scholarly journals Social Movements and Political Agency in the Digital Age: A Communication Approach

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 8-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Kavada
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Communicative Process ◽  
Communication Approach

Digital media pose a dual challenge to conventional understandings of political agency. First, digital media destabilize long-held assumptions about the nature of collective action, about social movements and their capacity to effect change. This is because digital media are thought to facilitate more decentralized, dispersed, temporary and individualized forms of political action that subvert the notion of the collective as singular, unified, homogeneous, coherent, and mass. One way of resolving this challenge is to view the collective in looser terms, as a process rather than as a finished product, a conceptualization that can be influence our understanding not only of social movements, but also of other political actors and of society as a whole. Second, digital media highlight the need to take communication seriously in how we conceptualize both collective action and political agency. Placing communication at the centre allows us to develop this looser and more processual understanding of the collective by studying it as a process that is constituted in and through communication. Inspired by organizational communication and particularly the work of Taylor and van Every (2000), this essay proposes a conception of collective action as emerging in conversations and solidified in texts. This conceptualization allows for a more multiplex and variegated view of political agency that takes into account the specific context where agency is exercised and the power that different actors can exert in a communicative process of negotiation, persuasion and claim-making.

One Foot on the Streets, One Foot on the Web

2018 ◽  
pp. 443-453
Author(s):  
Paolo Gerbaudo
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Digital Politics ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Web

Digital communication technologies are modifying how social movements communicate internally and externally and the way participants are organized and mobilized. This transformation calls for a rethinking of how we conceive of and analyze them. Scholars cannot be content with studying the digital and the physical or the online and the offline separately, but must explore the imbrication between these aspects by studying how the elements of social movements combine in a political “ensemble,” an ecosystem, or an action texture, defining the possibilities and limits of collective action. This chapter proposes a qualitative methodology combining analysis of digital media with observations of events and interviews with participants to develop a holistic account of collective action. This methodology is best positioned to capture the changing nature and meaning of protest action in a digital era, producing a “thick account” of the relationship between digital politics and everyday life.

Indigenous peoples as international political actors: a summary

Polar Record ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 264-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Tennberg
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Interests

ABSTRACTThe article discusses the results of a three year research project studying international indigenous political activism using case studies from the Arctic. Drawing on two different disciplinary starting points, international relations and international law, the project addressed two interrelated questions. The first of these was how relations between states, international organisations and indigenous peoples have been and are currently constructed as legal and political practices; the second was how indigenous peoples construct their political agency through different strategies to further their political interests. These questions are addressed from the point of view of power relations. The power to act is the basic form of political agency. However, this power may take different forms of political action, for example, self-identification, participation, influence, and representation. The main conclusions of the article are: 1) indigenous political agency is based on multiple forms of power; 2) practices of power that enable and constrain indigenous political agency change over time; 3) power circulates and produces multiple sites of encounters for states, international organisations and indigenous people; 4) indigenous political agency is a question of acting; and 5) there are new challenges ahead for indigenous peoples in claiming a political voice, in particular in global climate politics.

A Grassroots Approach to the Democratic Role of the Internet in Developing Countries

2013 ◽  
pp. 218-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Ben Moussa
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The North

This chapter explores the role of the Internet in collective action in Morocco, and examines the extent to which the medium has empowered civil society and social movements in the North African country. Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted with activists belonging to key social movement organizations, the article analyzes how the appropriation of the Internet in activism is mediated through the socioeconomic and political structures proper to Morocco as a semi-authoritarian and developing country. In so doing, it sheds light on various intersections between technology diffusion, social movements’ organizational structures, and multiple forms of power relationships among social and political actors. The article argues that the Internet has certainly transformed collective action repertoire deployed by Moroccan social movements; nevertheless, it also demonstrates that the impact of the Internet is conditioned by multiple forms of digital divides that are significantly shaping its implications for social and political change in the country.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 144-168
Author(s):  
Jun Liu
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Mobile Communication ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Contention ◽  
People’S Perception ◽  
Shed Light

This chapter summarizes the implication of the embedding of mobile communication into politics in contemporary China. The political relevance of mobile technologies relies not just on their capacity for providing affordable communication to human agency and generating new mediated visibility, but the relevance of these devices also relies on their capacity to carve out new opportunities for political action, to accumulate social resources as mobilizing structures against authoritarianism, and to shape people’s perception of their (potential) political agency or political subjectivity. Whereas mobile communication technologies entail new affordances to the Chinese people who are engaging in politics, the conclusion further broadens the scope of investigation to cases of political contention beyond China in order to illustrate how and to what extent the communication-centered framework may shed light on the case beyond China to more precisely pin down the influence of ICTs on contentious collective action.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Jun Liu
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Mobile Communication ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Chinese Society

