Activist Media: Documenting Movements and Networked Solidarity, Gino Canella (2022)

Strengthening Institutional Capacity for MDGs Acceleration Through Media Activism in India

When good governance is the condition for socio-economic development and success of MDGs in developing countries, media activism assumes a lot of significance in a country like India, which has a large population (41.6 percent) suffering on account of multi dimensional poverty index (UNDP Human Development Report 2011: 144). Print and electronic media both, through proliferation of multi-city editions of newspapers and 24 hours national and regional television news channels, have been making important influence on legislation and policy formulation in India. In recent past, India has witnessed a lot of media activism on variety of issues: Ombudsman (Lokpal); anti-corruption movement; sexual harassment of women; environmental degradation; female foeticide; caste related social deprivations; campaigns for food security; and right to information. Sustained media activism would go a long way in strengthening institutional capacity by increasing its coverage of people's participation, transparency, accountability and non-discrimination, especially in public expenditures and procurement in the name of pro-poor programmes for Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) acceleration. The paper looks at how MDGs in terms of their coverage content are reported by the media in India. It analyses media activism that resulted in essential interventions, setting up of a functional regulatory framework, mechanisms to address corruption, and efforts to assess performance. Finally paper explores whether media's activism can be sustained when states weakened by the requirements of policy frameworks of neo-liberalism and more corporate houses are assuming control over Indian media. Two case studies are discussed for substantiating the impact of media activism for strengthening of institutional capacities for MDGs acceleration in India. First: Telecast of weekly television programme of 'Satyamev Jayatey (Triumph of truth)'; and second: Media's coverage of people's movement against corruption and their demand for the setting up of 'Lokpal' (Ombudsman) for the trial of public servants involved in corruption charges. The role of New Media (Social Media) activism through internet sources for MDGs acceleration cannot be underestimated, but they remain beyond the purview of this paper.

In the last decade or so, concomitant with the spread of the global justice movement, there has been an emergence of transnational media activism—a rapid rise of Internet-based media activisms around the globe, which has posed increasing challenges to the political-economic establishments and media status quo. This paper is a case study of a media activists organisation in Hong Kong, i.e. Hong Kong In-media. Through an analysis of its historical developments, it discusses how local media activism has been situated in the broader landscape of transnational media activism. The connections between the local and transnational media activisms have been manifested in the local media activists’ appropriation of movement ideas and practices from the global exemplars, and in their attempts to mobilise transnational movement resources by forging tangible cooperations with the counterparts elsewhere. The local media activists’ contributions to transnational media activism in particular and transnational activism in general will be discussed.

The Audience in Media Activism

Activist media refer to media forms that serve activist purposes. Activism can be radical or moderate; media have multiple forms, encompassing television, photography, cartoons, radio, newspapers, zines, the Internet, and even the body. We use both concepts in a broad rather than narrow sense in order to be more inclusive in selecting our entries. Many studies of alternative media, radical media, citizen media, underground press, and social movement media fall under our broad definition of activist media. Mainstream media do not, even though sometimes they help to stir or deter contention and sometimes are appropriated by activists. Activist media are not a new phenomenon. In fact, the rise of modern social movements and nationalism in the eighteenth century coincided with the development of print capitalism. In the early days of the Internet, many independent web sites, discussion lists, and personal websites were activist media. Dominant digital media platforms of the twenty-first century, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Weibo in China, are commercial enterprises; they resemble mainstream media more than activist media. Yet some of their spaces are used so deliberately and persistently by citizens or civil society groups to voice dissent or make political claims that sometimes they serve the functions of activist media. Examples are hashtag activism such as #WhyIStayed and #Ferguson. On these platforms, activists can quickly mobilize the public, challenge dominant narratives, foster collective identities, or amplify voices that are historically marginalized. The role of digital activism became even more important during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic when physical gatherings were restricted. While the digital shift has expanded the reach and impact of activism, it has also introduced new challenges, such as online surveillance, censorship, misinformation, and the influence of algorithms. Updates to 2025 completed by Yuan Xu and Guobin Yang.

