This book focuses on the processes and practices that contemporary protesters use when acting with (and through) media. It covers both online and off-line contexts, as well as mainstream and alternative media. It bridges the gap between social-movement theory and media and communication studies. It is an important text for students and scholars of media and social change at both a local and transnational level. Over the past year, international and national media have been full of stories about protest movements and tumultuous social upheaval from Tunisia to California. But scholars have not yet fully addressed the connection between these movements and the media and communication channels through which their messages spread. Correcting that imbalance, "Mediation and Protest Movements" explores the nature of the relationship between protest movements, media representation, and communication strategies and tactics. This approach privileges the processes and practices of interacting with and through media and thus analyses the media and communications strategies and tactics of contemporary protest movements in both online and offline contexts. It also considers media environment(s) in their complexity: from mainstream to alternative media, from traditional to new media outlets. By addressing the transnational level of contention it appeals to a wide international audience interested in how protest movements at a local as well as a transnational level engage in mediation processes and develop media practices across the globe.

Rooted in the performative of Speech Act Theory, this interdisciplinary study crafts a new model to compare the work we do with words when we protest: across genres, from different geographies and languages. Rich with illustrative examples from Turkey, U.S., West Germany, Romania, Guatemala, Great Britain, and Northern Ireland, it examines the language of protest (chants, songs, poetry and prose) with an innovative use of analytical tools that will advance current theory. Operating at the intersection of linguistic pragmatics and critical discourse analysis this book provides fresh insights on interdisciplinary topics including power, identity, legitimacy and the Social Contract. In doing so it will appeal to students and scholars of sociolinguistics, pragmatics and critical discourse analysis, in addition to researchers working in sociology, political science, discourse, cultural and communication studies.

In this book a set of theoretical and methodological resources are presented to study the way in which protest, resistance and social movement discourses circulate through society and looks at the role of media and of communication in this process. Empirically, the focus of this book is on the UK’s anti-austerity movement. ‘The Circuit of Protest’, as developed in this volume, is comprised of an analysis of the discourses of the anti-austerity movement and their corresponding movement frames, and the self-mediation practices geared at communicating these. The mainstream media representations and the reception of the movement discourses and frames by non-activist citizens are also studied. It is concluded that studying a movement through the prism of mediation provides a nuanced assessment in terms of failures and successes of the UK’s anti-austerity movement. The book is of relevance to students and researchers of politics, social movements, as well as media and communication, but also to activists.

Articulating Dissent analyses the new communicative strategies of coalition protest movements and how these impact on a mainstream media unaccustomed to fractured articulations of dissent. Pollyanna Ruiz shows how coalition protest movements against austerity, war and globalisation build upon the communicative strategies of older single issue campaigns such as the anti-criminal justice bill protests and the women's peace movement. She argues that such protest groups are dismissed in the mainstream for not articulating a 'unified position' and explores the way in which contemporary protesters stemming from different traditions maintain solidarity. Articulating Dissent investigates the ways in which this diversity, so inherent in coalition protest, effects the movement of ideas from the political margins to the mainstream. In doing so this book offers an insightful and original analysis of the protest coalition as a developing political form.

The Occupy movement and the Arab Spring have brought global attention to the potential of social media for empowering otherwise marginalized groups. This book addresses questions like what happens after the moment of protest and global visibility and whether social media can also help sustain civic engagement beyond protest.

Why do some national movements use violent protest and others nonviolent protest? Wendy Pearlman shows that much of the answer lies inside movements themselves. Nonviolent protest requires coordination and restraint, which only a cohesive movement can provide. When, by contrast, a movement is fragmented, factional competition generates new incentives for violence and authority structures are too weak to constrain escalation. Pearlman reveals these patterns across one hundred years in the Palestinian national movement, with comparisons to South Africa and Northern Ireland. To those who ask why there is no Palestinian Gandhi, Pearlman demonstrates that nonviolence is not simply a matter of leadership. Nor is violence attributable only to religion, emotions or stark instrumentality. Instead, a movement's organizational structure mediates the strategies that it employs. By taking readers on a journey from civil disobedience to suicide bombings, this book offers fresh insight into the dynamics of conflict and mobilization.

Contains an Open Access chapter.With chapters spanning from the Russian Revolution to the present day, this book considers how art, media and communication technologies have been operationalised to connect, mobilise, organize and inspire the masses in particular national, political, and economic contexts.

Screening Protest brings together a range of scholarly perspectives to examine key issues in the representation of political participation, rebellion and insurrection with a collection of studies of the mediation of political dissent across time, space, and narrative genre.

Recent years have seen an enormous increase in protests across the world in which citizens have challenged what they see as a deterioration of democratic institutions and the very civil, political and social rights that form the basis of democratic life. Beginning with Iceland in 2008, and then forcefully in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece and Portugal, or more recently in Peru, Brazil, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Ukraine, people have taken to the streets against what they perceive as a rampant and dangerous corruption of democracy, with a distinct focus on inequality and suffering. This timely new book addresses the anti-austerity social movements of which these protests form part, mobilizing in the context of a crisis of neoliberalism. Donatella della Porta shows that, in order to understand their main facets in terms of social basis, strategy, and identity and organizational structures, we should look at the specific characteristics of the socioeconomic, cultural and political context in which they developed. The result is an important and insightful contribution to understanding a key issue of our times, which will be of interest to students and scholars of political and economic sociology, political science and social movement studies, as well as political activists.

The Handbook presents a most updated and comprehensive exploration of social movement research. It not only maps, but also expands the field of social movement studies, taking stock of recent developments in cognate areas of studies, within and beyond sociology and political science. While structured around traditional social movement concepts, each section combines the mapping of the state of the art with attempts to broaden our knowledge of social movements beyond classic theoretical agendas, and to identify the contribution that social movement studies can give to other fields of knowledge.