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Drawing on a range of theoretical and empirical perspectives, this volume examines the roles strategic communications play in creating social media messaging campaigns designed to engage in digital activism. As social activism and engagement continue to rise, individuals have an opportunity to use their agency as creators and consumers to explore issues of identity, diversity, justice, and action through digital activism. This edited volume situates activism and social justice historically and draws parallels to the work of activists in today's social movements such as modern-day feminism, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Missing Murdered Indigenous Women, and We Are All Khaled Said. Each chapter adds an additional filter of nuance, building a complete account of mounting issues through social media movements and at the same time scaffolding the complicated nature of digital collective action.The book will be a useful supplement to courses in public relations, journalism, social media, sociology, political science, diversity, digital activism, and mass communication at both the undergraduate and graduate level.

This edited volume offers a state-of-the-art synthesis of the historical role of radical journalism, its present iterations, and plans for the future of a journalism that is committed to liberatory movements and politics.At a time of profound crisis and stagnation for mainstream journalism, radical journalism seems to be riding a wave. New outlets, including those – like Jacobin – with a global reach, have sprung up, presenting a new generation of unapologetically progressive publications with an emancipatory agenda. Understanding the role and place of radical journalism becomes even more urgent given the current political climate in a (post) pandemic world with heightened inequalities and intensified pauperisation.Drawing on contributions from leading academics, this collection considers: • How new outlets fit in the genealogy of (radical) journalism and what their flourishing can tell us about the present and future of emancipatory politics and the role of the radical journalist; • What these new forms and publications mean for mainstream journalism and its persisting problems of financial sustainability and professional journalistic labour; • Important challenges presented by, for example, the resurgence of fascism, authoritarianism and the mainstreaming of the far right; • Essential questions of what radical journalism looks like today, what forms it takes or should take, and what its future might be.Radical Journalism is recommended reading for advanced students and journalists working at the intersection of journalism, politics, and sociology.

'John Feffer is our 21st-century Jack London'- Mike Davis In a post-Trump world, the right is still very much in power. Significantly more than half the world's population currently lives under some form of right-wing populist or authoritarian rule. Today's autocrats are, at first glance, a diverse band of brothers. But religious, economic, social and environmental differences aside, there is one thing that unites them - their hatred of the liberal, globalised world. This unity is their strength, and through control of government, civil society and the digital world they are working together across borders to stamp out the left. In comparison, the liberal left commands only a few disconnected islands - Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain and Uruguay. So far they have been on the defensive, campaigning on local issues in their own countries. This narrow focus underestimates the resilience and global connectivity of the right. In this book, John Feffer speaks to the world's leading activists to show how international leftist campaigns must come together if they are to combat the rising tide of the right. A global Green New Deal, progressive trans-European movements, grassroots campaigning on international issues with new and improved language and storytelling are all needed if we are to pull the planet back from the edge of catastrophe. This book is both a warning and an inspiration to activists terrified by the strengthening wall of far-right power.

Performing Media Activism in the Digital Age breaks new ground by conceptualizing activism as a performance extending beyond public space and the moment of public gatherings to consider the more extended view of social or political movements as mediated social connections. The book utilizes primary data extracted from social media platforms by applying a social network analysis (SNA) approach to the people, organizations, and media that are trying to advance their particular agendas, with an eye toward a better understanding of the ways in which social movements operate in a networked society. The goal of social network analysis is to identify social structures within a movement such as communities or clusters and it seeks to locate influence within those structures.Social network analysis as applied to media activism represents an interdisciplinary field that encompasses social psychology, sociology, as well as graph theory, which should suggest this book will be of interest to scholars and students in these and related fields. In the digital age, social network analysis represents a paradigm shift as analytical and data visualization tools can be applied in an interdisciplinary manner. By combining data science and sociology or cultural anthropology, one has the means to visualize networks of individuals and organizations engaged in a social movement, to see how movements are organized (structured) into communities, clusters, and niches, and to visualize power structures within social movements to see who is influencing a network over extended periods of time.

