1,721,081 research outputs found
Patterns of diffusion and the transnational dimension of protest in the movements of the crisis : an introduction
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Beyond Celebration: Toward a More Nuanced Assessment of Facebook’s Role in Occupy Wall Street
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A situated understanding of digital technologies in social movements. Media ecology and media practice approaches
No full textThe article tackles two main aspects related to the interaction between social movements and digital technologies. First, it reflects on the need to include and combine different theoretical approaches in social movement studies so as to construct more meaningful understanding of how social movement actors deals with digital technologies and with what outcomes in societies. In particular, the article argues that media ecology and media practice approaches serve well to reach this objective as: they recognize the complex multi-faceted array of media technologies, professions and contents with which social movement actors interact; they historicize the use of media technologies in social movements; and they highlight the agency of social movement actors in relation to media technologies while avoiding a media-centric approach to the subject matter. Second, this article employs a media practice perspective to explore two interrelated trends in contemporary societies that the articles in this special issue deal with: the personalization and individualization of politics, and the role of the grassroots in political mobilizations
Serpica Naro and the Others. The Media Sociali Experience in Italian Struggles Against Precarity
Full text linkSocial movements are also producers of symbolic resources, since they construct new collective identities and provide alternative system of meanings to societies. This was particularly significant with regard to recent struggles against work insecurity in Italy. There, in a discursive context dominated by the so-called ‘flexibility political mantra’, activists raised their voice in order to identify a novel social problem, precarity, and a novel social subject, precarious workers. The paper starts from these premises in order to investigate the so-called media sociali, a particular kind of media practice that had been developed by Italian activists involved in the long protest campaign against precarity, namely the Euro Mayday Parade (EMP). Probably, the media sociali are the most evident attempt to construct a fresh imagery based on precarious workers living and working conditions and to provide an alternative cultural grammar able to speak about precarity. The paper gives back the most important mechanism on which the media sociali rests through the living voices of activists involved in their elaboration: the mechanism of political socialization and social networking as well as the mechanism of diffusion and mutual recognition. Moreover, the paper proposes further reflections about the way in which those activists involved in the EMP perceived the media sociali. In doing so, the paper presents different ways of interpreting political conflict in contemporary Italian social movements and argues that the media sociali are an interesting attempt to overcome both mainstream and independent media in the construction of precarious workers’ imagery and political socialization. Interviews with activists and social movement generated documents are the main data source, investigated according to a qualitative analysis approach
Patterns of diffusion and the transnational dimension of protest in the movements of the crisis : an introduction
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Media Practices and Protest Politics. How Precarious Workers Mobilise
No full textHow do precarious workers employed in call-centres, universities, the fashion industry and many other labour markets organise, struggle and communicate to become recognised, influential political subjects? "Media Practices and Protest Politics; How Precarious Workers Mobilise" reveals the process by which individuals at the margins of the labour market and excluded from the welfare state communicate and struggle outside the realm of institutional politics to gain recognition in the political sphere. In this important and thought provoking work Alice Mattoni suggests an all-encompassing approach to understanding grassroots political communication in contemporary societies. Using original examples from precarious workers mobilizations in Italy she explores a range of activist media practices and compares different categories of media technologies, organizations and outlets from the printed press to web application and from mainstream to alternative media. Explaining how activists perceive and understand the media environment in which they are embedded the book discusses how they must interact with a diverse range of media professionals and technologies and considers how mainstream, radical left-wing and alternative media represent protests. Media Practices and Protest Politics offers important insights for understanding mechanisms and patterns of visibility in struggles for recognition and redistribution in post-democratic societies and provides a valuable contribution to the field of political communication and social movement studies
Making the Syntagma Square protests visible. Cultures of participation and activists’ communication in Greek anti-austerity protests
Full text linkThis article addresses the following general question: how do movement cultures of participation shape activists’ communication strategies in the construction of visibility for their protests? While other scholars have tackled this issue at the theoretical level, in this article I address this enquiry through a concrete case study – the Greek Indignants (Aγανακτισμένοι) and, more specifically, the occupation of Syntagma square – and employing the lens of culture at the analytical level. Overall, the main theoretical claim behind this article is that we cannot consider movement cultures as a monolithic construct transversally affecting activists’ usages of both digital media and non-digital media. First, there is the need to understand social movements’ cultures as embedded into their broader context. Second, as the empirical analysis shows, movement cultures related to a specific type of practice – i.e. the one of participation – hold more explanatory power when we split them into different subdimensions to then understand how each of them intertwines with a specific aspect of activists’ communication strategies
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