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The future – as a theme, research orientation, and mode of framing societal challenges – is becoming important in the social sciences. Yet the absence of collective action in many such accounts makes clear the potential contribution of social movement studies. In social movement studies, meanwhile, the future has been discussed directly and indirectly. Assumptions about timing, activist orientations towards the future, and causation are embedded in understandings of strategy, agency, mobilisation, tactical choice, consequences, and in concepts of waves, cycles and diffusion. Conceptual developments around temporalities, real utopias and grassroots initiatives, imagination, and prefiguration offer some alternative perspectives and promising new directions. Foregrounding social movement futures also has implications for protesters themselves: ideas and emotions relating to the future are central to activist debates about goals, winning, utopia, hope and burnout. This introduction reviews the societal and academic context for the renewed interest in futures that are relevant for social movement studies, before outlining three major movement areas or debates where futures are implicated, and which need to form part of future research. These areas, and the subdiscipline as a whole, it is argued, may also benefit from a more direct analysis of movement futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with the question of coordinating action during transitional and politically volatile times, in high-stakes situations. More specifically, I look at a local assembly that was established to campaign for the 'no' vote against regime change in the 2017 constitutional referendum in Turkey, and how it disintegrated at a time when coordinated action was perceived as the only viable strategy by the participants. Based on participant-observation and ethnographic interviews, I argue that instead of framing or strategy, differences in temporal frameworks eroded the basis on which activists usually coordinated their next steps, leading to an unresolvable mismatch in their anticipation of future events, and therefore, in action. I characterize the temporal dynamics of political contestation in such contexts as a 'politics of anticipation,' where futurity and temporality themselves become subjects of political contention. As such, this article contributes to the study of anti-authoritarian social movements, studies of time and temporality, and to the sociology of time and the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to analyse how social movements build alternative futures, this article explores the relationship between prefigurative politics and utopianism. A case study of the 'Indigenous Women's Movement for Buen Vivir' in Argentina will reveal how movement members shape alternative futures, while taking into account how everyday life influences their approaches to the future. Empirical data collected in 2019 shows that members define the present day as a crises-ridden dystopian age, exemplified by the conflicts they face which emerge from the resource-based development model of global capitalism. Extractivist activities are understood as destroyers of the planet and therefore are viewed as an imminent threat to human existence. Hence, the members aim to make the future possible by (re)constructing a reciprocity with nature as well as one between humans and other-than-human beings, in short, to realize Buen Vivir. To unravel how prefigurative practices and utopian imaginations intersect and co-constitute each other, I focus on how Buen Vivir is experienced in the movement through horizontality, spirituality, and autonomy. These experiences are framed by the actors as pre-colonial practices that are reconstructed in the present, as they seek to decolonise capitalist modernity 'so that there is a future'. This understanding reflects a cyclical temporality that inspires a processual, non-linear view of social change, which accompanies the indigenous women's 'prefigurative walking'. Thus, the linking of prefiguration with utopianism helps us in grasping the role of imagination, hopes, and visions for future transformations in the process of building alternative futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement fights to build an alternate future characterized by racial equality and justice, a priority is studying this projected image of what society could look like and how oppressed groups and activists who fight on their behalf feel this might be achieved. This article integrates knowledge from social movement studies, critical race theory, and futures research to add to this critical discussion. Specifically, I use the concept of social movement prospectus to investigate perspectives on future social change in relation to racial justice activism. Through analysis of interviews with 36 U.S. Black millennials about BLM and its potential impact on race relations in the United States, I examine the varied conceptualizations within this group of what success would look like for this movement and whether that success is likely to occur. Broadly, I find that Black millennials are skeptical about BLM's ability to effect social change, but are more optimistic when change is viewed in terms of cultural outcomes than structural ones. I consider the implications of these perspectives for the future of the movement, as well as for scholarship that investigates how social movements produce social change and shape the future of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do social movements respond to geopolitical uncertainties and mobilize aspirations and imagined futures for progressive social change? Building on scholarship on social movements and imagined futures, this article provides an empirical analysis of Taiwan's marriage equality movement as it navigated the shifting horizon of the nation's future. With the economic and diplomatic rise of mainland China, Taiwan has confronted with an increasing international isolation due to the nation's lack of widespread external legitimacy as a nation-state. Given this geopolitical context, Taiwan's marriage equality movement not simply drew on the globalized notion of equal rights for same-sex couples. Instead, it rearticulated the meaning of 'equality' of sexual minorities in parallel to Taiwan's aspirational equal status as a nation-state in the global sphere. Through the intimate entanglement of LGBT rights claims and sovereign aspirations, the marriage equality movement became a powerful emblem of the national vision that differentiated Taiwan from mainland China. This article thus provides new insights for scholarship on social movements and imagined futures, geopolitics, and gender and sexual rights movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How have political opportunities impacted the recent failure of social mobilizations for women's reproductive rights in Poland? This article seeks to explain why change has not happened despite two social mobilization waves, one of which was the largest in democratic Poland, attracting unprecedented public support. Delving into the political environment in which social mobilization emerged, we argue that women's movements for reproductive rights lacked strong roots in Polish society, being marginalized since 1989 to 2007. Simultaneously, an alliance of ruling elites, the Catholic Church and state-controlled media, have consistently been able to curb social movement demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intersectional politics has been widely associated with progressive Millennial activists. Accordingly, most social movement research focuses on progressive movements that adopt intersectionality as a guiding framework for organisation and mobilisation, mainly feminist, reproductive justice, LGBTQ and other movements spearheaded by university-educated Millennials. In contrast to most studies, we conduct a qualitative digital ethnography of Las Kellys, a Spanish grassroots movement with no explicit intersectional approach, but located at the intersection of the labour and feminist movements, and consisting of middle-aged, working-class (immigrant) women with no university background who fit their activism into their spare time. Our findings suggest that (1) Las Kellys deploys intersectional practices and disputes despite lacking an explicit intersectional approach, and (2) the development of intersectional practices and disputes in Las Kellys is the result of inter-movement diffusion processes from the anti-austerity protest cycle and the current wave of feminist protest. Moreover, we argue that the case of Las Kellys is part of a larger diffusion of intersectionality across contemporary Spanish activism as an outcome of the anti-austerity and feminist protest cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on repression in social movement studies focuses mainly on protest behavior and neglects other aspects of activism. This paper expands this literature by looking at how surveillance as a covert form of repression affects organizational practices in social movements. The secessionist mobilizations around the 1 October 2017 referendum in Catalonia serve as a case study to explore this question. Semi-structured interviews with organizers from the Catalan independence movement were used to identify two surveillance threats. Organizers feared the monitoring of their digital communication and the infiltration of their assemblies. They responded to these threats with five moves of counter-surveillant organizing: encryption, face-to-face communication, analogizing meetings, committee decision making, and closingoff assemblies. How organizers perceived surveillance and responded was closely connected to the cyclical dynamics of contention over time. The five moves allowed the movement to resist surveillance at least in the short term without moderating their claims or going underground. However, they were also harmful to the Catalan independence movement's organizing culture based on inclusivity and horizontality. These findings suggest that the consequences of repression for social movements go well beyond protest behavior and have a profound impact on their organizational practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs quantitative and qualitative data from a large diverse sample of scientists and professionals active in Greater Boston's environmental and community development movements to pursue two lines of inquiry regarding experts and expertise in social movements. Statistical analysis and supporting qualitative analysis investigate, first, the extent to which expert's professional training and employment predict their mobilization into different social movements (a measure of embodied expertise) and, second, the more specific ways that experts' embeddedness in Boston-area businesses, law firms, and colleges and universities provide distinct mobilization pathways. Finding support for both, our conclusions emphasize the strategic value and heterogeneity of expert activists as a group and the importance of institutional analysis in understanding the dynamics and impacts of expert activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the theoretical and empirical interest of protest slogans and writings for social movement research. It shows how this material can contribute to a better understanding of collective identities, emotions, and claims made in contemporary demonstrations. Theoretically, it invites researchers to go beyond the actual 'words' to invest these slogans as political performances: increasingly individualized and diversified, these writings carry a public staging and a political discourse that can address multiple audiences. Therefore, they give access to the individual and collective voices expressed within contemporary social movements – and the way they interplay. To take into account their diversity, the article proposes a typology of the main political functions of these writings – whether they aim to lay claims, to proclaim, to mobilize or to witness, which will determine their very form and their favored support. Secondly, the article revisits the ethical and methodological issues raised by the collection and analysis of protest writings for the empirical study of social movements. It examines different ways of mining their potential for comparison and mixed method device, through either textual, visual or qualitative analysis. To do so, it draws on the experience and results of an international study of youth social movements in the second decade of the twenty-first century, to which this method was widely applied to identify and compare the fundamental rhetorics of these post-2008 protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data has increased currency in contemporary activism and has become an integral part of the action repertoire of today's social movements. But data and data infrastructure are not only tools to support a movement's struggle: they are constitutive parts of the environment in which movements operate, and objects of contention in their own right. These developments challenge scholars of social movements and collective action. How are movements changing under the pressure of datafication? What 'new' mechanisms, actors and tactics meet the growing demand for citizen participation in an increasingly datafied society? Is social movement scholarship 'fit' to capture and interpret this evolution? This theoretical article puts social movement studies in dialogue with critical data studies with the aim of encouraging a much-needed cross-pollination. It advances the notion of 'datafied movements' to address the novel structural condition of contentious politics in the age of datafication and to explore the socio-technical, systemic effects of data and data infrastructure on movement dynamics. It reflects on how five key social movement dynamics, and the related elements in the conceptual toolbox of social movement studies – group formation, opportunity structures, action repertoires, meaning work, and collective identity – are altered by datafication and the advance of intelligent systems in society. In so doing, this article charts the building blocks of a future-proof research program in social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, Hong Kong activists mobilized against the proposed Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) and relied on a mobile chat-app's polling feature to make collective decisions. To understand the chat-app's role in the movement's 'backstage' dynamics — i.e., building coalitions, making decisions, and coordinating action away from public view — I analyzed a series of Telegram polls during the Anti-ELAB movement's airport sit-in/takeover. To generate insights into social movement studies, I combined aspects of a vibrant stream of research known as Communication as Constitutive of Organizing (CCO) with a nuanced use of the affordances concept. To identify the backstage dynamics of the movement, I applied criteria from the organizationality concept to assess the extent to which the movement communicatively exhibited organizational characteristics. Therefore, I addressed how chat-app polling facilitated collective decision-making and cultivated the movement's social address and collective identity. Recognizing chat-app polling as pivotal in transforming voiced concerns to legitimized authority, I identified three authorship affordances that fostered authority practices: anonymity, hyper-temporality, and affectivity. This study makes three contributions: (1) it extends the understanding of backstage organizational dynamics of social movements by adding two additional criteria of collective decision-making and collective actorhood to the extant criteria of collective identity, (2) it refines the affordances concept to explore how chat-apps influence data-related practices in contentious politics, and (3) it provides a novel method of analysis to isolate and investigate the processual dynamics of authority practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revisiting the concept of the social movement society, we see the development of new media and datafication creating unanticipated challenges and constraints, in effect, new and different opportunities. The wired world reduces the costs of spreading information and mobilizing action, but also creates additional risks. I review the premises and blindspots of the 'social movement society' hypothesis, initially offered by David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow,' and then consider how