well as in the newer ones, and not least in authoritarian states where democracy yet remains a future goal, protest movements continue to function as a significant force in political life. While some contemporary movements manifest extreme right-wing and even anti-democratic views, political protest movements generally remain a vital force in the struggles to deepen and broaden democracy.
That current protest movements make use of interactive digital media has become generally understood at the popular level, affirmed by journalistic accounts. However, analytically establishing with sharper precision the specifics of how these media are put to use in protest movements becomes a challenge. We could early on, a decade ago, readily dismiss the extreme positions – on the one hand, that these media basically are not of importance, on the other that they are absolutely essential for any kind of political efficacy. Even if our gut reactions may tilt more towards the latter end of the scale, this still leaves a wide range of empirical and conceptual work to be done. The variations and details are many; we need to be able to see both overarching patterns as well as the relevant variations in media affordances, the practices in using them, and their consequences. There has evolved over the past decade or so a small but growing literature exploring the connections between on the one side protest movements and alternative politics more generally, and on the other, the use of new digital media. The contours of the emerging perspective suggest that while these media certainly have a central position in such political activity, we must keep in sight the nuances to avoid oversimplification.
To this complex horizon, we must also add the relentlessness of history: whatever knowledge we may have attained about society, politics, protest, and the media becomes dated to some extent as circumstances evolve. Political situations, issues and opportunities change, sometimes gradually, other times dramatically. Who could have predicted the uprisings against the repressive regimes in the Arab world in the spring of 2011? Democracy itself – as a concept, as a system, as a political philosophy, as a vision of a better world – is no static phenomenon. Neither is it unified: it is contingent and contested, refracted in different ways in different contexts. It will mean something different – and will by necessity have to be adapted in a different manner – if it is to be developed in a society that has been characterized by clan or tribal structures, in a post-authoritarian setting, or in a country with already developed democratic structures. An important factor is the degree to which there are taken-for-granted cultures of democracy among various groups of the population, with established values and practices; the presence of what we might call ‘democratic reflexes’ can have significant impact. So too does a wide array of other aspects, such as literacy levels or engrained corruption among power elites.
Thus, to be strategic, protest movements must gauge the circumstances in which they are operating, not least the character of the democratic horizons that define their respective political milieu. It is one thing to organize and mobilize outside the political mainstream if one finds oneself in, for example, London or Sidney, and quite another thing if one is in Teheran or Beijing. The degrees of liberty, trust and tolerance, as well as structural power relations and overall political climates are some of key attributes of any political context, and they will impact on how a movement defines its goals, its adversaries and its allies, as well as how it strives to gain popular support. In approaching such topics, it would seem – from the vantage point of media studies, at least – quite logical to elucidate a movement’s various strategies and practices of communication. This would be all the more compelling the closer the object of study is to the historical present, given the kinds of media now available. As has been noted over the years, however, there has been rather little work done that bridges social movement analysis and media studies, with the few notable exceptions indirectly accentuating the trend.
History is fully operative within the media as well. We are very aware of how the media and their affordance – as well the creative practices that emerge in tandem with them – are in constant transformation. Facebook, Twitter and other social media have profoundly altered the landscape – and who would have thought from the beginning that they would become important public spheres? Or that alter globalization groups would be using YouTube? The concept of Web 2.0 that seemed like such a clear and convenient marker of a technological transition a few years ago today seems like an overburdened signifier that we continually load with new implications; it will probably soon need a replacement. The relationship between the traditional mass media and the new interactive media is an attribute of strategic importance to protest movements, even while that relationship continues to evolve. Indeed, through convergence, the distinction between the two media domains becomes increasingly difficult to define.
If our knowledge is always vulnerable to the march of time, the conclusion to be drawn is of course not that our endeavours to enhance it are futile; on the contrary, we must struggle to renew and update our knowledge about the world (as well as about ourselves and our ways of knowing). This brings me to the present volume, which is a most welcome contribution; it is not just an enhancement of our knowledge, but a significant stride forward in our efforts to probe deeper into the connection between protest movements and media. The editors have brought together an impressive array of high-quality chapters that provide, in the first part, theoretical, conceptual and historical horizons, and in the second, a series of detailed case studies. Together with their Introduction, which situates and surveys this cross-border field of protest movements and the media, the chapters of this collection constitute a landmark book on protest movements and the media.
And, in a few years’ time, when some of the empirical material and analyses in this book begin to feel a bit dated, I am sure we will not discard the volume, but rather see it as an indispensable resource, a valuable stepping stone that offers many analytic trajectories and much inspiration for further pursuing our knowledge about this important area specifically, and about vicissitudes of democracy more generally.
Peter Dahlgren
Lund University
Introduction: Mediation and protest movements
Bart Cammaerts, Alice Mattoni and Patrick McCurdy
If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.
Katharine Hepburn
Introduction
In the vast literature on protest, resistance, social movements and processes of social change, there is a very small presence of media and communication (practices). The fields of political science and political sociology often have been blind to what media and communication studies have to offer and, vice versa, many media and communication scholars are so media-centric that they have failed to extend their thinking to political and social movement theory. As Downing (2008: 41) points out ‘the typical divorce persists unabated between media studies research and theory and research by sociologists, political scientists, and historians’. Along si