Cultural Politics

                                    ACTIVIST MEDIA

One of the difficulties faced by social movements is getting their message reported clearly, accurately and effectively through the lens of mainstream media. A key factor in this work has been the creation of alternative media that both offer a direct channel to fairer representation and can keep the mainstream media honest by critiquing their coverage. In the contemporary, media-saturated world new problems emerge in the form of "protest fatigue" -- mainstream failure to cover demonstrations often dismissed as "sixties style protests," as if protest can be confined to one decade or is a stylistic choice -- and the silo effect in which people only get the news that reinforces their ideology. The sites and resources below are working to address these issues with courage and imagination.

Featured Site

• Independent Media Center. Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.

Key Sites

• AdBusters. Includes ad parodies and a variety of tools for exposing the seamy side of the ad business, and consumer capitalism generally.
• Alternative Press Center. Extensive online directory of alternative media.
• Alternative Press Review. Guide to alternative journalism.
• AlterNet. Major alternative news site.
• Bad Subjects. Political Education for Everyday Life..
• Bitch Media. Feminist take on popular culture.
• ColorLines Alternative news on race, class, and gender justice.
• Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia. 101 ways to subvert mainstream culture.
• Deep Dish TV. Long-standing alternative TV production group.
• Democracy Now! Daily TV/radio show from the grassroots.
• Digital Media and Activism. Useful set of linked resources and bibliography.
• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Counters conservative bias in media.
• GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).
• Media Alliance. Bay Area-based progressive media coalition.
• Media Tips for Activists. From the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
• MediaWatch. Stories mainstream media misses or gets wrong.
• The Monitor. Online version of an interesting progressive biweekly paper.
• Ms. magazine. One of the oldest and most influential feminist magazines.
• The Nation. Online site for America's longest-running progressive magazine.
• Pacifica Radio. A long-standing, important activist media group in Berkeley, CA.
• Paper Tiger. Alternative TV of the highest order.
• Radio for Peace International. Shortwave peace.
• SWAMP: Southwest Alternative Media Project.
• Z-Net. Many progressive media links.
• The Noam Chomsky Archive. Prolific progressive cultural critic's information-rich site.

Bibliography

• Anderson, Benjamin. "Rising Above: Alternative Media as Activist Media."  Stream: Culture/Politics/Technology 7(1), 23. Thoughtful article on how to be an activist educator and a media worker at the same time.

• Auger, Giselle A. 2013. “Fostering Democracy through Social Media: Evaluating Diametrically Opposed Nonprofit Advocacy Organizations’ Use of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.” Public Relations Review 39:369–76. 

• Bennett, W. Lance, Chris Wells, and Deen Freelon. 2011. “Communicating Civic Engagement: Contrasting Models of Citizenship in the Youth Web Sphere.” Journal of Communication 61(5):835–56.

• Briones, Rowena L., Beth Kuch, Brooke Fisher Liu, and Yan Jin. 2011. “Keeping up with the Digital Age: How the American Red Cross Uses Social Media to Build Relationships.” Public Relations Review 37(1):37–43.

• Cox, J. M. (2017). The source of a movement: Making the case for social media as an informational source using black lives matter. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40, 1847–1854.

• Costanza-Chock, Sasha and Chris Scweidler. "Toward transformative media organizing: LGBTQ and Two-Spirit media work in the United States." Media, Culture & Society (2016): 1-26

• Croeser, S., &" Highfield, T. ). "Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the occupy movement. First Monday 19.(2014 March 3).

• Dunbar-Hester, Christina. Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014.

• Earl, Jennifer, and Katrina Kimport. 2011. Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

• Gerbaudo, Paolo. 2012. Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism. London: Pluto Press.

• Hestres, Luis E. 2014. “Preaching to the Choir: Internet-Mediated Advocacy, Issue Public Mobilization, and Climate Change.” New Media & Society16(2):323–39.

• Joyce, Mary, ed. 2010. Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change. New York: International Debate Education Association.

• Kanter, Beth, and Allison Fine. 2010. The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change. John Wiley & Sons.