new technologies affect strategies and possibilities for activists, as well as stakes and targets of activists. The conclusion raises issues of inequality and representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This guest contribution to the Contentious Data special issue asks: What are the fundamental processes underlying the possibility of data activism? It argues that, if like everything else, social movements are being datafied, this operates on at least four levels: a change in the general conditions under which all social movements operate; data becoming either the specific or general object of activism; and finally, data becoming crucial to practices of movement resistance. Underlying this is a further pattern, that data as a narrative are increasingly an important aspect of contestation in contemporary politics. I interpret this general phenomenon through the lens of the social theory of Alberto Melucci and the leader of the Zapatistas movement, Subcomandante Marcos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars across various disciplines have discussed the role of ICTs and social media in contentious politics and social movements. Other studies have also highlighted the duality of data particularly in the context of contentious politics: data is simultaneously an object of political struggle and a weapon in repertoires of political struggle. Taking the protesters' collective and networked program of sousveillance during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-ELAB Movement as an example, this article examines protesters' and pro-establishment's engagement with data, the datafication of police as proxies of the state, and attitudes towards various forms of 'veillance'. The doxing at the heart of this case study provides an example in which data as constituents of movement repertoire and data as a contentious issue in its own right are conflated. This article bridges the surveillance and social movement literature by examining data practice and doxing during the protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent social movement scholarship has highlighted the instrumental and material roles played by digital technologies in supporting collective action and new cultures of organizing. This research seldom considers the symbolic role of digital technologies and data. However, the extraction and exploitation of data, described as data colonialism, facilitate novel opportunities for capitalist expansion in the everyday. Extensive data appropriation and commodification have led to a growing interest in data activism which challenges dominant data politics. Focusing on the intersection of data activism and local organising of collective action, this article examines two cases of how Big Tech disrupts everyday life and becomes a grievance used for mobilisation. With these cases, we illustrate how protest campaigns react to Google's aim to colonise both digital and physical spheres of life. The first case concerns the creation of a Google Campus in Berlin, while the second focuses on the Sidewalk Toronto urban development project led by the Google subsidiary, SideWalk Labs. Both projects were met with resistance comprising elements of data activism, mobilised as the Fuck Off Google and #blocksidewalk campaigns. Beyond rallying local discontent around impending gentrification and increased housing prices, the campaigns raised awareness about digital giants' unethical data practices and underscored alternative human-centric technologies and data politics. Employing frame analysis, we elaborate on the intersecting dynamics of traditional, community-based grassroots mobilisation and data activism against Googlization and explore the potentialities and limitations toward contextualising collective action for (rather than in) the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholars of activism have begun to unfold the dynamics of the 'contentious politics of data', less explored are the forms of appropriation of algorithms to pursue political objectives by social movements. This article fills this gap by offering a novel theoretical framework, a conceptual vocabulary, and a typology to foreground and articulate algorithmic activism as a subset of algorithmic politics. It starts discussing why an excessive focus on the power of platforms risks disregarding the exploration of agency and provides the definitions of algorithmic agency and politics. Subsequently, it centres on algorithmic activism and demonstrates that algorithms have become the latest addition to the contention repertoire of social movements. Drawing on a heterogeneous set of examples and case studies (including our own research and a database of 250 articles), we propose and examine a typology of three dynamics of algorithmic activism, i.e. algorithmic amplification, evasion, and hijacking. We show that the struggle for visibility (either to achieve it or deny it) lies at the centre of all these types of activism. In the conclusions, we reflect on the key takeaways of our work, clarifying that algorithmic activism (1) exceeds the notion of 'hashtag activism' (2) constitutes an agnostic concept (3) is part of an incessant political struggle between algorithmic strategies and tactics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of social movements have taken the form of connective action achieved through datafication structures in the absence of central coordinating social movement organizations. Social movement demobilization in digitally-mediated connective action remains a relatively understudied area. Drawing together social movement studies and communication studies, we introduce the theoretical framework of 'implicated networks of demobilization' (INsD) to explore the dynamics and implications of datafication for social movement demobilization. Based on examples from the Anti-Extradition Bill movement in Hong Kong and the 2020 George Floyd protests in the United States, we theorize that the connective action embedded in the datafication structure confronts three demobilizational dynamics: implicated data, materiality, and epistemic dynamics. These dynamics imply that connective action mobilization in datafied societies faces constraints pertaining to state-level network oppression, potential threats imposed by the material datafication structure, and the spread of digital knowledge of self-protection. The INsD framework contributes to understanding the interactive data-mediated dynamics between the state and activists in connective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opportunities are often conceptualized as 'openings' in a social movement's external environment which can reduce the cost of collective action, while threat is a force which increases the cost of inaction. These concepts were originally formulated to describe the political contexts of traditional offline movements, therefore how are they perceived and framed by activists in the digital environment of data? This study utilizes qualitative thematic coding to examine the collective action frames in four years of archival texts from 2009 to 2012 of two highly adept data activist mobilizations: The Digital Rights movement and the Anonymous hacktivist collective. Analyses show that frames of opportunity appear with far less frequency than threat. For both cases, volatile opportunity frames regarding their online actions are very rare, especially in the Anonymous texts. It concludes by suggesting that highly leveraging the affordances of digital technology and data may lead to political opportunities losing some of their perceived salience as a mobilizing force, while cultural factors around data activism may simultaneously result in an increased perception of threats. This study shows the importance of understanding how data mediate contemporary collective action and calls for further development and synthesis of the structural and cultural aspects of both opportunity and threat in social movement theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, following several countries including Burundi and Nigeria, a proposal was introduced in Rwanda to criminalize same-sex sex and lgbt activism. However, unlike the other countries, Rwanda's Article 217 criminalization proposal was eliminated within months of its introduction. While this