The environmental sector is an interesting realm in Chinese politics to observe factors such as the contributions of new media activism in bottom-up communication and decision-making processes, especially during the 40 years of reform and opening up. Top-down efforts to curb environmental issues are primarily to address increasing pubic discomfort due to pollution and related problems. However, environmental movements are increasingly visible in China despite their application of stability maintenance mechanisms such as Environmental Police. It is therefore noteworthy to deeply analyse the factors that contribute to the increasing scale of movements in the country. This study examines the role of new media activism (occurring due to the public’s interactions through WeChat, Weibo, QQ, etc.) in shaping the trajectory of environmental movements in China. How are these avenues supporting alternative communication channels outside the mainstream policy making apparatus? Is the government willing to incorporate the interests developed in these channels to policymaking realms? How these behavioural changes are influencing the state–society relations in contemporary China in the context of increasing environmental concerns. The study employs agency-structure framework to analyse the interactions between new media activism and the single party ruling political structure with the support fieldwork data from China. The study examines policy documents, official declarations of the communist party, public attitude towards new media activism, and so on, in order to present a comprehensive understanding on the politics of ecology in the PRC.

In this highly topical book, John Michael Roberts employs a political economy perspective to explore the relationship between financial neoliberal capitalism and digital publics. He offers an indispensable guide to understanding the relationship between the state, new media activism and neoliberal practices.

Reviewed by: Asian American Media Activism: Fighting for Cultural Citizenship by Lori Kido Lopez Anthony Yooshin Kim (bio) Asian American Media Activism: Fighting for Cultural Citizenship by Lori Kido Lopez. New York University Press. 2016. $27 paper. 272 pages. With her first book, Asian American Media Activism: Fighting for Cultural Citizenship, Lori Kido Lopez offers a fresh multidisciplinary take for understanding this recurring scenario in the US culture industry: a major network and creative team behind a problematic media production are forced to reckon with the swiftly mobilized opposition of Asian American media activists armed with smartphones and 140 characters. Lopez argues that in such cases, "while the stated goals of media activists might seem immediate—to recast a role, to demand an apology from producers, to hire an Asian American consultant or director, to produce more images of Asian Americans—what goes unstated is the connection between these achievements and the ultimate goal of cultural citizenship for Asian Americans."1 If the full enjoyment of legal citizenship is still burdened by the ongoing contradictions of race and capital, Lopez's attention to cultural politics is indebted to the innovations of earlier Asian American scholarship like Lisa Lowe's Immigrant Acts (1996) and Mae Ngai's Impossible Subjects (2004).2 Lopez's intervention, then, is to take seriously the seeming immateriality of an Internet ad, an online video, a hashtag, or a tweet, contending that they do not exist in an information vacuum but must be considered part of the wildly disparate contests and expressions for Asian American belonging in the United States. While the salvo of digitized ephemera takes up more and more space in our hard drives, our cognitive faculties, and our social environments, Lopez does not see our outright submission to neoliberal [End Page 159] technology. Positioned as a scholar and practitioner of media activism, she is able to glean the necessary potential to produce meaningful challenges against "a ubiquitous postracial media discourse that insists upon race as merely an individual quality."3 The sites Lopez brings together to compose her study are intriguing and unexpected. Diverging from the canonical scholarly genres of literature, theater, and film, she pursues different iterations of media activism as they play out in the underexplored realms of policy, advertising, and rapidly changing social media platforms like YouTube and Twitter—underexplored, she suggests, given the way such highly commercialized and visible institutions are rife with co-optation by capitalist logics and are easily "a target of criticism rather than a site for potential contributions to social justice."4 But in spite of the skepticism of viewing Asian America as a brand name, a target audience, or a consumer public, Lopez does not concede their productive tensions in the work of fashioning cultural citizenship. Transaction, translation, and, to quote one of her interviewees, "transcreation" are also important moments in which meanings of value and (non)equivalence can be ascertained. Lopez suggests that paying attention to these combined social, cultural, and economic exchanges can help us not only critique but also collectively participate in constructing political and representational strategies to transform the terms of the Asian American community from within and without.5 Beginning with the variegated responses to the flourish of recent Asian American sitcoms like The Mindy Project (Fox, 2012–2015, Hulu, 2015–present) and Fresh off the Boat (ABC, 2015–present), Lopez suggests "that even when images of minority communities succeed in gaining visibility there can be disagreement about what political gains have really been achieved."6 She contends that these "disagreements" over Asian Americans in the media "push back against assumptions that our neoliberal media landscape is inexorably moving toward the individual" and instead interrogates "specific examples of media activism [where] we can more clearly see how activists and minority communities believe that empowerment will be achieved through cultural citizenship."7 In fighting for cultural citizenship, then, Lopez teases out the distinction of "activism" versus "media activism," being careful to "counter a romanticism for a kind of 'authentic' or 'real' activism that is limited in who it can stem from or what kinds of actions and alliances it can include."8 She defines activism as "[beginning] with the identification of...

