PosterVote:expanding the action repertoire for local political activism

Online and digital technologies support and extend the action repertoires of localized social movements. In this paper we examine the ways by which digital technologies can support ‘on-the-ground ’ activist communities in the development of social movements. After identifying some of the challenges of deploying conventional voting and consultation technologies for activism, we examine situated political action in local communities through the design and deployment of a low-cost community voting prototype, PosterVote. We deploy PosterVote in two case studies with two local community organizations identifying the features that supported or hindered grassroots democratic practices. Through interviews with these communities, we explore the design of situated voting systems to support grassroots democratic practices and participation within an ecology of social action. Author Keywords Democracy; activism; participation; e-votin

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

Restoration of biogeomorphic systems by creating windows of opportunity to support natural establishment processes

In degraded landscapes, recolonization by pioneer vegetation is often halted by the presence of persistent environmental stress. When natural expansion does occur, it is commonly due to the momentary alleviation of a key environmental variable previously limiting new growth. Thus, studying the circumstances in which expansion occurs can inspire new restoration techniques, wherein vegetation establishment is provoked by emulating natural events through artificial means. Using the salt-marsh pioneer zone on tidal flats as a biogeomorphic model system, we explore how locally raised sediment bed forms, which are the result of natural (bio)geomorphic processes, enhance seedling establishment in an observational study. We then conduct a manipulative experiment designed to emulate these facilitative conditions in order to enable establishment on an uncolonized tidal flat. Here, we attempt to generate raised growth-promoting sediment bed forms using porous artificial structures. Flume experiments demonstrate how these structures produce a sheltered hydrodynamic environment in which suspended sediment and seeds preferentially settle. The application of these structures in the field led to the formation of stable, raised sediment platforms and the spontaneous recruitment of salt-marsh pioneers in the following growing season. These recruits were composed primarily of the annual pioneering Salicornia genus, with densities of up to 140 individuals/m2 within the structures, a 60-fold increase over ambient densities. Lower abundances of five other perennial species were found within structures that did not appear elsewhere in the pioneer zone. Furthermore, recruits grew to be on average three times greater in mass inside of the structures than in the neighboring ambient environment. The success of this restoration design may be attributed to the combination of three factors: (1) enhanced seed retention, (2) suppressed mortality, and (3) accelerated growth rates on the elevated surfaces generated by the artificial structures. We argue that restoration approaches similar to the one shown here, wherein the conditions for natural establishment are actively mimicked to promote vegetation development, may serve as promising tools in many biogeomorphic ecosystems, ranging from coastal to arid ecosystems

PageOneX: New approaches to newspaper front page analysis

© 2016 Sasha Costanza-Chock & Pablo Rey-Mazón. PageOneX is a Free/Libre and Open Source Software tool that we designed to aid in the coding, analysis, and visualization of newspaper front pages. Communication scholars have long analyzed newspaper front pages, using column inches as an important indicator of mass media attention. In the past, this involved obtaining physical copies of newspapers, coding and measurement by hand, and manual input of measurements into a spreadsheet or database, followed by calculation, analysis, and visualization. PageOneX automates some of these steps, simplifies others, and makes it possible for teams of investigators to conduct shared newspaper front page analysis online. We review scholarship in this area, describe our approach in depth, provide concrete examples of analysis conducted by media scholars using PageOneX, and discuss future directions for research and development