Media Activism
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 March 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0201
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 March 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0201
Introduction
From Tiananmen Square to Tahrir Square, physical togetherness—the amassing of bodies in public space—is an integral part of social movements. However, direct, physical interaction has historically been complemented by mediated communication. Activists have used pamphlets, leaflets, zines, telephones, faxes, television, and, most recently, the Internet to communicate both among themselves and to the broader public, thus enabling geographically dispersed people to organize collectively. In the early 21st century, digital-savvy social movements including the Arab Spring uprisings, Occupy Wall Street, the indignados movement in Spain, and #BlackLivesMatter have sparked a raft of innovative interdisciplinary research on the dynamic relationship between media and social movements. This article not only provides an overview of the extant literature on this subject but also looks more expansively to forms of media activism that are not necessarily tied to social movement organizing, including media policy activism, hacktivism, and culture jamming. In so doing, we conceive of the media both as a tool for political mobilization and as an object of political struggle as activists endeavor to reform, delegitimize, or build more-democratic alternatives to the commercial mass media system.
Theoretical Approaches to Media Activism
The entries in this section address several key theoretical approaches that figure prominently within media activism studies. Political economy tends to offer macrostructural analyses of power relationships. This framework is central to media activism in that it delineates the dominant relationships and discourses that media activists aim to subvert. Public sphere theory is the liberal paradigm through which some types of activism operate, especially at a discursive level. Last, critical theory of technology posits that technologies are socially constructed and thus can both enable and constrain various kinds of media activism. These conceptual frameworks help bring into focus what is at stake for activists and democratic society writ large and help guide action toward creating positive social change.
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Article
- Activist Media
- Adolescence and the Media
- Advertisements, Televised Political
- Advertising
- Advertising, Children and
- Advertising, International
- Agenda Setting
- Annenberg, Walter H.
- Argumentation
- Attitude-Behavior Consistency
- Audience Fragmentation
- Audience Studies
- Bakhtin, Mikhail
- Bandwagon Effect
- Baudrillard, Jean
- Brand Equity
- British and Irish Magazine, History of the
- Broadcasting, Public Service
- Castells, Manuel
- Celebrity and Public Persona
- Censorship
- Civic Duty
- CNN
- Codes and Cultural Discourse Analysis
- Cognitive Dissonance
- Collective Memory, Communication and
- Comedic News
- Communication Apprehension
- Communication Campaigns
- Communication, Definitions and Concepts of
- Communication History
- Communication Law
- Communication Networks
- Communication, Philosophy of
- Community Attachment
- Community Structure Approach
- Computer-Mediated Communication
- Content Analysis
- Corporate Social Responsibility and Communication
- Crisis Communication
- Critical and Cultural Studies
- Cross-tools and Cross-media Effects
- Cultivation
- Cultural and Creative Industries
- Cyberpolitics
- 3D Media
- Death, Dying, and Communication
- Debates, Televised
- Deliberation
- Developmental Communication
- Diffusion of Innovations
- Diplomacy, Public
- E-democracy/E-participation
- E-Government
- Elaboration Likelihood Model
- Embedded Coverage
- Entertainment
- Entertainment-Education
- Environmental Communication
- Ethnography of Communication
- Experiments
- Family Communication
- Federal Communications Commission
- Feminist Theory
- Focus Groups
- Freedom of the Press
- Gatekeeping
- Gender and the Media
- Global Englishes
- Goffman, Erving
- Habermas, Jürgen
- Health Communication
- Hegemony
- Heuristics
- Hostile Media Effect
- Identification with Media Characters
- Image Repair Theory
- Implicit Measurement
- Impression Management
- Indexing
- Infographics
- Information and Communication Technology for Development
- Information Management
- Information Overload
- Information Processing
- Infotainment
- Instructional Communication
- Integrated Marketing Communications
- Interactivity
- Intercultural Communication
- Intergroup Communication
- International Communications
- Interpersonal Communication
- Interpretation/Reception
- Journalism
- Journalism, Alternative
- Journalism and Trauma
- Journalism, Citizen
- Journalism, Citizen, History of
- Journalism Ethics
- Journalism, Peace
- Journalism, Tabloid
- Knowledge Gap
- Mass Communication
- McLuhan, Marshall
- Media Activism
- Media Aesthetics
- Media Bias
- Media Convergence
- Media Credibility
- Media Dependency
- Media Ecology
- Media Economics
- Media Economics, Theories of
- Media, Educational
- Media Effects
- Media Ethics
- Media Events
- Media Exposure Measurement
- Media, Gays and Lesbians in the
- Media Literacy
- Media Logic
- Media Management
- Media Policy and Governance
- Media Regulation
- Media, Social
- Media Sociology
- Media Systems Theory
- Merton, Robert K.
- Message Characteristics and Persuasion
- Mobile Communication Studies
- Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Approaches to
- Murdoch, Rupert
- Narrative
- Narrative Persuasion
- News Framing
- NGOs, Communication and
- Online Campaigning
- Organizational Change and Organizational Change Communicat...
- Organizational Communication
- Parasocial Theory in Communication
- Participation, Civic/Political
- Perceived Realism
- Persuasion and Social Influence
- Persuasion, Resisting
- Political Advertising
- Political Economy
- Political Knowledge
- Political Marketing
- Political Scandals
- Political Socialization
- Polls, Opinion
- Priming
- Propaganda
- Proxemics
- Public Opinion
- Public Relations
- Public Sphere
- Radio Studies
- Reality Television
- Reasoned Action Frameworks
- Religion and the Media
- Reporting, Investigative
- Rhetoric and Communication
- Rhetoric, Religious
- Risk Communication
- Schramm, Wilbur
- Science Communication
- Scripps, E. W.
- Selective Exposure
- Semiotics
- Sense-Making/Sensemaking
- Sesame Street
- Sex in the Media
- Small-Group Communication
- Social Capital
- Social Change
- Social Cognition
- Social Construction
- Social Interaction
- Social Movements
- Social Network Analysis
- Social Protest
- Sports Communication
- Stereotypes
- Strategic Communication
- Surveillance and Communication
- Tabloidization
- Telecommunications History/Policy
- Television
- Television, Cable
- Third-Person Effect
- Time Warner
- Transmedia Storytelling
- Two-Step Flow
- Uses and Gratifications
- Video
- Video Deficit
- Video Games and Communication
- Violence in the Media
- Visual Communication
- Web 2.0
- Whistleblowing
- WikiLeaks
- Youth and Media