Media Protest Research Articles

Протестный медиа-активизм в современной России и перспективы его развития

The article attempts to study protest media activism in modern Russia, taking into account the manifestation of its new forms, such as online rallies, as well as an analysis of the prospects for its further application in the protest practice of modern Russia. The conclusion is made about the ambiguity of the use of new media technologies to consolidate the protest potential of the Russian society, which is associated with the presence of trends in the growth of the Internet users and the increase in state control over the sphere of public communications on the Internet.

The gender of the meme: women and protest media in populist Hungary

ABSTRACT Building on my research on what is called O1G activism in Hungary, this essay examines how and why the Internet meme becomes a gendered medium in particular sociopolitical contexts. O1G abbreviates a vulgar statement about Hungary’s prime minister that Internet users transformed into ever more creative Internet memes and circulated on social media. Although gender-based language norms discouraged women from using vulgar language, women nevertheless played a pivotal role in expanding O1G activism. Using NVivo to analyze the 646 O1G memes I collected for this project, I highlight that, curiously, women contributed Internet memes to O1G activism that reconnected them to gender-normative spaces, forms of labor, and behaviors. They produced memes that portrayed O1G nail designs, O1G cookies, and protests that paired O1G signs with flowers, teddy bears, and balloons. These memes illustrate that in a context in which toxic masculinity pervades political culture, Internet memes will also be gendered when used as protest media. Although O1G memes reinforced associations between women and feminized affective labor, paradoxically they also helped women gain visibility in political activism. I conclude that women’s production of O1G memes was an important step toward making political culture more inclusive in Hungary.

Internet Memes as Protest Media in Populist Hungary

ABSTRACTScholars propose that memes are efficient tools of political mobilization as they stimulate large masses to take up a cause. Focusing on what is called O1G activism in Hungary, I demonstrate that the role of memes in political activism is conditioned by the particular sociopolitical contexts in which they are produced. In Hungary, activists used social media to assemble databases of O1G memes, but this strategy was not conducive to building narrative capacity. These databases, however, galvanized other prominent developments. They helped make the domain of politics more inclusive by reconfiguring the affective tone of engagement from confrontation to conversation.

The igniter and the megaphone: Perceptions of Facebook’s role in activism

The study examines perceptions of the significance and roles of new and mainstream media in protests, using interviews with 31 individuals involved in the 2011 protests in Israel: Activists and Campaigners, who organized the protests ‘on the ground’; Techies, who operated the digital presence of the protests; and Journalists, who covered the protests. Findings indicate that the perceptions of media’s significance and roles varied greatly. While Techies attributed a significant role to the Internet, Activists and Journalists placed greater emphasis on the enduring dominance of mainstream media. In addition, interviewees argued that the Internet, particularly Facebook, has a greater added value in supporting protests associated with peripheral than central regions. Finally, most interviewees argued that the Internet, particularly Facebook, was highly significant to the success of the protest in its early stages, but mainstream media coverage is necessary for achieving wider public recognition and legitimacy in subsequent stages.

The Media Protest of Neighbouring Associations, Promoter of Citizen Democratic Culture during Transition in Southern Spain

In the current context of placing value on the neighbouring movement within the Spanish democratic Transition, we set out to confirm that the press actively participates in the growing conjunction of neighbouring issues with political content and contributes to the idea that this movement becomes a parameter of the democratic culture for the citizen during Transition. Since the conflict is newsworthy, we conduct a micro-social study of the neighbouring protest in the newspaper <em>El Correo de Andalucía</em>, published in the southern Spanish city of Seville. Through analysis of content, we study the informative flow and the repertoire of protest following a typology that distinguishes four formats (demonstrations, strikes, speeches and associations) divided into two levels of conflict. The analysis sample consists of 33 texts published between November 1975 (Franco’s death and the accession to the throne of Juan Carlos I) and June 1977 (the first democratic general elections). The main conclusion reveals that the newspaper becomes a platform that gives visibility to the neighbouring movement, normalising behaviours and procedure rules through the protest.

Comparing Digital Protest Media Imaginaries: Anti-Austerity Movements in Greece, Italy & Spain

This article presents findings from an empirical study of repertoires of contention and communication engaged during anti-austerity protests by the Indignados in Spain, the precarious generation in Italy, and the Aganaktismenoi in Greece. Drawing on 60 semi­structured interviews with activists and independent media producers involved in the 2011 wave of contention, we bring together social movement and communications theoretical frameworks to present a comparative critical analysis of digital protest media imaginaries. After examining the different socio-political and protest media contexts of the three countries translocally, our critical analysis emphasizes the emergence of three different imaginaries: in Spain the digital protest media imaginary was technopolitical, grounded in the politics and political economies of communication technologies emerging from the free culture movement; in Italy this imaginary was techno-fragmented, lacking cohesion, and failed to bring together old and new protest media logics; and finally in Greece it was techno-pragmatic, envisioned according to practical objectives that reflected the diverse politics and desires of media makers rather than the strictly technological or political affordances of the digital media forms and platforms. This research reveals how pivotal the temporal and geographical dimensions are when analyzed using theoretical perspectives from both communications and social movement research; moreover it emphasizes the importance of studying translocal digital protest media imaginaries as they shape movement repertoires of contention and communication; both elements are crucial to better understanding the challenges, limitations, successes and opportunities for digital protest media.

Enabling disabled participation in sport: Roadrunning

The Old Mutual Two Oceans Marathon (OMTOM) and Comrades Marathon were challenged by wheelchair participants to enter their ultramarathon races in 2016, despite the ultramarathon being physically challenging over 56 km and 90 km respectively. The terrain for both is mountainous, exacerbating the physical challenge of the distance. Initially both events declined entry to two wheelchair participants, based on procedural, logistical and safety grounds, prompting social media protests and debate. This commentary focuses in brief on the two sides of the same coin: the rights of disabled and specifically wheelchair athletes to be included in ultramarathons in South Africa; and the management and regulatory responsibilities of event organisers in these complex events.

