The Routledge Companion to Media and Activism Routledge Media and Cultural Studies Companions Series

The Routledge Companion to Media and Activism is a wide-ranging collection of 42 original and authoritative essays by leading contributors from a variety of academic disciplines.

Introducing and exploring central debates about the diverse relationships between both media and protest, and communication and social change, the book offers readers a reliable and informed guide to understanding how media and activism influence one another. The expert contributors examine the tactics and strategies of protest movements, and how activists organize themselves and each other; they investigate the dilemmas of media coverage and the creation of alternative media spaces and platforms; and they emphasize the importance of creativity and art in social change.

Bringing together case studies and contributors from six continents, the collection is organized around themes that address past, present and future developments from around the world. The Routledge Companion to Media and Activism is an essential reference and guide for those who want to understand this vital area.

Contents

Notes on contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction: making meanings and making trouble

GRAHAM MEIKLE

Part I — THEMES

1) Looking back, looking ahead: what has changed in social movement media since the internet and social media?

JOHN D. H. DOWNING

2) The nexus between media, communication and social movements: looking back and the way forward

DONATELLA DELLA PORTA and ELENA PAVAN

3) Nonviolent activism and the media: Gandhi and beyond

SEAN SCALMER

4) Can the Women’s Peace Camp be televised?: challenging mainstream media coverage of Greenham Common

ANNA FEIGENBAUM

5) Artistic activism

STEPHEN DUNCOMBE and STEVE LAMBERT

6) Alternative computing

LEAH A. LIEVROUW

Part II — ORGANIZATIONS AND IDENTITIES

7) Transformative media organizing: key lessons from participatory communications research with the immigrant rights, Occupy, and LGBTQ and Two-Spirit movements

SASHA COSTANZA-CHOCK

8) Affective publics and windows of opportunity: social media and the potential for social change

ZIZI PAPACHARISSI and MEGGAN TAYLOR TREVEY

9) Social media and contentious action in China

ZIXUE TAI

10) Connective or collective?: the intersection between online crowds and social movements in contemporary activism

ANASTASIA KAVADA

11) The communicative core of working class organization

JESSE DREW

12) Digital activism and the future of worker resistance

LINA DENCIK and PETER WILKIN

13) Forming publics: alternative media and activist cultural practices

RICARDA DRÜEKE and ELKE ZOBL

14) Social media activism, self-representation and the construction of political biographies

VERONICA BARASSI

Part III — ACTIVIST ARTS

15) Cats, punk, arson and new media: art activism in Russia 2007–2015

YNGVAR B. STEINHOLT

16) Art as activism in Japan: the case of a good-for-nothing kid and her pussy

MARK McLELLAND

17) Music and activism: from prefigurative to pragmatic politics

ANDREW GREEN and JOHN STREET

18) Small ‘p’ politics and minor gestures: political artists, politics and aesthetics in contemporary art

MARIA MIRANDA and NORIE NEUMARK

19) I can haz rights?: online memes as digital embodiment of craft(ivism)

VICTORIA ESTEVES

20) Feminist protest assemblages and remix culture

RED CHIDGEY

Part IV — TACTICS OF VISIBILITY

21) Affective activism and political secularism: the unending body in the Femen movement

CAMILLA MØHRING REESTORFF

22) The purchase of witnessing in human rights activism

SANDRA RISTOVSKA

23) Palestine online: occupation and liberation in the digital age

MIRIYAM AOURAGH

24) Turning murders into public executions: 'Beheading videos' as alternative media

JOE F. KHALIL

25) Urban graffiti, political activism and resistance

NOUREDDINE MILADI

26) Leaktivism and its discontents

ATHINA KARATZOGIANNI

27) Counter-cartography: mapping power as collective practice

ANDRÉ MESQUITA (translated by Victoria Esteves)

Part V — CONTESTING NARRATIVES

28) Climate justice, hacktivist sensibilities, prototypes of change

ADRIENNE RUSSELL

29) The British National Party: digital discourse and power

CHRIS ATTON

30) Mapping social media trajectories in Zimbabwe

BRUCE MUTSVAIRO

31) The case of the destroyed plaque: social media, collective memory, and activism in Cartagena, Colombia

ANAMARIA TAMAYO-DUQUE and TOBY MILLER

32) The media strategy of the Aboriginal Black Power, Land Rights and Self-determination movement

GARY FOLEY and EDWINA HOWELL

Part VI — CHANGING THE MEDIA

33) Policy activism: advocating, protesting and hacking media regulation

ARNE HINTZ

34) Media activism: media change?

NATALIE FENTON

35) Fan activism

SAMANTHA CLOSE

36) Acting out: resisting copyright monopolies

STEVE COLLINS

37) Disability and media activism

KATIE ELLIS and GERARD GOGGIN

Part VII — BEYOND SOCIAL MEDIA

38) From digital activism to algorithmic resistance

EMILIANO TRERÉ

39) On the question of blockchain activism

OLIVER LEISTERT

40) 'Dear Mr. Neo-Nazi, can you please give me your informed consent so that I can quote your fascist tweet?': questions of social media research ethics in online ideology critique

CHRISTIAN FUCHS

41) Beyond 'report, block, ignore': informal responses to trolling and harassment on social media

FRANCES SHAW

42) Organized networks in the age of platform capitalism

GEERT LOVINK and NED ROSSITER

Graham Meikle is Professor of Communication and Digital Media at the University of Westminster in London. His other books include Social Media: Communication, Sharing and Visibility and Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet.