Emiliano Treré

In search of the ‘we’ of social media activism: introduction to the special issue on social media and protest identities

An internet meme using the Anonymous’ Guy Fawkes mask ‘going viral’ on Facebook; the hashtag #wearethe99percent launched by the Occupy Wall Street movement being adopted by thousands of internet us...

Media ecologies and protest movements: main perspectives and key lessons

ABSTRACT Studies adopting the media ecology metaphor to investigate social movements form a promising strand of literature that has emerged in the last years to overcome the communicative reductionism permeating the study of the relation between social movements and communication technologies. However, contributions that apply ecological visions to protest are scattered, and only seldom connect their analyses to more general media ecological frameworks. The article critically reviews and classifies the diverse strands of scholarship that adopt the ecological metaphor in their exploration of activism, and connects them with the more general literature on media and communication ecologies. Moreover, it extracts the constitutive elements of this literature that can help scholars to better address the complexity of communication within social movements, and it articulates four key lessons that a media ecology lens brings to the understanding of media and protest. Finally, the article further demonstrates the strengths of this approach through an illustration of the preliminary findings of an ongoing investigation on the 15M movement in Spain.

Reclaiming, proclaiming, and maintaining collective identity in the #YoSoy132 movement in Mexico: an examination of digital frontstage and backstage activism through social media and instant messaging platforms

This article starts from the recognition that digital social movements studies have progressively disregarded collective identity and the importance of internal communicative dynamics in contemporary social movements, in favour of the study of the technological affordances and the organizational capabilities of social media. Based on a two-year multimodal ethnography of the Mexican #YoSoy132 movement, the article demonstrates that the concept of collective identity is still able to yield relevant insights into the study of current movements, especially in connection with the use of social media platforms. Through the appropriations of social media, Mexican students were able to oppose the negative identification fabricated by the PRI party, reclaim their agency and their role as heirs of a long tradition of rebellion, generate collective identification processes, and find ‘comfort zones’ to lower the costs of activism, reinforcing their internal cohesion and solidarity. The article stresses the importance of the internal communicative dynamics that develop in the backstage of social media (Facebook chats and groups) and through instant messaging services (WhatsApp), thus rediscovering the pivotal linkage between collective identity and internal communication that characterized the first wave of research on digital social movements. The findings point out how that internal cohesion and collective identity are fundamentally shaped and reinforced in the social media backstage by practices of ‘ludic activism’, which indicates that social media represent not only the organizational backbone of contemporary social movements, but also multifaceted ecologies where a new, expressive and humorous ‘communicative resistance grammar’ emerges.

Challenging mainstream media, documenting real life and sharing with the community: An analysis of the motivations for producing citizen journalism in a post-disaster city

The aim of this article is to explore the motivations that drove many ordinary people to produce citizen journalism after the earthquake that destroyed the Italian city of L’Aquila in 2009. Using in-depth interviews, we investigate the motivations and the obstacles underlying the publication of grassroots information related to the post-earthquake situation. Findings highlight that people were largely motivated to upload their content online: (1) to contrast the quake-related news provided by Italian mainstream media with their own perceptions; (2) to document their lives and the ‘real situation’ of the city; and (3) to share their points of view with other citizens trying to re-establish online the ties broken offline because of the catastrophe. Analysis shows that these non-professional journalists also had to face a series of obstacles, such as risks of fragmentation and lack of professionalism, funding and visibility.

The #YoSoy132 movement and the struggle for media democratization in Mexico

In this article, we analyze through a political economy of communication lens the historical and political contexts in which the #YoSoy132 movement emerged, the concentration of Mexican media system and the possibilities offered by social media to young people, situating the issue of media democratization at the centre of the #YoSoy132 struggle. Drawing on two group and four individual interviews, we also focus on the dimension of students’ communication practices in order to provide a more nuanced evaluation of the role played by digital media inside the movement. By blending a political economy analysis with an exploration of media practices, we offer an in-depth understanding of how communication technologies were used and appropriated in order to democratize mainstream media, foster pluralism and trigger important processes related to political culture within the Mexican context. We conclude by assessing the achievements as well as the challenges of #YoSoy132.

Tracing the Roots of Technopolitics: Towards a North-South Dialogue

The concept of technopolitics has been increasingly employed to interpret the contemporary uses of communication technologies by social movements and civil society organizations. This chapter tackles the historical and theoretical roots of the notion, by critically examining contributions from different disciplines, regions and strands of literature. First, the chapter outlines the use of technopolitics within technology transfer and scientific innovation, and charts its adoption in studies regarding media and the political sphere. Then, it explores its rediscovery and application at the intersection between the appropriations of Spanish activists and academics, and scrutinizes its extension to Latin America. Next, it examines five key potentialities of the concept, as well as its connections with other recent theorizations, especially derived from Anglo-Saxon scholarship. The chapter concludes by proposing further dialogue between Northern and Southern research communities, as a way to generate more nuanced understandings of everyday activist practices, action research, and socio-political change.

The Sublime of Digital Activism: Hybrid Media Ecologies and the New Grammar of Protest

Research on the relationships between social movements and digital communication technologies has grown exponentially in the last few years, following episodes of increasingly intense contention around the globe. This inquiry has produced not only several valuable and illuminating insights but also many superficial and flawed accounts of the role of (digital) technology within contemporary protests. In this commentary, I will tackle some of the key points raised by Lim’s monograph. I start by addressing her claim that the Internet has become more “local” in contemporary movements. Then, I provide a socioeconomic excursus on the crisis of the middle class under financial capitalism that can integrate her reflections on the propelling role of middle classes in recent contentious episodes. To escape the enchantment of technological novelty, I also address the need to examine the historical communicative conditions of movements. I reflect on the radical media imagination, media imaginaries, and the sublime of digital activism. Next, I focus on multidimensionality of media hybridity within contemporary movements. I conclude by offering my perspective on the emergence of a new digital grammar of protest and on the enduring role of precarious bodies in the space of appearance.

Digital rebellion: the birth of the Cyber Left

I have always found, and my dialogues with colleagues have done nothing more than confirm it, that one of the greatest obstacles of part of the social movements scholarship is the absence of empath...