result can be understood as a success story, it also can elide the obstacles Rwandan activists experience when organizing for lgbt people. The cross-movement coalition that formed to oppose Article 217 specifically adopted a nonconfrontational strategy designed to work within the authoritarian political system in Rwanda. While activists framed the removal of Article 217 as aligned with existing government priorities, the dialogue strategy has clear limits when activists' goals are to make further changes in Rwanda, particularly when government officials do not see further changes as aligned with their priorities. A combination of the authoritarian system and the government's focus on economic development and individual advancement narrowly circumscribe what types of activism the government will accept. This imperative to conform to government expectations means activists adopt rhetoric and encourage lgbt people to engage in activities that are focused on how they appear as individuals. This focus on the individual elides the wider structural problems that exist in Rwanda that perpetuate discrimination againstlgbt people, particularly those who experience multiple marginalizations. Lgbt activism is circumscribed so it can occur in Rwanda, but this has consequences for how much change is advocated for and who benefits from this activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on social movements and gender studies, the article aims at exploring repertoires of action articulated by LGBTQ communities in Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey during and after the 2011 and 2013 protests. The aim is to disentangle how LGBTQ individuals mobilized in the MENA region and which role civil society organizations and digital technologies played in the development of such mobilizations. State repression on mobilizing structures, the relevance of digital networks in mobilization strategies, involving LGBTQ activists and individuals in the three countries, will be discussed. The empirical analysis draws on 44 semi-structured interviews carried out in Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey between 2011 and 2020 focusing on repressive contexts, civil society activism, and digital networks. By doing so, the analysis aims also to shed light on the roles played by both meso-level organizations and digital technologies in triggering a range of diverse repertoires of action. If in the three countries LGBTQ communities have been disproportionally targeted by state and non-state repressive campaigns, in Egypt LGBTQ activists challenged repression thanks to the use of social networks as alternative venues for socialization, while in Tunisia and Turkey, LGBTQ activists, drawing upon more established meso-level mobilizing structures, built-up new strategies with the aim to increase their cooperation with other political challengers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how young activists in Portugal and Finland negotiate the value of social media in their practices. Considering the near ubiquitous intertwinement of online-offline environments, and its contradictory promises for social movements, we look at these negotiations through the moral principles drawn upon to critique and justify social media practices. Based on ethnographic data from Portuguese climate activists and Finnish mental health activists, we build on pragmatist sociology as an analytical frame to investigate value and meaning-making within these social movements. Results show how activists predominantly criticize social media for its fame-valued logic, which they consider leading to the individualization and depoliticization of communication and the 'marketization' of messages and practices. These challenges are managed with reference to the groups' civic values through two sets of practices: 1) grounding the online and 2) repurposing individualism. Yet these practices reveal different compromise strategies in each country to accommodate social media demands and core group values, highlighting different interpretations of civic values that materialize in competing stances in relation to 'political' content and 'individual' action. We argue that an analytical framework focusing on values as they unfold in everyday practices is particularly apt to understanding meaning construction in social movements, whose very essence is the evaluation and critique of existing justifications within certain socio-political arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how those who adopt an 'anti-diet' stance use strategies to challenge weight-loss dieting norms. We used a qualitative survey to examine how a heterogenous collective of feminists, fat activists and health professionals (and those on the margins of these groups) define the source(s) of power underlying diet culture and discuss the strategies they use to challenge it. One hundred and eighteen people (Mage = 36.67, SD = 10.50) took part. Most were female (n = 112), heterosexual (69%), and residing in Australia (59%). A small proportion (13%) had a culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) background. Thirty-seven per cent were health professionals, and over half identified as non-diet activists (52%). We generated three themes in our thematic analysis: 'Describing diet culture: Unpacking cultural and material forms of power,' 'Self-care as a political strategy: Refusals and ambivalence in the anti-diet community,' and 'Relational strategies: Challenging diet culture in work and everyday interactions.' Participants viewed diet culture as being reinforced through internalized multi-institutional patriarchal, Eurocentric and capitalist systems. They challenged cultural norms and institutions that reinforce diet culture by being critical of gender norms and rejecting consumerist dieting practices. We argue that the self-care and relational strategies used by participants across communities signify an awkward but unified 'anti-diet movement.' Future research should recruit a more culturally and ethnically diverse sample and examine the 'anti-diet' movement beyond the Global North context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research shows that anger triggers participation in social movements, while fear inhibits action. Therefore, fear is less likely to contribute to citizens' engagement in protest. However, in the case of climate change, fear may play a distinct role and thus contribute to participation. Given the long-term consequences of climate change, we argue that it triggers different emotions across disparate age groups. We investigate the extent to which young, adult, and senior climate strikers experience fear and anger in relation to climate change. Furthermore, we analyze the contribution of these emotions to younger and older citizens' motivation to demonstrate. Using a unique dataset collected among climate strike demonstrators in eleven cities around the world in September 2019, we examine the importance of anger and fear in explaining motivations to take part in the demonstration - to pressure politicians or to defend one's interests. Overall, we find that protesters aged above 60 years old are less likely to fear climate change but are more likely to feel anger in relation to this issue than younger generations. On the other hand, those aged below 35 report the highest levels of fear in relation to climate change and are significantly less angry than senior citizens. In all age groups, both anger and fear are associated with motivation to defend one's interest and to pressure politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With climate change litigation (CCL) being increasingly used by climate activists, its consequences for public discourses on climate change warrants attention. Considering CCL as public campaigning tool, this study presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of national media coverage on three CCL cases in the Netherlands focusing on individual claims of key actors (N = 1,394). Discerning generic and issue-specific frames, this study compares general modes of justifications mobilized by different actors and specific arguments made within these normative views. Findings show that climate activists were largely successful in determining the dominant normative perspectives and the majority of