Paolo Gerbaudo

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...

The persistence of collectivity in digital protest

‘How are technology-enabled crowds activated, structured and maintained in the absence of recognized leaders, common goals, or conventional organization, issue framing, and action coordination?’ The question Lance W. Bennett, Alex Segerberg and Shawn Walters ask in the ‘Organization in the Crowd’ article published on this issue of Information, Communication and Society is a crucial question for all those interested in the intersection between digital communication and social movements, as it has been manifested in a number of recent protest movements, from the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street. Asking how ‘crowds’ hold together, without the presence of familiar forms of ‘social glue’, formal leaders, bureaucratic organizations and the like, is fundamentally posing the question of unity, coherence and order of protest action at a time of social complexity and ‘liquidity’ (Bauman, 2000). How do thousands of participants, often acting at a distance from one another come to perceive themselves, and to be seen by others as part of a common actor? How do dispersed internet users come to feel part of a collective actor that goes under the name of convenience of ‘crowd’? The answer to these probing questions put forward by Bennett, Segerberg andWalker concentrates on the role played by a number of networking micro-operations, on ‘the many small and fitful contributions of the crowd’, as manifested in Twitter behaviour of the type of tweeting, retweeting, posting links or utilizing multiple hashtags. Through a multitude of these small transactions internet participants, constantly contribute in weaving together different pieces of cloth into a common texture, different networks into a ‘network of networks’, bestowed with a certain degree of coherence and rationality. Looking at social media messages, and in particular at the Twitter conversations of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Segerberg, Bennett and Walker convincingly demonstrate how such operations are responsible for ‘connecting different networks in a meaningful way’ allowing such networks ‘to demonstrate a strong degree of coherence despite their complexity and diffuseness’. I find this an important contribution to the discussion about digital communication in contemporary protest movements and in particular the huge debate about networking. It is a piece that needs to be understood in connection with the influential work developed in recent years by the authors, and in particular with Bennett’s and Segerberg’s theorizing about ‘connective action’, as a contemporary substitute for collective action, based on digitally personalized action frames, rather than traditional collective action frames. Bennett, Segerberg and Walker

The indignant citizen: anti-austerity movements in southern Europe and the anti-oligarchic reclaiming of citizenship

Abstract This article discusses the change in political vision of anti-austerity movements in southern Europe in comparison with previous protest movements. It focuses on the emergence of a discourse of citizenship at the core of the new protest wave, as seen in frequent references to ‘citizens’, ‘citizenry’ and ‘citizenship’ in movement manifestos, and the resolutions and declarations of popular assemblies. I investigate the meaning and motivations of this ‘citizenism’ and how it reflects the change in economic conditions and popular perceptions in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. The analysis draws from movement documents, and in-depth interviews with 40 protest organisers and participants from the Indignados movement in Spain and the Aganaktismenoi movement in Greece. I argue that within these movements, the idea of citizenship has acted both as a source of popular identity interpellating a diverse set of demographics, and as a central demand, organising calls for greater popular participation in decision-making, freedom of expression and against corruption. Anti-austerity movements put forward an anti-oligarchic view of citizenship, which is different from the liberal, civic-republican and social democratic approaches, in its understanding of citizenship as the power of the dispersed ‘citizenry’ against the concentrated power of economic and political elites. This grassroots re-appropriation of citizenship highlights how anti-austerity movements in southern Europe have departed from the anti-statism of autonomous movements and have developed a more positive view of the state as a basis of social cohesion and a possible means of ‘people power’.

In search of European alternatives. Anti-austerity protests in Europe

Europe has been an object of constant scrutiny and criticism since the beginning of the economic crisis of 2008, and more so with the explosion of the sovereign debt crisis in 2010. Recurrent news media expressions such as ‘euro-crisis’ have popularised the idea that there is something irremediably wrong in the project of the European Union (EU), which threatens its very existence as a political entity. The economic crisis — turned by austerity policies into a long and deep depression of Europe’s periphery — has shown the rising power and increasing lack of legitimacy of the current technocratic institutions of the EU, including the European Council, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission. Yet, the protest movements which have developed in the old continent in response to the crisis, and in particular the ‘subterranean politics’ of the Indignados and Occupy groups, have shown little interest in a transformation of European governance structures and policies. Anti-austerity protests have largely developed at a national level with limited transnational coordination and vision. While rightly criticising neo-liberal policies pursued at the European level, protests have mostly ended up seeing Europe only as the culprit and not also as the space where a political alternative to neo-liberalism could be developed.

Protest Diffusion and Cultural Resonance in the 2011 Protest Wave

The 2011 protest wave, encompassing the Arab Spring revolutions, the Indignados movement in Spain and Greece, and the Occupy Wall Street movement has often been described as a new global protest cycle. However, the dynamics of diffusion suggest a more complex picture. Transmission of protest frames and repertoires from one country and cultural region to another was quite slow and tortuous. Moreover, adoption of the new ideas and practices of protest spawned by the protest wave of 2011 involved laborious dynamics of cultural translation and domestication. This situation points to the continuing importance of local protest cultures and cultural contexts, in addition to channels of transmission, even in an era of instantaneous communication technologies.

