Social media and activism

This entry provides an overview of the ways in which social media and digital networks are contextualized and examined in relation to social movements and activism. A number of communicative practices that activists deploy are identified and the ways in which information and communication technology (ICT)-mediated practices are embedded in roles and functions relevant to activists and social movements are addressed giving attention to the importance of social ties and networks online and offline and to constraints and limitations of ICT use. Networks and communicative practices increasingly manifest themselves as a field of contention which is giving rise to a digital rights and freedoms agenda that is being embraced by activists, non-governmental organizations and social movements

15 years of protest and media technologies scholarship: A sociotechnical timeline

This article investigates the relationship between the invention of new media technologies and scholarship concerning protest and political engagement. Building on an innovative approach that moves beyond a systematic literature review, this article contributes to our understanding of scholarship concerning digital communication technologies and how they may have been adopted and shaped protest movements and political engagement. Based on visualizations, we draw a sociotechnical timeline of protest and media technology scholarship within three dimensions: technological development, methods and techniques, and the social phenomena under investigation. The article concludes by identifying major trends in protest and media technologies scholarship over the past 15 years. The sociotechnical timeline enhances our understanding of academic discourse at the intersection of protest and media technologies by highlighting shortcomings and potential for future research

Copy when uncertain: lower light levels increase trail pheromone deposition and reliance on pheromone trails in ants

Animals may gather information from multiple sources, and these information sources may conflict. Theory predicts that, all else being equal, reliance on a particular information source will depend on its information content relative to other sources. Information conflicts are a good area in which to test such predictions. Social insects, such as ants, make extensive use of both private information (e.g. visual route memories) and social information (e.g. pheromone trails) when attempting to locate a food source. Importantly, eusocial insects collaborate on food retrieval, so both information use and information provision may be expected to vary with the information content of alternative information sources. Many ants, such as Lasius niger, are active both day and night. Variation in light levels represents an ecologically important change in the information content of visually-acquired route information. Here, we examine information use and information provision under high light levels (3200 lux, equivalent to a bright but overcast day), moderate light levels simulating dusk (10 lux) and darkness (0.007 lux, equivalent to a moonless night). Ants learn poorly, or not at all, in darkness. As light levels decrease, ants show decreasing reliance on private visual information, and a stronger reliance on social information, consistent with a ‘copy when uncertain’ strategy. In moderate light levels and darkness, pheromone deposition increases, presumably to compensate for the low information content of visual information. Varying light levels for cathemeral animals provides a powerful and ecologically meaningful method for examining information use and provision under varying levels of information content

Exploring the impact of an evolving war and terror blogosphere on traditional media coverage of conflict

This article analyses the evolution of a war and terror blogosphere between 2001 and 2011. It identifies seven areas where blogs and related online genres could provide ‘alternative’ accounts to traditional media narratives of conflict. The article also assesses the challenges and opportunities of blogs in each area from the perspective of the working journalist in order to deepen our understanding of the changing influence of blogs on traditional media narratives of conflict. Parallel accounts and interpretations of conflict will collaborate and compete in a war and terror blogosphere in the future, but it has been significantly influenced by the adoption of blogging by military actors since 2008. The war and terror blogosphere is no longer a relatively unmonitored online space which is having an impact on both the production of ‘alternative’ accounts of conflict and the incorporation of these accounts into traditional journalism

Democracy, protest and public sphere in Russia after the 2011–2012 anti-government protests: digital media at stake

The 2011–2012 Russian protest mobilisations were largely enabled by the rise of social networks. Social and technological advancements paired to pave the way for the ‘biggest protests since the fall of USSR’. Ubiquitous and uncensored social media facilitated the networking and mobilisation for this protest activity: Liberal masses were able to share and discuss their grievances, unite and coordinate online for the offline protest. The digitally savvy protest public developed to confront the government, which appeared to be astonished by the scale of protest. Those mobilisations marked an important gap between the government’s conception of the society and the real state of resistance. This article studies three main hypotheses regarding the potential of the protest movement in Russia. The hypotheses were drawn from recent sociological, political and media studies on Russian resistance. Current research aims to contribute to the debate from the digital media perspective. It therefore evaluates three main assumptions: Digital media have the potential to empower, dependent upon the relevant political, social and economic factors; digital media isolates protest publics and therefore may be more useful for the government than the resistance; and recent censorship of digital media communication signals a tightening of both formal and informal restrictions against opposition and protest politics. This article uses theoretical and factual evidence on the limitations of democracy and the public sphere and conceptualises the government’s management of resistance in Russia during and after the 2011–2012 protests. It studies how the hybrid political regime in Russia balances restrictions on freedom of speech with strengthened state propaganda and how it mediates media oppression and invites self-censorship. Finally, it examines how the state communication watchdog has recently focused its attention at the digital realm. This move confirms the importance of the online protest communication for the Russian political environment. Yet the state’s acknowledgement of digital political resistance may lead to further oppression and curbing of this emerging component of Russian politics

The participation paradigm in audience research

As today's media simultaneously converge and diverge, fusing and hybridizing across digital services and platforms, some researchers argue that audiences are dead-long live the user! But for others, it is the complex interweaving of continuities and changes that demands attention, especially now that audiencing has become a vital mode of engaging with all dimensions of daily life. This article asks how we should research audiences in a digital networked age. I argue that, while many avenues are being actively pursued, many researchers are concentrating on the notion of participation, asking, on the one hand, what modes of participation are afforded to people by the particular media and communication infrastructures which mediate social, cultural or political spheres of life? And, on the other hand, how do people engage with, accede to, negotiate or contest this as they explore and invent new ways of connecting with each other through and around media? The features of this emerging participation paradigm of audience research are examined in this article

Subjectivity 2.0 : digital technologies, participatory media and communicative capitalism

Drawing on observations and focus group material from pervasive drama project, The Memory Dealer, this article explores both the dynamics and the limitations of existing models of digital subjectivity. It interrogates, in particular, constructions of the digital subject within critical internet studies, focusing on the work of Jodi Dean. This model of subjectivity argues that participatory digital media are a conduit through which the subject is ‘captured’ and shaped to suit the needs of capital. It is suggested here, however, that framing subjective engagements with technology as inevitably being relations of capture, is dangerous in foreclosing scope for resistance and inter-subjective political action. The article ultimately argues that there is a need to reconceptualise the digital subject away from models of capture and towards a more situated, material analysis of the affordances enabled by subjective entanglements with technology

Public Service Broadcasting-Friends Groups as a Microcosm of Public Interest Media Advocacy

This article is concerned with the interdependencies between public service broadcasters and the third sector, an area in which there is little research that has provided in-depth analysis of case studies. It investigates and compares three public service broadcasting (PSB)-Friends groups in the UK, Australia, and South Africa. By means of analyzing semi-structured interviews and archival data, we address development, institutionalization and policy impact of the Voice of the Listener & Viewer, ABC-Friends, and SOS Coalition. Drawing on resource-mobilization theory we argue that, in particular, material, human, and informational resources, contextualized with political opportunities, have analytic value in explaining similarities and differences between the groups, which are conceived as a microcosm of public interest media advocacy