issue-specific arguments of defendants were prompted by activists' arguments. A strong focus on ecological and civic arguments, such as the responsibility for current and future generations, spurs public legitimacy while discussing solutions involved a greater variety of viewpoints which led to higher levels of controversy. The findings indicate that a separation of responsibility and solutions discourses may facilitate public legitimacy and hence benefit the goals of climate activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffusion is a long-established concept that deals with the mechanisms explaining the prevalence of social movements. However, previous empirical studies on digital movement merely used diffusion as a term referring to increasing numbers of posts or public attention, without distinguishing what is diffused nor asking how information is diffused. Studies applying social network analysis have restricted themselves to retweet networks from a static perspective and emphasized the main actors and critical messages driven by the crowds. While the previous studies examined information diffusion as an outcome, they were unable to reveal the underlying processes that define how digitally networked movements spread over time among crowds embedded in different communities. As a case study, this paper investigates how the German-speaking network #FridaysForFuture was facilitated and contested through different diffusion dynamics. By inferring a diffusion network based on 237,892 retweeting sequences and the following/follower relationships of the 51,803 engaged actors in the early stages of #FridaysForFuture, it quantifies the digitally networked movement from a top-down perspective: the network, the tweets, and the retweets, concerning aspects of both actor and content. The findings suggest the development of digitally networked movements depends on their ability to influence and spread among different networked publics. The diffusion mechanisms of information, discourses, and beliefs of digitally networked movements were mainly enabled by, and flowed through, preexisting networks rather than situational spontaneity. However, they varied according to issue salience and were distinguished by the network structures, political positions, ideological lines, and geographical proximities of the involved communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate protests are one of the most impressive social movements of this time and are historical in various respects: the global and widespread scale, the employed protest tactics, and its young demographic character. This study explicitly takes the position that the climate marches are opening new avenues of politization with a radical educational democratic potential. Building on the conceptual framework of social movement learning, the educational experiences of recurring participants of the protests are explored in terms of civic education. This contributes not only to the understanding of the possibility of the climate movement as educational spaces for learning about politics and democracy, but also to a better understanding of the educational potential of social movements in general. The research design consists of a single country case study with individual interviews and focus groups with frequent participants of the climate protests in Belgium. The findings indicate that the climate protests are an especially fruitful place for political engagement acting as a catalysator for politization. It fosters a process with reflections on individual agency, collective responsibility, current political structures, and the democratic ideals of our society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific authorities increasingly caution that industrialised nations need to implement substantial transformations to meet environmental targets. To mobilize people for this transformation and press for policy reforms, socio-environmental movements combine strategies from art and activism. While existing studies conceptualise this phenomenon asartivism, empirical research on the design, function, and reception of social movements' artivist practices remains scarce. Therefore, this article examines the socioenvironmental movement Extinction Rebellion's (×R) art-actions. Through visual analysis and focus group research, it analyses five of XR's recent art-actions in the Netherlands, their design and their reception among the activists and their target group. Drawing on Susanne C. Moser's ten tasks for transformative climate change communication, we argue that XR's art-actions use principles of transformative communication to serve movement-external goals, such as awareness-raising and mobilization, as well as movementinternal goals, such as the sharing of emotions and the prevention of activist exhaustion. Our analysis then shows that XR's art-actions often succeed in reaching movement-internal goals. Regarding movement-external goals, our findings indicate that XR's artactions carry potential in mobilizing an ecologically aware audience for environmental action. The realisation of this potential, however, hinges on striking a careful balance between salient-image, specific call for action and positive outcome. Overall, we emphasize the relevance of considering the internal and external dimensions of artivism in social movement research and practice - and we show how reception research can serve this endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claims made during mass protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and Thailand in 2020 became increasingly transgressive. Localist demands and calls for the reform of the monarchy, respectively, violated conventional political norms in these two hybrid regimes. This paper examines the dynamics of opposition discursive radicalization during ongoing autocratization. Observational data and protest event analysis are employed to assess the scaling up of claims-making and its relationship to protest size and group solidarity. The paper argues that radicalization can best be understood relationally, between a hybrid regime, on the one hand, and moderates and radicals in the opposition, on the other. It identifies the following three points of convergence that lead to similar protest trajectories in both cases: the marginalization of moderates along with their gatekeeping role of transgressive discourses; the creation of digitally enabled protest networks that facilitated mass mobilization and claims diffusion; and the intensification of protest policing that provoked a departure from reformist to revolutionary claims. The argument offered here shows similarities to but also nuanced differences from the repression literature and casts doubt on the assumptions about the demobilizing impact of autocratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory essay surveys a wave of mass movements in contemporary East and Southeast Asia. We identify three main aspects that drove and sustained this wave of societal pushback amidst institutional decay. We first discuss how democratic backsliding shapes the spread of mass mobilization in polities that are seen as regulated by the interest of power elites and their machinery of coercion and adaptation. We then critically examine the continued relevance of protest leadership by highlighting the relational dynamics between organizing with and without (formal) organizations. We further examine how network and coalition building in political and civil societies shaped the long-term trajectory of movement organizations to facilitate large-scale protests at critical times. This review draws on the contributions to this special issue and the recent literature on democratic backsliding and political activism. It provides a holistic survey of defensive mobilizations and the interactive mechanisms among the masses in the region and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the anti-extradition bill movement in Hong Kong, this paper employs the concepts of doing and undoing gender to investigate the barriers that female frontline protesters encountered and the strategies they adopted. It shows that stereotypes linking high-risk activism and physical prowess with masculinity, the association of the frontline with high risks of arrest and injuries, and physical confrontation