• Karpf, David. 2010. “Online Political Mobilization from the Advocacy Group’s Perspective: Looking Beyond Clicktivism.” Policy & Internet 2(4):Article 2.

• ---. 2012. The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 

• Kavada, Anastasia. 2005. “Civil Society Organisations and the Internet: The Case of Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the World Development Movement.” Pp. 208–22 in Global Activism, Global Media, edited by Wilma de Jong, Martin Shaw, and Neil Stammers. London, UK: Pluto Press.

• ---. 2009. “Collective Action and the Social Web: Comparing the Architecture of Avaaz.org and Openesf.net.” Pp. 129–40 in Communicative Approaches to Politics and Ethics in Europe, edited by Nico Carpentier et al. Tartu, Estonia: Tartu University Press.

• Kessler, Sarah. 2012. “Amplifying Individual Impact: Social Media’s Emerging Role in Activism.” Pp. 205–15 in Media, Mobilization, and Human Rights: Mediating Suffering, edited by Tristan Anne Borer. London, UK: Zed Books.

• Koffman, Ofra, and Rosalind Gill. 2013. “‘The Revolution Will Be Led by a 12-Year-Old Girl’: Girl Power and Global Biopolitic.” Feminist Review 105(1):83–102.

• Land, Molly, Patrick Meier, Mark Belinsky, and Emily Jacobi. 2012. #ICT4HR: Information and Communication Technologies for Human Rights. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.

• Land, Molly Beutz. 2009. “Networked Activism.” Harvard Human Rights Journal22:205–43.'

• Lebert, Joanne. 2003. “Wiring Human Rights Activism: Amnesty International and the Challenges of Information and Communication Technologies.” Pp. 209–32 in Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice, edited by Martha McCaughey and Michael D. Ayers. New York, NY: Routledge.

• Lewis, Kevin, Kurt Gray, and Jens Meierhenrich. 2014. “The Structure of Online Activism.” Sociological Science 1–9.

• Lovejoy, Kristen, and Gregory D. Saxton. 2012. “Information, Community, and Action: How Nonprofit Organizations Use Social Media.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 17(3):337–53.

• Lynch, Marc, Deen Freelon, and Sean Aday. 2014. Syria’s Socially Mediated Civil War. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace.

• McPherson, Ella. 2014. “Advocacy Organizations’ Evaluation of Social Media Information for NGO Journalism The Evidence and Engagement Models.” American Behavioral Scientist.

• Murthy, Dhiraj. "Introduction to Social Media, Activism, and Organizations." Social Media + Society January-March 2018: 1–4.

• Obar, Jonathan A., Paul Zube, and Cliff Lampe. 2012. “Advocacy 2.0: An Analysis of How Advocacy Groups in the United States Perceive and Use Social Media as Tools for Facilitating Civic Engagement and Collective Action.” Journal of Information Policy 2:1–25.

• Potts, Amanda, Will Simm, Jon Whittle, and Johann W. Unger. n.d. “Exploring ‘Success’ in Digitally Augmented Activism: A Triangulated Approach to Analyzing UK Activist Twitter Use.” Discourse, Context & Media.

• Rodriguez, Clemencia. Citizens’ Media Against Armed Conflict: Disrupting Violence in Colombia. University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

• Schultz, Friederike, Sonja Utz, and Anja Göritz. 2011. “Is the Medium the Message? Perceptions of and Reactions to Crisis Communication via Twitter, Blogs and Traditional Media.” Public Relations Review 37(1):20–27.

• Seo, Hyunjin, Ji Young Kim, and Sung-Un Yang. 2009. “Global Activism and New Media: A Study of Transnational NGOs’ Online Public Relations.” Public Relations Review 35(2):123–26.

• Veil, Shari R., Tara Buehner, and Michael J. Palenchar. 2011. “A Work-In-Process Literature Review: Incorporating Social Media in Risk and Crisis Communication.” Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 19(2):110–22.

• Additional bibliography: Open Social Scholarship Annotated Bibliography/Action and Activism