Reviewed by: Asian American Media Activism: Fighting for Cultural Citizenship by Lori Kido Lopez Leland Tabares (bio) Asian American Media Activism: Fighting for Cultural Citizenship, by Lori Kido Lopez. New York: New York University Press, 2016. Xi + 247 pp. $27.00 paper. ISBN: 9781479866830. It is easy to be excited by Asian American Media Activism: Fighting for Cultural Citizenship. For junior scholars coming of age around social media and for established scholars who have witnessed the scope of this cultural shift, Lori Kido Lopez’s book delivers a refreshing, insightful, and necessary investigation into the evolving state of Asian American activism and cultural belonging in our contemporary media landscape. Lopez shows how media activism enables Asian Americans—who have been historically stereotyped, marginalized, and excluded in mainstream media—to access “greater participation and a recognized voice in media” (23). With media representations being so central in constructing a national cultural imaginary, Lopez argues that the fight for representation in the media is invariably a fight over Asian American citizenship. The manuscript traverses multiple media sites—from more traditional activist organizations and advertising agencies to new media outlets such as YouTube, Twitter, and online fan forums—to offer a comprehensive multidisciplinary study on the representational, cultural, and institutional formations surrounding Asian American media activism and citizenship. [End Page 488] Essential to Asian American Media Activism is the concept of “cultural citizenship.” Citizenship in America has revolved around an individual’s legal status, granting or prohibiting the right to participate in the nation-state. Lopez contends, however, that an individual’s legal status cannot fully encompass the lived experience of citizenship. She proposes “cultural citizenship” as a framework to account for the ways that cultural practices and cultural institutions produce citizenship by facilitating shared experiences, promoting emotional connections, and building community. Cultural citizenship thus expands our definition of citizenship, and at the same time it “stands in opposition to normative assumptions about the necessity of assimilation” because it includes cultural practices and minority identities outside of the mainstream (12). With minority communities continuing to be disenfranchised by the mainstream media industry, cultural citizenship provides an analytic that navigates the complex ways in which minority groups affirm their own cultural belonging while redressing the institutions that regulate them. Media activism plays an important role in authorizing cultural citizenship. Media activism fundamentally asserts Asian America’s collective effort to stake claim over its own community in a “neoliberal media culture” that exalts individual citizenship “as something that everyone must attain for herself” (13). While Asian American activists hold individualized goals, Lopez sees their variegated yet rich interpretations of Asian American cultural citizenship as exemplary of their collective action and power. Her study migrates across media platforms to reveal the diversity, influence, and efficacy of twenty-first-century media activism. Based on her extensive experiences working with the Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), the book combines sociological ethnography with cultural critique to generate a compelling piece of research that blends academic criticism with community activism. Her turn to purportedly “devalued forms of popular culture”—like online fan forums, Twitter, and YouTube—challenges our preconceived desire for a “romanticism for a kind of ‘authentic’ or ‘real’ activism that is limited in who it can stem from or what kinds of actions and alliances it can include” in order to “expand the category of media activist to participants who might not normally be considered” (23). Asian American Media Activism investigates activism at five different institutional arenas across the contemporary media industry, moving from more traditional spaces to online social platforms. Chapters 1 and 2 examine media activism at organizations that advocate for Asian American representation in film and television. Chapter 1 details how local independent activist groups based in the Los Angeles area, particularly MANAA, organize against larger media corporations when addressing misrepresentations of Asian Americans in the media. Chapter 2 focuses on policy-oriented institutions to demonstrate how battles over regulatory policies “fall within the realm of culture” (73) because [End Page 489] “policy interventions” implicitly affect the ways that “representations are shaped, shows are created, ratings are measured, and channels are expanded” (107). Although Lopez appreciates the work of local advocacy groups, she...

> “Through this book, I imagine the possibility that later generations of media feminists might not have to do this work again: putting a stop, for a while at least, to this particular feminist ‘re’-cycle.” > > —Alexandra Juhasz, Women of Vision , 20011 > “Theories and concepts help order history, but critically informed production practice, an orientation of learning, thinking, and doing might move us out of these painful historical reveries.” > > —Angela J. Aguayo, Documentary Resistance , 20192 alexandra juhasz: In October 2017 I received …

Career choices in the millennial era have patterns that are identical to the world of technology, such as content creators, YouTubers, media activists and gamers. The guidance and counseling profession is also not a barrier for students to pursue careers in the world of technology. Based on the findings, there are two students who are pursuing careers such as YouTubers and media activists with 55.7 million subscribers and hundreds of media and video works. This research uses case study method. Data was collected by means of interviews, observation, documentation studies. Based on the results of the study, it was found that (1) these two students became YouTubers and media activists according to their potential, interests and talents. This is what is meant by the positive Self concept meant by Donald Super. Where the positive self-concept seems to be the driving force to form career patterns throughout their lives. This is manifested in totality in every work produced. (2) these two students are in the exploratory stage (15-25 years). Where they have been able to understand a profession with an interest in the talent they have. Although there is potential to develop in other directions. Keywords: youtuber, media activist, Donald Super’s Career Theory

In this article we examine how and why the media construct food risks, from the perspective of ‘media actors’ (people involved in different types of media) using data from 30 interviews conducted in 2013 with media actors from Australia and the United Kingdom. In modern society, many risks are invisible and are brought to the attention of the public through representations in the mass media. This is particularly relevant for food safety, where the widening gap between producers and consumers in the developed world has increased the need for consumer trust in the food supply. We show the importance of newsworthiness in construction of media stories about food risk using Beck’s ideas on cosmopolitan risk to interpret the data. We note the ways in which the strategies that media actors use to construct stories about food risk amplify the risk posed potentially creating consumer anxiety about the safety of the food system. It is important for food regulators and public health professionals to be aware of this anxiety when presenting information about a food incident so that they can target their message accordingly to decrease anxiety.

What are the roles of media actors in relation to civil society actors in advocacy campaigns, and what factors shape these roles? Interested in media strategies of civil society actors, the paper examines the advocacy for a ‘right to information’ law in Ghana. While journalists are obvious partners in pushing for the right to information, the civil society‐led advocacy encountered a passive media. Focused on mechanisms of engaging media actors as advocates in civil society‐led advocacy, this study relies on interviews with key actors in the advocacy campaign and textual analysis of news coverage, spanning 2010–2019. The paper posits that mainly two factors contributed to the media taking a more active role in the campaign; the Civil Society Organisations changed their approach and how they communicated and related to media actors, and media actors developed more awareness and understanding of the advocacy issue. Two important main mechanisms are uncovered in this study. First, it matters how civil society actors perceive of media actors in their media strategy, and how this in turn is received by media actors. Second, when CSOs seek to engage media as partners, it is necessary to also give room for their ownership and advocacy as independent partners.

BackgroundPrevious research has shown that the media can play a role in shaping consumer perceptions during a public health crisis. In order for public health professionals to communicate well-informed health information to the media, it is important that they understand how media view their role in transmitting public health information to consumers and decide what information to present. This paper reports the perceptions of media actors from three countries about their role in reporting information during a food incident. This information is used to present ideas and suggestions for public health professionals working with media during food incidents.MethodsThirty three semi-structured interviews with media actors from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom were conducted and analysed thematically. Media actors were recruited via purposive sampling using a sampling strategy, from a variety of formats including newspaper, television, radio and online.ResultsMedia actors said that during a food incident, they play two roles. First, they play a role in communicating information to consumers by acting as a conduit for information between the public and the relevant authorities. Second, they play a role as investigators by acting as a public watchdog.ConclusionMedia actors are an important source of consumer information during food incidents. Public health professionals can work with media by actively approaching them with information about food incidents; promoting to media that as public health professionals, they are best placed to provide the facts about food incidents; and by providing angles for further investigation and directing media to relevant and correct information to inform such investigations. Public health professionals who adapt how they work with media are more likely to influence media to portray messages that fit what they would like the public to know and that are in line with public health recommendations and enable consumers to engage in safe and health promoting behaviours in response to food incidents.

This thesis focuses on the question of the renewal of relations between media actors and audiences in the context of the digital transformation of journalism and the advent of social media. It is based on a qualitative and a quantitative content analysis of tweets related to twelve francophone news threads in 2011 and 2016. The results mainly show a gap between uniform and unidirectional uses of Twitter by media actors and the diversified, personal and interactive uses of news on Twitter by audiences. Findings suggest the persistence of long-standing trends in the relations between media actors and audiences – which remain asymmetrical (and tend to become stronger in this sense) despite the possibilities of social interactions offered by the microblogging tool Twitter – and a “resistance” by media actors, especially journalists, to change institutionalized journalistic practices.