with the police meant that the frontline was marked discursively as a male domain. However, the leaderless characteristic of the movement facilitated women crossing this discursively marked gender boundary. Once on the frontline, women took different paths. Some began to do gender by taking on tasks that were considered less risky and more compatible with femininity because of the gendered interactions amongst protesters. On the other hand, women with experience, and access to social support and mentorship gained the confidence they needed to take on tasks that were seen as 'masculine', and thus undoing the gender stereotype that women lacked the capacity for frontline protest. The findings illustrate the continuous challenge women face as they are held accountable for their gender in social movements. At the same time, they also suggest that women's doing of gender in social movements is not inevitable, but contingent on social contexts and interactions. Certain factors such as the leaderless characteristic of a movement and peer support and mentorship can facilitate gender boundary crossing and neutralize gendered interactions. These, in turn, allow gender to be undone in social movements and promote women's participation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time after the end of large-scale student unrest in the 1970s Japan stood out by a comparatively low level of protest. Yet spectacular waves of mass-protest returned with the anti-nuke mobilizations following the 2011 Fukushima meltdown and other 'post-2011' movements. In this paper I develop an analytical framework inspired by the multi-level perspective in transition studies to illuminate two questions: how can the relatively low level of protest in Japan before 2011 – in particular the so called 'ice age' of protest from the 1970s to the early 2000s – be explained, and what enabled the recovery of protest afterwards, starting in the early 2000s and leading up to the post-2011 protest cycle? I point to the crucial role played on the one hand by niches in the form of social movement spaces in fostering oppositional discourses and on the other hand by landscape changes that destabilized the established politico-cultural regime. A crucial role was played by the creative work of freeter activists in social movement spaces during the 1990s who reinvented activism in response to stigmatization of open protest after the collective trauma of the perceived defeat of the New Left in the 1970s. This creative work was a precondition for the rise of protest movements in the early 2000s which in turn prepared the way for the post-2011 protest wave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extensive participation of secondary school students was one of the features that characterized Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement. Lacking the power and resources enjoyed by adults, how do these teenagers organize protest actions? While recent scholarship focuses on how recent youth activism is facilitated by the prevalent use of social media, this article argues that digitally-based, informal social movement groups formed by student activists played a crucial role in unleashing teenage youth's social capital. By activating their schools' alumni networks, school reputation and joint-school ties, these digitally-based groups initiated a wide array of collective actions that mobilized scores of teenagers. However, despite forming a decentralized structure, these groups were unequal in terms of their mobilization power. Reputable schools with strong alumni networks and joint-school linkages are more capable of shaping movement narratives and mobilizing territory-wide protest actions. In contrast, schools with weaker social capital are more likely to organize actions with neighbouring schools within local districts and rely on external help. Our findings contribute to social movement studies by demonstrating how teenage youth engage in protests and how informal, Internet-initiated protest organizations play a crucial role in shaping movement dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the presidency of President Joko Widodo (2014 – present), Indonesia's small but feisty labor movement was remarkably successful in defeating government policies that it opposed and winning pro-labor policies. Labor's success, however, was quickly reversed after Joko Widodo became president. I argue that social movement and contentious politics scholarship provides insufficient analytic leverage to explain labor's sudden reversal of fate. The budding literature on democratic backsliding, which analyzes the incremental steps through which democracies become less democratic, provides critical insights to understanding labor's changing fortunes. This broader regime context of executive aggrandizement, not deficiencies in the labor movement or a mere closing of the political opportunity structure, explains both the rapidity and the depth of labor's reversal of fortune since 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary networked social movements are often described as leaderless. However, social influence is inevitably unevenly distributed across participants, so informal and diffused leaders do exist. This study contends that analysis of informal and diffused leadership in networked social movements should examine whether such leadership is stable and what factors might explain who can take on a leadership role. Starting from these premises, this study investigates discussions of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong on the online forum LIHKG. Analyzing millions of movement-related and non-movement-related comments revealed that influence was highly unevenly distributed and that opinion leadership was more unstable in movement-related discussions. Opinion leadership was related to personal characteristics and communication activities, but sometimes in ways that were specific to movement-related discussions. Moreover, opinion leadership tended to stabilize over time. The findings provide insights into the characteristics of informal and diffused leadership in networked social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the roles of professional networks in mass protests. The extensive participation of professionals in the anti-extradition movement in Hong Kong, using their professional expertise, specialized networks and institutional positions, constituted a novel form of collective action. Based on framing analysis of sectoral petitions and interviews with participating professionals, this paper shows that state–corporatist arrangements and social movement abeyance structures laid the foundation for sectoral mobilization in the anti-extradition movement. It reveals the conditions under which professional activism can move beyond individual practices and overcome organizational barriers to generating resources to sustain a mass movement. Perceived threats to the professional ethos triggered cross-sectoral participation. Sectoral mobilization modes and levels were contingent on an array of institutional constraints, informal networks and conjunctural events that made for widespread and legitimate professional involvement in a networked movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under which conditions do movement actors have influence over legislation? Theory suggests that allies are important, but research findings are mixed. This study argues that if allies are conceptualized following an interactionist approach, they can be crucial. This study develops a new operationalization of movement allies and appraises it by examining the influence of LGBT and labor activists and their legislative allies on the approval of bill amendments in Chile. Using logistic regressions with clustered errors on 1,669 bill amendments, complemented with archival data and interviews with activists and members of congress, findings show that legislative allies have a positive effect on the passage of amendments. Moreover, their profile as social movement supporters gives legislative allies the influence to modify the content of bills when political conditions expand. These findings highlight the advantage of using an interactionist approach to identify legislative allies for movements and the value of analyzing