Social Movement Media Research Articles

Book Review: Tweeting to Freedom: An Encyclopedia of Citizen Protests and Uprisings Around the World

Professors Jim Willis (Azusa Pacific University) and Anthony R. Fellow (California State University at Fullerton) edited the affordable and relevant single-volume Tweeting to Freedom: An Encyclopedia of Citizen Protests and Uprisings Around the World. The extensive teaching and research experience of Willis and Fellow is evident in the instructive and informative writing throughout. A major consideration with a reference work on a topic as quickly evolving as social media is how quickly the text will become outdated. The focus on providing context for social media movements will serve to keep the content in Tweeting to Freedom relevant, especially as the memory of the reasons for protests gets shorter and shorter. The analysis will be useful even when the examples are inevitably no longer current; however, there are many timely examples, such as references to the 2016 US presidential election.

Social Media for Empowerment in Social Movements: The Case of Malaysia's Grassroots Activism

Social media plays an instrumental role in enabling and facilitating social movements. However, this role depends on the complex social issues in a civic community and dynamics of power in movement politics. Existing literature provides little insight into the formative role of social media in social movements; instead, it tends to focus on the informational role and episodic effect of social media in community activism. We present the case of Bersih, a social media-enabled social movement that pushed for electoral reform in Malaysia. The non-partisan community-driven movement exerted public pressure on institutions and gained formal recognition. In this study, we reveal the significant role social media plays in empowering citizens by enabling them to facilitate and coordinate collective action towards producing change in their community. This research is significant in articulating the precise nature of the role of ICT in addressing complex social problems.

Social Media and Peoples Movement: A view on Role of Social Media in Jallikattu Protest

Social Media became a tool for politicians to propagate their ideas to the public and social media became a platform for common public to express their views on different socio-political issues. In January 2017, we witnessed there were huge protest across Tamilnadu supporting Jallikattu, a bull-taming traditional Tamil sport which was banned by Supreme Court of India. The messages were spread in different social networking sites and Apps to participate in the Jallikattu protest. People used Social media Like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp to organise a massive protest. With this background this paper analyses the role of social media in Jallikattu protest.

Smart and Secure? Millennials on Mobile Devices

Millennials, members of the Generation Y are constantly connected to their social circles online, they are the founders of the social media movement. These young consumers count as the largest segment of smartphone owners in most regions of the world. In fact, smartphones have become one of the most important possessions of this highly technology savvy generation. However, the advanced and widespread use of mobile devices often does not meet with the required security consciousness. People who have grown up with internet, are more likely to share personal and sensitive corporate information online by using the same device for both work and private applications, accessing free Wi-Fi networks or borrowing other devices without the appropriate protection. This work examines the crucial smartphone security risks that users face with the new technology. It aims to investigate how their practices and behaviours can pose security risks on their smartphones usage. Security practices and awareness can be improved by increasing users' knowledge. To accomplish this, education on technology is needed.

A review of Education and Social Media using functionalist and conflict theories of educational purposes

Education and Social Media: Toward a Digital Future (2016), edited by Christine Greenhow, Julia Sonnevend, and Colin Agur, is a compilation of essays by leading contributors to the digital and social media movement in education. The chapters within this volume provide a granular look at the current landscape of how digital media is utilized across educational levels, fields of study, and geographic areas. The book is divided into three sections discussing the emerging use of social media in education, challenges in its implementation, and potential directions as tech-based education continues to evolve. In this review, we situate the ideas presented in Education and Social Media in the functionalist and conflict theories of educational perspective to further illuminate the potential of digital learning in supporting increased access to education for marginalized student populations. We discuss how these competing views are both given voice in Education and Social Media, prompting the reader to critically reflect on advantages and dangers presented by increased use of technological platforms in educational settings. Topics discussed include online universities, peer-developed curriculum, and differential use of technology based on school socioeconomic demographics. We also suggest areas that have emerged in need of further discussion since the book’s publication.

“All the same thing”: liberating reproductive politics for a mediated “gay community”

Analyzing the logic by which the Boston-based, national newspaper, the Gay Community News (GCN), intervened in mid-1980s battles over abortion and foster-parenting, this case study confirms and complicates recent critiques of ahistorical and silo-ed “alternative” media theory. The GCN’s radical collective strategically mixed, dismissed, crossed, re-defined, and ignored historically and geographically specific rhetorical resources to link abortion and lesbian/gay parenting as an “all the same thing” argument for its feminist “gay liberation” politics. At once premised on and adapting an opposition between logics of liberation and of “private” choice, the GCN’s equivalence rhetoric challenges distinctions between social movement media. The case also demonstrates how, considered in their own contexts, media projects may both disrupt oppressive codes and representations, whether promulgated by the state or other activists, and reinforce or legitimize domination and privilege. Although flawed and unavoidably contingent, this creative “same thing” imagining of a feminist “gay” reproductive liberation politics, and its limits, speak powerfully still, or again, to the radical, self-interrogating, and embodied social justice solidarities urgently needed today.