Media Ecology and the Politics of Dissent: Representations of the Hong Kong Protests in The Guardian and China Daily

The phenomenon of protests, currently on the rise in worldwide democracies, is made known to citizens mainly through representations in the media. This article, responding to the need for a broader view of protest media coverage in an international context, examines the ways the 2014 Hong Kong (HK) protests were covered by the online versions of two highly influential and appealing newspapers, belonging to contrasting media systems: The Guardian and China Daily. By revising a typology of previously used frames and inventing new ones, this study conducts a quantitative content analysis of news articles with the view to (a) highlight similarities and differences in the media coverage of protests within the above-mentioned media systems, (b) find out whether the media coverage of such events with political ramifications is affected by the geopolitical interests of the countries. Based on our analysis, this study suggests the need for revising the protest paradigm as important factors—the protests’ momentum, the media systems, the new information communication technologies, and certain geopolitical interests—are involved in the dynamics surrounding media coverage of protests and as such they greatly influence the framing process. Moreover, our findings demonstrated that the media coverage of the 2014 HK protests by the two newspapers was reflective of both the media systems in which they function and the distinctive national standpoints.

Moving Feelings, Intimate Moods and Migrant Protest in Cardiff

In a public mood of marked hostility around asylum, emotion overflows protest media produced as part of recent migrant mobilisations. Protest media seeks to touch audiences, to stir public feeling for migrants, to build a sense of collectivity, and to move the collective to action, but the emotional modes used also work sideways to produce uneasy and unpredictable affects. This article examines the ‘cultural politics of emotion’(Ahmed 2004) in three pieces of media produced as part of recent refugee protests in Cardiff, Wales: a book of asylum-seeking women’s testimonies, a series of antideportation blog posts and videos, and a ‘Refugee House’ museum installation. Feelings declared outright, such as love, rage and despair, work to move publics outright, but also relegate participants into confined genres of action and subjectivity. Uneasy effects generated through the media’s aesthetics and materiality stir up other, more ambivalent and mobile emotional modes. This article explores the qualities of these uneasy affects, and how they might alter moods around asylum for political effect.

Body Image as Strategy for Engagement in Social Media

Worldwide, the use of digital communication networks has been a key strategy in activist events involving demonstrations. Its use was evident in the media’s repeated publication of pictures taken on demonstrators’ mobile phones during actions that have overthrown heads of state during the Arab Spring in 2011. In countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, social network websites and mobile communication devices (phones and notebooks) were used widely for organizing participants and for recording events. This work intends to analyze not only how communication technologies have contributed to the emergence of such events but also how image production can be interpreted in such environments. Since the use of social media in protests caught the attention of broadcasting media in 2009 during demonstrations in Iran, a strong connection can be noticed between the content circulating through digital communication technologies and the body. For images produced during the Arab Spring, the same is observed with a series of strategies connecting body image and social mobilization. Our intention is to contribute to the debate of political images, considering the way they have been produced in contemporary society, which deals with a complex environment composed of communication technologies, social organization, and the body itself.

ПРОТЕСТНЫЙ ДИСКУРС: ОПТИКА ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ

ПРОТЕСТНЫЙ ДИСКУРС: ОПТИКА ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ

The Professional Protester: Emergence of a New News Media Protest Coverage Paradigm in Time Magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year Issue

The Professional Protester: Emergence of a New News Media Protest Coverage Paradigm in Time Magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year Issue

Traditional protest media and anti‐military struggle in Nigeria 1988–1999

This article, derived from an extensive research report sponsored by the Ford Foundation through a grant administered by the African Centre for Democratic Government, Nigeria documents the deployment of traditional media theatre, oratory, folk music in the anti-military struggle of 1988-99 in Nigeria. These resources were used successfully by civil society to engage the authoritarian state in this period, notwithstanding the state's use of them to bolster its hegemony. Most of the protest artists were persecuted, but maintained their position and thereby deepened social anger against the military. THIS ARTICLE SEEKS TO DOCUMENT POPULAR RESISTANCE to military dictatorship through the use of traditional protest media in the Yorubaspeaking area of Nigeria. Based on fieldwork conducted in Ibadan and Lagos between January and June 2000, it shows how in times of repression, when the regular channels of free expression are closed or suppressed, civil society falls back on indigenous modes of communication to express dissent and to censure the authorities. Ibadan and Lagos were selected as study sites because they contain a rare concentration of indigenous media workers such as Ewi poets, theatre artistes, and folk musicians, whose work was scrutinized, and with whom this researcher carried out in-depth interviews. Historical and archival research was employed to complement the insights gained from primary data. As is well known, the period between the late 1980s and 1999 when a civilian democracy was inaugurated, was one of intense repression in Nigeria. The woes of a failed structural adjustment policy, aborted transitions and the ravages of a predatory and monumentally corrupt military class brought a once thriving nation to its knees, and to the bottom of the international economic pecking order. A 'transition without end' mounted by General Babangidal culminated in an annulled election in 1993, and gave way to the dark age of the Abacha period, between late 1993 and 1998. The brutal dictator's death in June 1998 ushered in the government of General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who, under pressure from a resurgent civil The author is a lecturer in political science at Lagos State University, Nigeria. He was formerly editorial page editor of the Daily Times, Nigeria's oldest newspaper. 1. Larry Diamond, Anthony Kirk-Greene and Oyeleye Oyediran (eds), Transition Without End: Nigerian politics and civil society under Babangida (Vantage Publishers, Ibadan, 1997).