amendments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 2000s, governments in many Western democracies have introduced policies and practices to prevent radicalization and violent extremism (PRVE). This has led to the formation of a new policy arena in which an increased number of actors are tasked with PRVE work. The diverse set of actors and methods involved affect social movements in new and complex ways, but also challenges the established knowledge and analytical focus of research on the repression of social movements. In this article, we propose a conceptual framework that attends to the causes, content and consequences of protest control. We use it to examine interaction between actors in the PRVE arena and to highlight issues that are underexplored in repression research. To elucidate these issues, we use empirical examples from our own research on measures to counter extremist milieus in the Nordic countries and the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the literature of social movements and emotions, this article analyses a case of the union-led movement against outsourcing in the UK. Our focus is on the emotional processes of collective identity formation and the movement culture of new grassroot unions, addressing the themes of movement culture, collective identity and political solidarity. Data consists of participant observations, interviews, and additional website and media material. The results show that the movement culture of the new grassroot unions is characterised by direct action and a collective identity based on a proud re-centring of BAME workers as subjects of labour struggles. Key emotional processes consist of sharing emotions of humiliation, anger, and exclusion, but also joy and feelings of solidarity. A crucial part of the movement's expansion is due to the construction of political solidarity and coalition-building. The results demonstrate the importance of heeding the crucial mobilising power of shared emotions in the analysis of new labour unions. The article contributes to labour movement research with an enhanced understanding of immaterial claims on dignity, respect and care, alongside the cognitivist focus on material work conditions and labour rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary anti-gender movements mobilize against gender and sexual equality for which feminist and LGBTQI+ movements have been advocating for decades. We propose the term 'contentious gender politics' to capture this clash of opposing movements concerning bodily integrity, kinship structures, sexual morality, and institutionalization of gender equality. Existing literature has recognized the transnational character of anti-gender movements and identified matching tactics, frames, and allies across different countries. We examine how these transnational movements used similar campaigns to 'localize'. Localization is conceptualized in this research as the process of adapting frames and tactics to different national contexts. To do so, this study examines the diffusion of social movements and anti-gender campaigns by comparing anti-gender movements in Italy and Croatia through critical events between 2013 and 2019. We demonstrate that the localization of these anti-gender movements occurred through a three-step pathway: first, by adapting frames and tactics of left-liberal civil society and progressive movements; second, by forging alliances with existing right-wing parties; and third, by embedding its agenda within formal political and administrative bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this book, Jessica Rich introduces a new pattern of state-society relations, which she calls civic corporatism: when state actors help civil society organizations to mobilize relatively autonomous political advocacy coalitions. I State-Sponsored Activism: Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Democratic Brazil i provides a new theoretical and empirical account of why Brazil's AIDS movement endured despite these abovementioned perils. Since the 1980s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has fostered serious political and public health challenges, such as the prohibitive cost of antiretrovirals (ARVs) due to highly protectionist intellectual property regimes. [Extracted from the article]

Generation left: by Keir Milburn, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2019, v +139 pp., £35.00 (hardback), ISBN 9781509532230, £ 9.99 (paperback), ISBN 9781509532247, £8.99 (ebook), ISBN 9781509532261 Surprisingly, Milburn ignores the 2010 anti-austerity and student movement in the UK as a catalyst for the birth of Generation Left in the country. Milburn relies on socio-economic and electoral data to investigate the contributing factors to the emergence of Generation Left, a youth-led electoral movement that appeared at the conjuncture of the 2008 economic crisis and the global wave of protests in 2011. [Extracted from the article]

Social movement impact on democracy has primarily been treated in two ways in the literature: the role of social movements in promoting democratization in the form of regime change; and a more recent literature on the ways social movements initiate democratic innovation in governing institutions and norm diffusion in already existing democracy. In this article, we argue that to fully understand social movement impact on democracy, we need to look beyond these two main approaches, as important as they are. Using the emblematic case of Spain's 15-M pro-democracy movement to illustrate our conceptual proposal, we draw on existing literature to argue that social movements can impact democracy in several key arenas currently not sufficiently considered in the literature. We provide examples of democratic impact emerging from the experimentation around the central problematic of 'real democracy' in the 'occupied squares' to highlight several ways social movements' democratic impact might be explored. We develop the concepts of hybridity and democratic laboratory to analyze these impacts and discuss their relation to contemporary theorizing about democracy and movement outcomes. We argue that adopting this broader approach to the democratic impact of social movements leads to a more nuanced understanding of movement outcomes and 'success'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between the articulation of the 15-M movement in Spain and the expansion of Feminist Economics (FE) at the feminist base of this movement, in particular, in Feminism Committees (FC-15 M). We assert that this expansion was due to FE's capacity to explain the 2008 crisis beyond its economic-financial dimensions and to analyse the effects of the political-economic austerity measures on the sustainability of life. We claim that a differentiating feature of FE in Spain is its permeability to dialogue with social movements. Therefore, it has become more politicized and critical than other academic fields. This influence has also been reflected in the structure and contents of the most recent FE national conferences, which from 2013 on included not only the classic academic strand but also training and political action strands. In order to explore this development, our methodology includes interviews with key informants; document analysis of material generated in the conferences and the Feminism Committees of 15-M; questionnaires to activists, academics, and practitioners of FE; and informal observation as direct participants of the described processes and events. The paper begins with an introduction to FE thought and its connections with so-called 'Feminism for the 99%' and continues with a methodological section. The twofold results section analyzes the dialogues between FE and FC-15 M. It concludes with a summary of the key ideas presented and some final remarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the influence that the educommunicative dimension of the 15M Movement has had on the creation and consolidation of a new ecosystem of independent media. To this end, we rely on a document analysis of the movement's minutes and manifestos and on the review of the editorial principles and educational activities of a sample of independent media. We also draw on ten in-depth interviews with key journalists and activists who actively participated in the 15M. We argue that