This is the first authoritative reference work to map the multifaceted and vibrant site of citizen media research and practice, incorporating insights from across a wide range of scholarly areas.Citizen media is a fast-evolving terrain that cuts across a variety of disciplines. It explores the physical artefacts, digital content, performative interventions, practices and discursive expressions of affective sociality that ordinary citizens produce as they participate in public life to effect aesthetic or socio-political change. The seventy-seven entries featured in this pioneering resource provide a rigorous overview of extant scholarship, deliver a robust critique of key research themes and anticipate new directions for research on a variety of topics. Cross-references and recommended reading suggestions are included at the end of each entry to allow scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to identify relevant connections across diverse areas of citizen media scholarship and explore further avenues of research.Featuring contributions by leading scholars and supported by an international panel of consultant editors, the Encyclopedia is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers in media studies, social movement studies, performance studies, political science and a variety of other disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. It will also be of interest to non-academics involved in activist movements and those working to effect change in various areas of social life.

This volume examines the rise of an emerging sport as a grassroots effort (or “new social movement”), arguing that the growth of non-normative sports movements occurs through two social processes: one driven primarily by product development, commercialization, and consumption, and another that relies upon public resources and grassroots efforts. Through the lens of disc golf, informed by the author's experience both playing and researching the sport, Joshua Woods here explores how non-normative sports development depends on the consistency of insider culture and ideology, as well as on how the movement navigates a broad field of market competition, government regulation, community characteristics, public opinion, traditional media, social media and technological change. Throughout, the author probes why some sports grow faster than others, examining cultural tendencies toward sport, individual choices to participate, and the various institutional forces at play.

This anthology examines how activists have used media technology to effect social and political change from the 1940s to today.In the 1940s, it was 16 mm film. In the 1980s, it was handheld video cameras. Today, it is cell phones and social media. Activists have always found ways to use the media du jour for quick and widespread distribution. InsUrgent Media from the Front looks at activist media practices in the twenty-first century and sheds light on what it means to enact change using different media of the past and present.The term “insUrgent media” highlights the ways grassroots media activists challenge hegemonic norms like colonialism, patriarchy, imperialism, classism, and heteronormativity—while also conveying the urgency of this work. With chapters focused on indigenous resistance, community media, and the use of media as activism throughout US history, this anthology emphasizes the wide reach media activism has had over time.

This collected volume is the first to study the interface between contemporary social movements, cultural memory and digital media. Establishing the digital memory work practices of social movements as an important area of research, it reveals how activists use digital media to lay claim to, circulate and curate cultural memories. Interdisciplinary in scope, its contributors address mobilizations of mediated remembrance in the USA, Germany, Sweden, Italy, India, Argentina, the UK and Russia.

Since it first aired in 1966, Star Trek has led American television into a more progressive era by presenting a diverse cast interacting as equals, demonstrating expertise and efficiency as they lead a starship across the galaxy. To this day, the Star Trek franchise strives to inspire viewers to find beauty in diversity and progress. In Social Movements and the Collective Identity of the Star Trek Fandom: Boldly Going Where No Fans Have Gone Before, David G. LoConto explores the development of the Star Trek fandom from its uncertain beginnings in the 1960s, to the popularity explosion in the 1990s and its triumphant return in 2017. LoConto analyzes the cultural phenomena of Star Trek through a social psychological approach, using symbolic interactionist and strategic ritualization theories, as well as ideas from Habermas and Foucault to track the fandom's movements, values, and evolution.