A review of Education and Social Media using conflict and functionalist theories

Education and Social Media: Toward a Digital Future (2016), edited by Christine Greenhow, Julia Sonnevend, and Colin Agur, is a compilation of essays by leading contributors to the digital and social media movement in education. The chapters within this volume provide a granular look at the current landscape of how digital media is utilized across educational levels, fields of study, and geographic areas. The book is divided into three sections discussing the emerging use of social media in education, challenges in its implementation, and potential directions as tech-based education continues to evolve. In this review, we situate the ideas presented in Education and Social Media in the functionalist and conflict theories of educational perspective to further illuminate the potential of digital learning in supporting increased access to education for marginalized student populations. We discuss how these competing views are both given voice in Education and Social Media, prompting the reader to critically reflect on advantages and dangers presented by increased use of technological platforms in educational settings. Topics discussed include online universities, peer-developed curriculum, and differential use of technology based on school socioeconomic demographics. We also suggest areas that have emerged in need of further discussion since the book’s publication.

#Eduresistance: a critical analysis of the role of digital media in collective struggles for public education in the USA

ABSTRACTFrom Facebook-coordinated high-school walkouts to compelling Internet-based protest art that has accompanied recent teacher strikes, grassroots education activism in the USA has gone digital. Despite the proliferation of research on the mediatisation of education policy, few studies have explored the ways in which activists for public education engage with Web 2.0 technologies. This paper makes a contribution to this under-researched area by exploring selected activist accounts including Parents Across America, United Opt Out National, and the PS 2013 campaign in New York City. I draw on critical, feminist, and cultural studies theories of education and social movement media to analyse activist media practices in a policy and political milieu dominated by corporate media and neoliberal governance structures. The analysis reveals that progressive education activists strategically deploy digital media to amplify voice, build collective identity, and disseminate alternative knowledge to enable direct action. A situated analysis also reveals significant differences in activist media practice which are shaped by particular political histories and geographies. The paper concludes with a discussion about future lines of inquiry into the role of digital media in collective struggles for public education.

Trauma, Shared Recognition and Indigenous Resistance on Social media

This paper investigates the ways in which Indigenous Australians respond individually, and collectively, to racial vilification by means of social media sites. Introducing the concept of “shared recognition” this paper describes the collective sense of anger and frustration experienced by Indigenous people when traumatic events in the public domain act as reminders of ongoing colonialism. Three examples are explored to demonstrate collective trauma as a result of racist and discriminatory acts that are made public, and the ways in which social media is utilised by Indigenous Australians to make sense of and cope with trauma. Firstly, the Four Corners program on ABC television entitled ‘Australia’s Shame’. Secondly, a cartoon produced by the editorial cartoonist for The Australian newspaper, Bill Leak depicting Indigenous fathers as neglectful. Finally, the social media movement, #IndigenousDads, that emerged in response to these events and demonstrates ongoing resistance to colonial narratives. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s (2004) notion of “affective economies” this paper unpacks the politics of pain, shame and pride in the aftermath of both the Four Corners program and the Bill Leak cartoon.

Social Media and Political Mobilisation: An Analysis of the July 2016 Zimbabwe Shut Down

This study sought to carry out an analysis of the effects of the social media in political mobilization. These were analyzed using the following indicators (i) the social media as a communication tool and (ii) the role of social media in political mobilization. The study was using a one-day demonstration that occurred in Zimbabwe code named #ZimShutDown2016 as a case study. In the study, a qualitative case study research design was used. Secondary data from online newspaper reports and Social Media Networks was used to analyze the effects of the social media movement in bringing real socio-economic and political change in developing countries such as Zimbabwe. In-depth interviews with five key informants from local universities helped in the analysis and they were identified using purposive sampling technique. Findings from the study revealed that social media is an effective tool of communication among citizens. Information is exchanged minute by minute among citizens, and this encourages ‘citizenry journalism.’ As such, the social media has a positive impact in mobilizing the community in bringing real social, political and economic change. The study, therefore, recommends a longer survey on the challenges of the social media movement in developing countries such as Zimbabwe.