the movement's media activism had a clear educommunicative orientation that strengthened pre-existing media activism, opening windows of opportunity for media innovation. This contributed to the rise of a new media ecosystem of independent media characterised by three key elements: (1) synergies and mutual support; (2) the key role of the community of subscribers and users; and (3) an educational agency with a public service orientation. Finally, we illustrate that this new media ecosystem displays a clear educommunicative orientation. This orientation is rooted in the imaginary and practices of the 15M and is based on the revitalised civic role of journalism and on the value of information for radical democracy. This article advances social movement studies by engaging a dialogue between an educommunicative perspective and a media ecology lens. It articulates the relevance of media as educational agents and explores the impact of a social movement in the creation and shaping of a new media ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 15-M movement, which emerged in 2011 amidst the Great Recession in Spain, has achieved the status of transformative protest event. Social movement research using this concept has mostly focused on meso-level legacies: event memories shape later organisational dynamics within social movements and among activists. Collective memories can, however, transcend the activists' milieu, acting as a sediment in the political culture of broader social sectors. Along this line of inquiry, this article examines the memory of the 15-M movement among ordinary demonstrators in two recent mobilisations (International Women's Day and the pensioners' protests). Based on forty-four in-depth interviews, we show not only a widespread recollection of 15-M eight years later, but also that memories include mobilising components, influencing the perceptions of protest as an efficacious political tool, or extending protest repertoires that are now considered familiar and legitimate. Recollections of 15-M are also associated with changes in the critical understanding of the political system and the advancement of a new political subject, which envisages an active role in politics for ordinary citizens. Significantly, these mobilising memories are discernible even among those who did not participate at the time, showing that cultural legacies may have transcended the first-instance protagonists. In short, protest action, subjects, critical mentalities and repertoires gained an enduring legitimacy, which is consistent with the extension of alternative horizontal logics of politics and more active understandings of citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 15-M mobilizations shook Spanish society and placed the demand for 'real democracy' at the center of political debate. In order to better understand the scope and impact of the Indignados' democratizing endeavors, this article aims to address an issue that has not received much attention: the connection of this protest cycle with the political economy. To this end, both the opportunity structure generated by the economic crisis and the class and generational conflicts shaping the mobilizations are analyzed. The article proposes that the symbolic and short-term success of 15-M in re-politicizing distributive conflicts contrasts with its medium-term inability to materially democratize the political economy. This relative failure can be explained by the confluence of several factors: on the one hand, 15-M's organizational weakness and its disconnection from a somewhat declining labor movement; on the other, the lack of responsiveness of Spain's political institutions to street politics and the powerful structural inertia of economic dynamics created by decades of neoliberalism. The findings of this case study aim to contribute to scholarly debates on the impacts of social movements and their connection to political economy and social classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011 the Indignados traced a line of flight from austerity policies. They invented unprecedented spaces for participation, re-imagined Spanish democracy and turned their attention to forms of life as spaces for political transformation. Their practices enacted a collective sensitivity that challenged the regime of impotence blocking their lives. The global financial crisis was denying them a future, and their ability to think and act together. Ten years later, while the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the world's normal course, self-organizing neighbours updated the Indignados' sensibility and methods. This article analyses the neighborhood support networks created by the Mutual Aid Groups (GAM) in A Coruña, Spain, during the lockdown in March 2020. As the government urged people to stay at home and obey the public health directives, the GAM took care of vulnerable life and democracy, threatened today by new authoritarian drives. From the standpoint of the ethics of care and an interest in experimental social movements, we discuss the power of a caring democracy, which sustains life and renews the democratic turn of the 15-M. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2015 and 2019, the Spanish capital, Madrid, was governed by the movement party Ahora Madrid, a novel political actor strongly connected to anti-austerity and pro-democracy movements gathered under the umbrella of the Indignados, or '15 M', movement. Against the background of the party's abundant hopes for regenerating urban democracy at the beginning of its term, our research asks how and to what extent Ahora Madrid translated the movement's democratizing practices and expectations into concrete policies. Based on our own qualitative research involving government actors and social movements, our empirical findings demonstrate that the democratic innovations implemented responded to diverging visions of how to achieve 'real democracy', defined by different imaginaries and traditions of collective action within 15 M. While demonstrating the steady interaction between Ahora Madrid policy makers and the social movements they came from, the findings also reveal the policy agenda divisions that posed a challenge for the broadening and deepening of urban democracy. These divisions concerned vertical versus horizontal political logics, the individual versus collective nature of political subjects, and digital versus on-site political participation and deliberation. In addition to the tensions emerging among the various ideational frameworks for collective action (i.e. the autonomous tradition, technopolitics, and the institutional left), this study identifies an apparent divorce between the two intertwined goals of the 15 M: to fight neoliberal austerity and to seek participatory democracy. The empirical findings lead to highlight the internal accounts of the consequences of social movements, especially concerning the conditions for institutionalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the biographical consequences of participation in 15 M by following the trajectories, from May 2011 to November 2019, of individuals who took part in the movement in Madrid. Based on a field study combining observations and repeat interviews, this follow-up of the trajectories of forty Indignados (22 in the period 2013–15 and 18 to 2019) reveals considerable biographical impacts on both representations and individual practices in the political, personal and professional spheres. These impacts were particularly salient among those who had experienced biographical disruptions, whether in relation to political socialization or a drop in social status, and those who had mobilized in an intense and lasting way. However, 15 M had also had a profound influence on the biographies of those with an activist background and those who had been less involved in the movement. This microsociological approach gives us a better understanding of the biographical trajectories of the Indignados and provides an account of the transformations in collective action in Madrid over the past ten years. The main legacy of 15 M is therefore that it created a new generation of activists who are now involved in a multitude of activist microspheres and institutional settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]