This groundbreaking collection advances understanding of the concept of media practices by critically interrogating its relevance for the study of citizen and activist media.Media as practice has emerged as a powerful approach to understanding the media's significance in contemporary society. Bringing together contributions from leading scholars in sociology, media and communication, social movement and critical data studies, this book stimulates dialogue across previously separate traditions of research on citizen and activist media practices and stakes out future directions for research in this burgeoning interdisciplinary field. Framed by a foreword by Nick Couldry and a substantial introductory chapter by the editors, contributions to the volume trace the roots and appropriations of the concept of media practice in Latin American communication theory; reflect on the relationship between activist agency and technological affordances; explore the relevance of the media practice approach for the study of media activism, including activism that takes media as its central object of struggle; and demonstrate the significance of the media practice approach for understanding processes of mediatization and datafication. Offering both a comprehensive introduction to scholarship on citizen media and practice and a cutting-edge exploration of a novel theoretical framework, the book is ideal for students and experienced scholars alike.

A global exploration of internet memes as agents of pop culture, politics, protest, and propaganda on- and offline, and how they will save or destroy us all.Memes are the street art of the social web. Using social media–driven movements as her guide, technologist and digital media scholar An Xiao Mina unpacks the mechanics of memes and how they operate to reinforce, amplify, and shape today's politics. She finds that the “silly” stuff of meme culture—the photo remixes, the selfies, the YouTube songs, and the pun-tastic hashtags—are fundamentally intertwined with how we find and affirm one another, direct attention to human rights and social justice issues, build narratives, and make culture. Mina finds parallels, for example, between a photo of Black Lives Matter protestors in Ferguson, Missouri, raising their hands in a gesture of resistance and one from eight thousand miles away, in Hong Kong, of Umbrella Movement activists raising yellow umbrellas as they fight for voting rights. She shows how a viral video of then presidential nominee Donald Trump laid the groundwork for pink pussyhats, a meme come to life as the widely recognized symbol for the international Women's March. Crucially, Mina reveals how, in parts of the world where public dissent is downright dangerous, memes can belie contentious political opinions that would incur drastic consequences if expressed outright. Activists in China evade censorship by critiquing their government with grass mud horse pictures online. Meanwhile, governments and hate groups are also beginning to utilize memes to spread propaganda, xenophobia, and misinformation. Botnets and state-sponsored agents spread them to confuse and distract internet communities. On the long, winding road from innocuous cat photos, internet memes have become a central practice for political contention and civic engagement.Memes to Movements unveils the transformative power of memes, for better and for worse. At a time when our movements are growing more complex and open-ended—when governments are learning to wield the internet as effectively as protestors—Mina brings a fresh and sharply innovative take to the media discourse.

In this accessible introduction to communication activism, organizer Karen Jeffreys and sociologist Charlotte Ryan draw on more than two decades of ongoing collaboration, using the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless (RICH) as a case study.The book examines a community with shared values, decision-making, and conflict resolution procedures, tracking its organizing strategy and matched communication plan. The authors first describe a communication campaign during the welfare reform battles (1990–1995) in which they began to practice communication activism. In ongoing work with two organizations over the next two decades, they distil a model of communication activism that draws directly from vibrant traditions of empowerment communication in U.S. social movements and movements from the Global South.Beyond Prime Time Activism provides students and researchers with an invaluable look at contemporary activism practices and with practical tools tried and tested in two decades of social movement engagement. This book is ideal for anyone participating in social change movements or studying how they navigate communication and media inequalities.

Wenn Menschen heute auf der Straße protestieren, sind immer auch digitale Medien im Spiel. Ob zur Mobilisierung oder Koordination, zur Vor- oder Nachbereitung: Proteste sind durch die sprachlichen Interaktionen und medialen Praktiken der Teilnehmenden bestimmt. Mark Dang-Anh widmet sich der situativen Protestkommunikation in digitalen Medien mit einem Fokus auf Interaktionen im Mikrobloggingdienst Twitter. Anhand zweier Falluntersuchungen von Protesten gegen rechte Aufmärsche analysiert er die vielschichtigen Relationen zwischen Sprache, Medien und der sozialen Praxis des Protestierens. Die dem Buch zugrunde liegende Arbeit wurde 2019 mit dem »Preis der Universität Siegen für die Förderung des wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchses, vergeben von der Dirlmeier-Stiftung«, ausgezeichnet.