‘Part of the project of that book was not to be authentic’: neo-historical authenticity and its anachronisms in contemporary historical fiction

A redefinition of ‘authenticity’ is occurring in historical fiction, with the emergence of a ‘neo-historical’ aesthetic. Wider cultural discourses around authenticity are particularly unstable as evidenced by the renegotiation of the term through social media movements such as Instagram’s #liveauthentic community. The neo-historical impulse in fiction participates in these debates. Whereas in much historical fiction criticism the term ‘authentic’ has been synonymous with ‘accurate’ – witness the quotation from Sarah Waters in my title – the neo-historical aesthetic is differently authentic. This is evident in the use of conspicuous anachronisms through which the neo-historical both resists and incorporates postmodern discourses about the unreliability of ‘factual’ historical narratives, proposing instead new kinds of fictional histories, which are authentic in their self-awareness and honest acknowledgement of their inevitable limitations. With reference to #liveauthentic, this paper will explore the neo-historical aesthetic in novels by Emma Donoghue and Sarah Waters and historical fiction criticism from Diana Wallace and Marie-Luise Kohlke. Underpinning these debates are semiotic theories by Jonathan Culler about authenticity and tourism which illuminate the conditions of ‘authenticity’ and clarify ongoing shifts in its meaning. Rather than deconstructing all history neo-historical aesthetics use the politics and practices of deconstruction and shift the semiotic markers of authenticity to create new, fictionalised ‘neo-histories’.

The Lumad Struggle for Social and Environmental Justice: Alternative Media in a Socio-Environmental Movement in the Philippines

Abstract This study examines the role of alternative media in the socio-environmental movement for justice for the Lumad, the indigenous peoples of the southern Philippines, and the fight to protect the environment in the Philippines from extractive companies and mono-crop plantations. Using thematic textual analysis and framing analysis, the study analysed selected news articles, press releases and advocacy articles from bulatlat.com and civil society group websites posted online from September to December 2015. Anchored on Downing’s theory of alternative media as social movement media and Fuchs’ theory of alternative media as critical media, the study reveals four categories of alternative media: (1) as giver of voice to the oppressed Lumad; (2) as social movement media used for social mobilisation; (3) as an alternative media outfit fulfilling a complementary role with the socio-environmental movement; and (4) as making social movements’ offline activism visible. It concluded that alternative media play a vital role in socio-environmental movements and the continuing challenge to mitigate the climate crisis.

Media Action Research Group: toward an antiauthoritarian profeminist media research methodology

The Media Action Research Group (MARG) is an antiauthoritarian, profeminist (antiracist, anticolonial, queer, trans and anti-capitalist) group of activist-researchers both inside and outside the university, studying autonomous social movement media activism in Canada and beyond. In this article we map a taxonomy of activist-research, illustrating how MARG brings together five specific methodologies—activist-led issue-based research, militant participatory ethnography, feminist community research, prefigurative antiauthoritarian feminist participatory action research (PAFPAR), and autonomous media research—to study how women, people of colour, queer and trans people, and Indigenous people in antiauthoritarian or anarchist-leaning social movements are using grassroots media to support and report on these movements. We find that although MARG set out to create an antiauthoritarian research-activist collective, we are restricted in some ways by the intensification of neoliberalism in the university institution. Nonetheless we are able to conduct transgressive research at the intersection between antiauthoritarian activism and the academy, producing three direct and immediate impacts: within social movements, within media activism, and within the university.

Social movement documentary practices: digital storytelling, social media and organizing

ABSTRACTScholars and activists have studied social movement media for its potential to challenge dominant narratives, build community relationships and create social change. This paper presents a case study of two short-form documentary projects with Black Lives Matter 5280 and the Service Employees International Union, Local 105 in Denver, Colorado to explore how collaborative media-making projects assist in building local grassroots campaigns of racial and economic justice. The communication strategies as well as the distribution efforts via online social networks and community screenings are discussed in order to analyse how documentaries rely upon personal narratives to animate members and allies’ feelings and then connect them with traditional forms of organizing like community meetings and public demonstrations. The participatory aspects of filmmaking are viewed through democratic theory, which emphasizes the social relations of citizenship and shared communal values over material and cultural resources, rather than visual aesthetics or technical processes.

Retweeting #WorldEnvironmentDay: A study of content features and visual rhetoric in an environmental movement

Much work has been done on the role and impacts of social media in social movements, but less attention has been paid to the use of content features such as hashtags and URLs, and visual rhetoric used in persuading and mobilizing in social movements. We address this gap by analyzing a sample of 1271 tweets during World Environment Day, a yearly and global movement to commemorate and promote awareness about the environment. We examine the impacts of content features and the use of three types of visual rhetoric (ethos, pathos and logos) on retweeting, as retweeting is a measure of retransmission and expressive participation in the movement. The use of URLs was positively associated with retweeting, but the relationship is reverse for hashtags and retweeting. Ethos was the dominant persuasion strategy present in the visual rhetoric, and the use of both Ethos and Pathos were significantly associated with retweeting.

Toward transformative media organizing: LGBTQ and Two-Spirit media work in the United States

This article summarizes key findings from a strengths and needs assessment of media work by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans*, Queer (LGBTQ) and Two-Spirit organizations in the United States, conducted in 2014–2015. This mixed-methods participatory research included a nationwide organizational survey with 231 respondents, 19 expert interviews, and a series of workshops with project partners and advisers. We found that despite scarce resources, many LGBTQ and Two-Spirit organizations have an intersectional analysis of linked systems of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other axes of identity and structural inequality. Many seek to do media work that develops the critical consciousness and leadership of their communities, create media in ways that are deeply accountable to their social base, use participatory approaches to media making, are strategic and cross-platform in their approach, and root their work in community action. We call this combination of characteristics transformative media organizing, and we believe it describes an emerging paradigm for social movement media practices in the current media landscape.

Book Review: Social Media: How to Engage, Share, and Connect, by Regina Luttrell, Measuring the Impact of Social Media on Business Profit & Success: A Fortune 500 Perspective, by Cong Li and Don Stacks, Participatory Culture, Community, and Play—Learning from Reddit, by Adrienne L. Massanari, Social Networking: Redefining Communication in the Digital Age, by Anastacia Kurylo and Tatyana Dumova (Eds.),

Book Review: <i>Social Media: How to Engage, Share, and Connect</i>, by Regina Luttrell, <i>Measuring the Impact of Social Media on Business Profit &amp; Success: A Fortune 500 Perspective</i>, by Cong Li and Don Stacks, <i>Participatory Culture, Community, and Play—Learning from Reddit</i>, by Adrienne L. Massanari, <i>Social Networking: Redefining Communication in the Digital Age</i>, by Anastacia Kurylo and Tatyana Dumova (Eds.),

¿Cómo contribuyen las redes sociales en el desarrollo de la subjetividad en sociedades autoritarias? El caso de #YoSoy132 en México

This paper seeks to address how social media is shaping the traditional structures of power in some countries known to have an authoritarian government, such being the case of Mexico. Online conversations give users tremendous visibility.&#x0D; We will enlist the characteristics of why Mexico is considered authoritarian. Then, with the example of #YoSoy132, we will argue how social media conversations are becoming a common practice that can strengthen citizenship. We will prove that these practices innovate information production and allow citizen surveillance, therefore they make users visible actors. Before social media, government control went hand in hand with opaque practices and collusion of mass media. We examine the conflict between authoritarian practices in Mexico and the logic of visibility, that we understand as a form of citizenship behavior emerging in amateur social media discourse that nourishes itself from the audiovisual world. Relying on a methodology based on a conceptual framework of social movements, we analyzed online conversations as empirical evidence of the social media movement. We find a civic symbolic imaginary that corresponds to the sociocultural moment of the first decade of 2000.

Social Media and Social Movements: The Transformation of Communication Patterns

Social Media and Social Movements: The Transformation of Communication Patterns

White Women Wanted? An Analysis of Gender Diversity in Social Justice Magazines

The role of media in collective action repertoires has been extensively studied, but media as an agent of socialization in social movement identity is less understood. It could be that social movement media is normalizing a particular activist identity to the exclusion of other demographics. For instance, Harper has identified white-centrism in anti-speciesist media produced by the Nonhuman Animal rights movement and supposes that this lack of diversity stunts movement potential. Using the lesser-studied Nonhuman Animal rights movement as a starting point, this study investigates two prominent Nonhuman Animal rights magazines. We compare those findings with an analysis of comparable leftist movements also known to exhibit diversity strains. A content analysis of Nonhuman Animal rights, women’s rights, and gay rights magazine covers spanning from 2000 to 2012 was undertaken to determine the manifestation of gender, race, body type, and sexualization. We find that the Nonhuman Animal rights media in our sample overwhelmingly portrays white women with a tendency toward thinness, but with low levels of sexualization as comparable to that of the other movements. All three movement samples unevenly depicted gender, overrepresented whites, and underrepresented non-thin body types.