An Activists Guide To Exploiting The Media

The Routledge Companion to Media and Activism is a wide-ranging collection of 42 original and authoritative essays by leading contributors from a variety of academic disciplines. Introducing and exploring central debates about the diverse relationships between both media and protest, and communication and social change, the book offers readers a reliable and informed guide to understanding how media and activism influence one another. The expert contributors examine the tactics and strategies of protest movements, and how activists organize themselves and each other; they investigate the dilemmas of media coverage and the creation of alternative media spaces and platforms; and they emphasize the importance of creativity and art in social change. Bringing together case studies and contributors from six continents, the collection is organized around themes that address past, present and future developments from around the world. The Routledge Companion to Media and Activism is an essential reference and guide for those who want to understand this vital area.

Drawing on a range of international examples, Libby Lester invites readers to develop a nuanced understanding of changing media practices and dynamics by connecting local, national and global environmental issues, journalistic practices and news sources, public relations and protests, and the symbolic and strategic circulation of meanings in the public sphere.

Media Activism in the Digital Age captures an exciting moment in the evolution of media activism studies and offers an invaluable guide to this vibrant and evolving field of research. Victor Pickard and Guobin Yang have assembled essays by leading scholars and activists to provide case studies of feminist, technological, and political interventions during different historical periods and at local, national, and global levels. Looking at the underlying theories, histories, politics, ideologies, tactics, strategies, and aesthetics, the book takes an expansive view of media activism. It explores how varieties of activism are mediated through communication technologies, how activists deploy strategies for changing the structures of media systems, and how governments and corporations seek to police media activism. From memes to zines, hacktivism to artivism, this volume considers activist practices involving both older kinds of media and newer digital, social, and network-based forms. Media Activism in the Digital Age provides a useful cross-section of this growing field for both students and researchers.

The revolution will not be televised. But will it be online instead? When the Internet first took off, we heard a lot about its potential for social change. We heard it would revitalize democracy. We heard it would empower us. We heard we would all be publishers, working together to create a new public sphere. Future Active tests such claims. With fierce intelligence and wit, Graham Meikle takes us behind the digital barricades and into the heart of Internet activist campaigns. In the first in-depth look at this global phenomenon, the author talks to key players in the Indymedia movement and introduces us to the activists behind gwbush.com, the website that provoked the President to declare there ought to be limits to freedom. The founder of Belgrade radio station B92 explains how they used the net to thwart Milosevic's censorship, while McLibel trial defendant Dave Morris talks about the role of the McSpotlight website. And pioneer hacktivists the Electronic Disturbance Theater introduce us to virtual sit-ins and electronic civil disobedience - while US military analysts offer a different perspective on this kind of information warfare. Future Active is an accessible, comprehensive, and supremely readable introduction to the world of online activism. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in how hackers, culture jammers, and media activists have not only incorporated recent technology as a tool for change, but also redefined what counts as activism.

The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media provides an authoritative and comprehensive examination of the diverse forms, practices and philosophies of alternative and community media across the world. The volume offers a multiplicity of perspectives to examine the reasons why alternative and community media arise, how they develop in particular ways and in particular places, and how they can enrich our understanding of the broader media landscape and its place in society. The 50 chapters present a range of theoretical and methodological positions, and arguments to demonstrate the dynamic, challenging and innovative thinking around the subject; locating media theory and practice within the broader concerns of democracy, citizenship, social exclusion, race, class and gender. In addition to research from the UK, the US, Canada, Europe and Australia, the Companion also includes studies from Colombia, Haiti, India, South Korea and Zimbabwe, enabling international comparisons to be made and also allowing for the problematisation of traditional - often Western - approaches to media studies. By considering media practices across a range of cultures and communities, this collection is an ideal companion to the key issues and debates within alternative and community media.

The Media and the Public explores the ways a range of media,from the press to television to the Internet, have constructed andrepresented the public. Provides a new synthesis of recent research exploring therelationship between media and their publics Identifies ways in which different publics are subverting thegatekeeping of mainstream media in order to find a voice andcommunicate with others Situates contemporary media-public discourse and relationshipsin an historical context in order to show the origin ofcontemporary public/political engagement Creates a theoretical expansion on the role of the media inaccessing or denying the articulation of public voices, and theways in which publics are harnessing new media formats to producericher and more complex forms of political engagement