Social Movement-Media/Public Decoupling

• In Event: Poster Session: Information Technology and Politics

Abstract

Social movement-media/public interaction has been largely examined from the “asymmetric dependency” lens in which movements’ mobilization, development, and sociopolitical outcomes depend on winning sympathy from the media and public opinion. The introduction of digital technologies in collective action processes seems to have increasingly disrupted the uneven dynamics between movements and the media/public. Using a case study of a protest campaign organized by Chinese American immigrants, this paper demonstrates how the campaign witnessed phenomenal mobilization success yet encountered fiascos in drawing media attention and public sympathy. The contradictory reception of the campaign among the protesters and the media/public was because they were situated in two separate interpretative universes, which guided them to different trajectories of understanding the incident and protest. The bifurcation of interpretative paths was in part caused by the technolinguistic enclosure of the protest community, as the campaigners deliberated on WeChat, a China-based digital platform engineered like a “walled garden.” By unpacking the decoupling processes of movements and the media/public, this study reverses the lens from understanding their interaction to examining their disengagement. By pointing out their disassociation as the result of splintered interpretative processes set off by digital platforms’ designs, the study contributes to interrogating the digital infrastructural politics in social movements and other forms of political and civic engagements.

Author

• Hao Cao, Wuhan University