Reclaiming popular sovereignty: The vision of the state in the discourse of podemos and the movimento 5 stelle

This article explores how the MoVimento 5 Stelle (M5S) in Italy and Podemos in Spain thematise the role of the State. We draw from a qualitative analysis of speeches of party leaders and party manifestoes in recent national elections. We argue that Podemos and the M5S coincide in reasserting the principle of popular sovereignty to overcome the present “post-democratic” condition and the distance between citizens and the State. However, they differ in their understanding of the State’s intervention on the economy and society. Podemos proposes a new interventionist state reminiscent of post-war social democracy. M5S has a more liberal view, conceiving of the State as a neutral arbiter of the free market. Furthermore, the two parties have different conceptions of the relationship between the State and the Nation. While adopting a patriotic discourse, Podemos has catered for demands of local autonomy, framing Spain as a “nation of nations” and has been adamant in defending migrants and refugees. The M5S has instead proposed a more nationalist discourse, as seen in tirades by party leaders against migrants and refugees. These divergences reflect the different positioning of these formations along the Left/Right axis and how this results in a more inclusive/exclusive view of the State.

Spikey Posters Street Media and Territoriality in Urban Activist Scenes

This article discusses fly-posting practices performed by radical urban activists in Rome and Berlin. It suggests that political posters cannot be understood simply as channels of information about events and activities of political and subcultural “autonomous scenes” encompassing squats, occupied social centers, political bars, bookshops, cafes, and similar activist hangouts. Rather, these “street media” are crucially involved in processes of spatial appropriation and in the construction of an antagonistic territoriality. Fly-posting exposes its practitioners to police repression and attacks by right-wing groups, and given the risks involved, it also becomes a form of demarcation, alerting that a certain wall, street, area is symbolically claimed by the movement. Looking at fly-posting we can come to understand the nature of autonomous movement scenes as antagonistic and exclusive spaces, whose internal communitarianism is premised on the symbolic and spatial repulsion of authorities and political enemies.

A round-table on the international dimensions of News Corp in the light of the UK phone hacking scandal

The events of July 2011, in which reporters working for the News Corporation-owned title, the News of the World, were found to have hacked into the mobile phone of a murdered teenager, have focused a huge amount of attention on the ethics and regulation of corporate media. As allegations emerged of complicity between senior media executives, top police officers and leading government officials, public revulsion at the newspaper’s behaviour forced the government to launch a major public inquiry led by Lord Justice Leveson into the ‘culture, practices and ethics’ of the UK media. Since then, it has been revealed that there may have been nearly 6000 victims of phone hacking, and further evidence has emerged of covert surveillance, blackmail, the ‘blagging’ of information and regular invasions of privacy at the title, which was soon shut down by Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of News Corporation. News Corporation is the world’s second-largest media company: a giant transnational with holdings in cable and satellite television, movies, book publishing, newspapers and online. It has a presence in all the major media markets and a major influence on politics, business and everyday life. The events in the UK raise serious questions about the behaviour of News Corp in other countries. To what extent does the company exert similar influence over the political process elsewhere? In what ways does its domination of sports and entertainment coverage distort or enhance domestic media systems? What does its behaviour tell us about the practices and scope of media power in the contemporary world? In order to answer some of these questions, we have commissioned short articles on the impact of News Corp in six countries and regions: Latin America, Italy, New Zealand, China, India and the US. They provide a fascinating insight into how News Corp operates differently in different regions – using joint ventures in some while relying on its own brand in others – and how its ability to dominate market share is far from inevitable and subject to ongoing regulation by the state and intense competition from its rivals. 434730 GMC8110.1177/1742766511434730Global Media and CommunicationSpecial section 2012

Social Media and Populism: An elective affinity?

Since the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, an intense debate has developed around the connection between social media and populist movements. In this article, I put forward some theses about the reasons for the apparent ‘elective affinity’ between social media and populism. I argue that the match between social media and populist politics derives from the way in which the mass networking capabilities of social media, at the time of a ‘mass web’ involving billions of people worldwide, provide a suitable channel for the mass politics and the appeals to the people typical of populism. But this affinity also needs to be understood in light of the rebellious narrative that has come to be associated with social media at times in which rapid technological development has coincided with a profound economic crisis, shaking the legitimacy of the neoliberal order. This question is explored by examining the role acquired by social media in populist movements as the people’s voice and the people’s rally, providing, on the one hand, with a means for disaffected individuals to express themselves and, on the other hand, with a space in which disgruntled Internet users could gather and form partisan online crowds.

Introduction. Politics of Big Data

This special issue offers a critical dialogue around the myriad political dimensions of Big Data. We begin by recognising that the technological objects of Big Data are unprecedented in the speed, scope and scale of their computation and knowledge production. This critical dialogue is grounded in an equal recognition of continuities around Big Data’s social, cultural, and political economic dimensions.