The introduction assesses and identifies lacunae and challenges in the existing literature on ICTs and contentious collective action. Through a survey of relevant scholarship on social movement and contentious politics, this chapter proposes to explicitly make communication a key element in a tripartite framework of contentious politics and social movements and, further, to regard communication as an intermediary between ICTs and contentious collective action. The introductory chapter further elucidates the embeddedness of mobile communication technologies within Chinese society and, thus, it has become a context for (political) action as well and can therefore have an impact on contentious politics.

scholarly journals Fantasies of Participation: The Situationist Imaginary of New Forms of Labour in Art and Politics

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (49-50) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Grindon
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
State Control ◽  
Situationist International ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Conditioning Control ◽  
Radical Movements

The Situationist International (SI) have become a canonical reference point when discussing artists’ participation in political action or activism. This article attempts to decentre the SI from this position, by tracing their theories and representations of political agency and labour. I argue that their notion of agency is deeply conflicted, epitomized by the dual invocations ‘never work/all power to the workers’ councils. I examine how the SI’s representations of agency betray an attraction to and fascination with 1960s reactionary fantasies around brainwashing, conditioning, control and torture. Their practical descriptions of a constructed situation, which ‘makes people live’ are, in fact, closer to torturous state control than total liberation. The notions of agency they mobilise draw on colonial and classist sources, which actually deny the agency of radical movements. As a result, the SI produce a series of weak fantasies of participation, in which agency is denied and ‘demanding the impossible’ is actually a demand to constitute and police the impossible. Artistic-political agency was both guarded centre and constituent other. The SI’s policing of their identity, tied in name to the agency of ‘situations’, involved the ongoing exclusion and repression of other artists’ more practically-engaged labour within social movements.

Grievance-based social movement mobilization in the #Ferguson Twitter storm

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Kay LeFebvre ◽  
Crystal Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Movement Mobilization ◽  
Movement Participation ◽  
Protest Activity

Existing literature on collective action suggests that social protest activity is often driven by structural out-group grievances. This article explores how a framework of grievance-based social movement participation applies to the digital media realm and how social media are reshaping the protest landscape. Our research looks specifically at the case of the #Ferguson Twitter storm that occurred in November 2014. During a 3-week period, over 6 million tweets were sent with the indicator #Ferguson. We examine the statistics and content of those tweets to show that the Ferguson Twitter storm was driven to an enormous volume by four key mobilizers. Tweet content included structural out-group grievances that reflect established expectations about drivers of social movements and protests. In contrast to the emphasis on violence by traditional mass media, online social movement participants emphasized peace, especially after the conflict escalated and rioting in the streets began.

Promoting or Preventing Change Through Political Participation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert Klandermans
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Group Efficacy ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Identity Model ◽  
Social Level

This chapter examines political participation as a unique capacity possessed by humans that “fundamentally shapes a human being.” It argues that without political participation, we would lose much of our identity as “political actors” who seek to influence and change the world they live in. The chapter first explains what political participation is and why some people participate in collective political action while others do not. It then considers a range of individual factors that motivate political participation, such as ideology, identity, emotion, and instrumentality, and the role of social-level factors including social networks. It also describes a social identity model of collective action (SIMCA), which suggests that affective injustice (e.g., group-based anger), perceived group efficacy, and politicized collective identity predict engagement in collective action. The chapter concludes by discussing moral obligation as a motive for participating in political collective action.

scholarly journals Time’s Up for a Change of Political Focus: Katniss Everdeen’s Ecofeminist Leadership in The Hunger Games Film Series

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-109
Author(s):  
Mónica Martín
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Hunger Games ◽  
The Hunger Games ◽  
Film Series ◽  
New Generation

This article explores Katniss Everdeen’s ecofeminist political agency in The Hunger Games film series (2012-2015) in the light of global social movements in the late 2010s. As a young destitute woman who defies the oppressive rules of an oligarchic and patriarchal totalitarian order, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) represents the utopian potential of intersectional politics forged across class, gender, racial and geopolitical borders. In opposition to ecocidal and patriarchal conceptions of progress, Katniss’s ecofeminist heroism is illustrative of the emergence of cosmopolitan political imaginaries that advocate sustainable, egalitarian collective futures constructed beyond the methodological frameworks of neoliberal globalisation and material dialectics. Contemporary with young activists like Greta Thunberg, one of the founders of the ecological movement Fridays for Future, Katniss can be taken as a cinematic representative of a new generation of utopian political actors for whom individual well-being is tied to ecosocial welfare and cosmopolitan inclusion.

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