Communicative Mobilization: How Social Movement Actors Attempt Publicity in a Changing Media Landscape

• In Event: 282 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 06. Social Movements, Identity, and the Media

Abstract

Media both open and close pathways for social movement actors to enter the public sphere. This seeming contradiction is explained by when and how media actors partner with movement actors, conditions shaped by a tension that exists between ideal public sphere and actually-existing pubic sphere contaminated by capitalist media. In the past, social movements had specific kinds of minimal success in attracting journalistic media attention and enjoyed some reception of critical claims. We do not yet fully know the shape minimal success has taken or will take as digital media technologies concur with capitalist restructurings of media, blurring the line between information and entertainment and proliferating a new media landscape of digital “infotainment”. By traversing such a landscape, recent social movements have left us with a paradox. Social movement actors bury structural critique for publicity that is personally relevant to potential sympathizers only for critical reception in niche media, misunderstandings on other channels and few criminal charges in cases of finance corruption and police brutality. I hazard to call this a personalized movement paradox, and it gives shape and context to how movement actors struggle with and succeed at personalized digital infotainment, a struggle that I will suggest we conceptualize as “communicative mobilization”.

Author

• JL Johnson