Peter Ludes entlarvt Brutalisierung und Banalisierung in kollektiven Mythen – für eine Emanzipation der Sinne im Zeitalter ihrer technischen Vereinnahmung. Denn Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien dienen nicht nur der Ausweitung von Kommunikation, sondern auch als Kampfmittel. Insoweit sie aufgrund ihrer leicht zugänglichen, scheinbar kostenlosen Verbreitung als relativ natürliche Weltbedingungen erlebt werden, konstituieren sie neue Mythen der unbegrenzten, freien Kommunikation. Welche Perspektiven und Praktiken werden aber wie vorgegeben und formatiert? Wie wird das komplexe und widersprüchliche Zusammenspiel und Gegeneinander von fiktiven Behauptungen und verdrängten ‚Tat-Sachen‘ zu einem neuen Problem? Es geht zum Schluss um unterschiedlich vernetzte lokale Kontakt- und globale virtuelle Machtzonen, die hier symbolisch aufgehoben werden mit Abrechnungen für die acht reichsten Männer der Erde.Der Autor Dr. Peter Ludes, PhD (USA), habilitierterSoziologe, apl. Professor für Kultur- und Medienwissenschaft in Siegen. Professor für Massenkommunikation an der Jacobs University Bremen 2002-2017, Gastprofessor an der Universität Köln.

Sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), this volume focuses on media and social movements. Contributing authors draw on cases as diverse as the Harry Potter Alliance to youth oriented, non-profit educational organizations, in order to assess systematically how media environments, systems, and usage affect collective action in the 21st century. The volume demonstrates that the study of media and social movements has developed into a vibrant sub-field stretched across Communication Studies, Political Science, and Sociology, and illustrates the need for serious interdisciplinary research. Chapters in the volume reinforce the need to examine many kinds of media (such as fiction) for social movements, particularly in terms of recruitment and framing. They show the critical importance of connecting classic and contemporary social movement research when trying to understand topics such as recruitment, identity, and discourse, even when these are playing out in the digital world. Chapters explore the difficulties that organizations face in organizing whether or not they are primarily offline or online; the ways that digital media usage affects various organizational functions and effectiveness; and the importance of examining the role of youth in social movements across all of these topics.

This book guides the reader through the many complications and contradictions that characterize popular contestation today, focusing on its socio-political, cultural, and aesthetic dimensions. The volume recognizes that the same media and creative strategies can be used to pursue very different causes, as the anti-gay marriage Manif Pour Tous movement in France makes clear. The contributors are scholars from the humanities and social sciences, who analyze protests in particular regions, including Egypt, Iran, Australia, France, Spain, Greece, and Hong Kong, and transnational protests such as the NSA-leaks and the mobilization of migrants and refugees. Not only the specificity of these protest movements is examined, but also their tendency to connect and influence each other, as well as the central, often ambiguous role global digital platforms play in this.

As individuals incorporate new forms of media into their daily routines, these media transform individuals'engagement with networks of heterogeneous actors. Using the concept of media practices, this volume looks at processes of social and political transformation in diverse regions of the world to argue that media change and social change converge on a redefinition of the relations of individuals to larger collective bodies. To this end, contributors examine new collective actors emerging in the public arena through digital media or established actors adjusting to a diversified communication environment. The book offers an important contribution to a vibrant, transdisciplinary, and international field of research emerging at the intersections of communication, performance and social movement studies.

This book explores software's pivotal role as the code that powers computers, mobile devices, the Internet, and social media. Creating conditions for the ongoing development and use of software, including the Internet as a communications infrastructure, is one of the most compelling issues of our time. Free software is based upon open source code, developed in peer communities as well as corporate settings, challenging the dominance of proprietary software firms and promoting the digital commons. Drawing upon key cases and interviews with free software proponents based in Europe, Brazil and the U.S., the book explores pathways toward creating the digital commons and examines contemporary political struggles over free software, privacy and civil liberties on the Internet that are vital for the commons'continued development.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the manifestations and interrelations of collectivity and power on the internet from a sociological point of view. It addresses questions on how different forms of internet-based collectivities (masses, crowds, movements, communities) could be understood and differentiated from one another. It presents analyses on the role technical infrastructures of the web play for their formation, how the mobilization and organization of social movements and social protests has changed through social media, how work and decision-making processes are organized in open source communities and why the essential segments of the commercial internet are today concentrated in the hands of a few corporations who dispose over significant economic, infrastructural and rule-setting power.

Das Buch geht den Fragen nach, wie sich die vielfältigen neuartigen Formen von Kollektivität in der Internetgesellschaft voneinander unterscheiden und typisieren lassen und welche Rolle die technischen Infrastrukturen des Netzes für deren Entstehung bzw. Verstetigung spielen. Es wird diskutiert, auf welche Weise sich die Mobilisierung und Organisierung sozialer Bewegungen durch Social Media verändert, wie Arbeits- und Entscheidungsprozesse in Open-Source-Communities strukturiert sind und über welche ökonomische und regelsetzende Macht die großen Internetkonzerne als wesentliche Gatekeeper und Kuratoren der Kommunikation im Netz heute verfügen.

The intersection of virtual and physical spaces at the heart of contemporary political protests is a pivotal element in new practices of activism. In this new and global ecology of dissent and activism, different forces, stakeholders, and spaces, once defiantly discordant, come together to define the increasingly malleable nature and terms of participatory politics and the performance of democracy. This book explores the emerging sites, aesthetics and politics of contemporary dissent as a critical attempt to foreground their mediation and negotiation in an era of neoliberal globalization. Contemporary forms of media activism occupy deeply ambivalent spaces, which Ardizzoni analyzes using the lens of what she calls'matrix activism.'Rather than confining the analysis to a single platform, a single technology, or a single social actor, matrix activism allows us to explain the hybrid nature of new forms of dissent and resistance, as they are located at the intersection of alternative and mainstream, non-profit and corporate, individual and social, production and consumption, online and offline.

A firsthand account and incisive analysis of modern protest, revealing internet-fueled social movements'greatest strengths and frequent challenges To understand a thwarted Turkish coup, an anti–Wall Street encampment, and a packed Tahrir Square, we must first comprehend the power and the weaknesses of using new technologies to mobilize large numbers of people. An incisive observer, writer, and participant in today's social movements, Zeynep Tufekci explains in this accessible and compelling book the nuanced trajectories of modern protests—how they form, how they operate differently from past protests, and why they have difficulty persisting in their long-term quests for change. Tufekci speaks from direct experience, combining on-the-ground interviews with insightful analysis. She describes how the internet helped the Zapatista uprisings in Mexico, the necessity of remote Twitter users to organize medical supplies during Arab Spring, the refusal to use bullhorns in the Occupy Movement that started in New York, and the empowering effect of tear gas in Istanbul's Gezi Park. These details from life inside social movements complete a moving investigation of authority, technology, and culture—and offer essential insights into the future of governance.

This book examines the increased utilization of social media in daily life and its impact on social movements. The contributors analyze “social media revolutions” such as the Arab Spring, the 15-M movement in Spain, the Occupy Nigeria movement, and the Occupy Gezi movement in Turkey. The contributors to this collection—academics, researchers, and activists—implement diverse methodological approaches, both descriptive and quantitative, to cut across various disciplines, including communication and media studies, cultural studies, politics, sociology, and education.

Sites of Protest examines the global resurgence of protest movements and the ways in which they use public and private space - both physical and ‘immaterial'- to secure attention for a wide variety of causes, cultural events and moral campaigns. The book takes its readers inside the mindset, not only of protestors and activists, but also of the state and corporate authorities that attempt to limit the impact of dissent. It also explains how media outlets frame the wide variety of international events and controversies that make up modern protest movements, and examines the myths that surround activism and the Internet. Has the landscape of dissent changed forever, or does the fact that protestors still rely on the symbolism associated with a particular ‘place', mean that their interventions will remain localised and will fail to create a universal appeal?

Global Injustice Symbols and Social Movements examines our collective moral and political maps, dotted with symbols shaped by political dynamics beyond their local or national origin and offers the first systematic sociological treatment of this important phenomenon.

Welche Rolle spielten die sozialen Medien – insbesondere Facebook und Twitter – bei der transnationalen Empörung nach der Finanzkrise? Das Buch analysiert diese Frage anhand der Proteste in Portugal, Spanien, USA, Großbritannien und Deutschland. Die Ergebnisse bringen Aufschluss, wie transnational die Kommunikation der Protestbewegungen in den Jahren 2011 und 2012 ausgerichtet war. Zudem wird deutlich, wozu die Aktivisten das Netz nutzten: zum inhaltlichen Diskurs, zur Organisation des Protests oder zur Verbreitung von Emotionen. Mit einem Vorwort von Bodo Hombach

One doesn't need to look far to find examples of contemporary locations of cultural opposition. Digital piracy, audio mashups, The Onion and Wikipedia are all examples of transgression in our current mediascape. And as digital age transgression becomes increasingly essential, it also becomes more difficult to define and protect. The contributions in this collection are organized into six sections that address the use of new technologies to alter existing cultural messages, the incorporation of technology and alternative media in transformation of everyday cultural practices and institutions, and the reuse and repurposing of technology to focus active political engagement and innovative social change. Bringing together a variety of scholars and case studies, Transgression 2.0 will be the first key resource for scholars and students interested in digital culture as a transformative intervention in the types, methods and significance of cultural politics.

This volume provides a critical and in-depth investigation of the relationship between alter-globalist thinking and practices and their popular discourses. It examines the ways in which several alter-globalist activist groups (like Indymedia, no-borders campaigns, and forms of climate change activism), as well as left-wing intellectuals and academics (like Michael Hardt, Al Gore, Antonio Negri, Hakim Bey, and Geert Lovink), mobilize problematic discourses, tools, and divisions in an attempt to overcome gendered, raced, and classed oppressions worldwide. The book draws out how these mobilizations and theorizations, despite (or possibly because of) their liberatory claims, are actually implicated in the intensification of global hierarchies by repeatedly invoking narratives of transcendence, connection, progress, and in particular of speed. Hoofd argues that the humanist ideals that underlie all these practices paradoxically trigger increasing disenfranchisements worldwide.

Since industrialization, two major theoretical perspectives have accompanied the vibrant practice of social change. The first, hegemony, emerged as a less deterministic route to revolution from Marxist theory, and forms the common sense of social movement today. Within hegemonic resistance, rhetoric links issues, ideas, and identities to form a recognizable collective agent, whose aim is to transform the status quo into its vision of the world. The second major mode of resistance, transgression, grows from anarchist and autonomous resistance to capitalism. Transgression attempts to free individuals'uniqueness and creative power by deconstructing authority and explicating the body in resistance. Transgression as a Mode of Resistance: Rethinking Social Movement in an Era of Corporate Globalization provides the conceptual mapping for scholars, students, and practitioners to participate in the growing debate between these rich and powerful forces of social change. Through a broad perspective on philosophy and history, Christina R. Foust demonstrates that hegemony and transgression are sometimes conflicting, oftentimes inter-related practices. She responds to critics who believe that without a social change agent, resistance appears baseless and na ve; without a representational economy to cohere and express common interests, social movement is impossible. Through alternative social relationships and political performances, transgressive resistors may reinvent daily life.

In the last few decades the people of the African diaspora have intensified their struggles against racial discrimination and for equality. This account of these social movements include action in Latin America, the Indian Ocean World, Europe, Canada and the United States.