media materiality theorists cast social movement theories in a new light
DESCRIPTION
This paper presented at the 2012 European Association of Antropologigists conference in Nanterre, France considers the role that media have played in shaping the structure andoutcomes of revolutions and revolutionary events. Inspired by the debate about therole of social media tools like Twitter and Facebook in recent protests and revolutions in northern Africa and the Middle East, this paper turns to existing literature on social movements by sociologists, in which communication tools golargely unnoticed, and puts it in dialogue with the work of media theorists. Settingthese theoretical bodies next to one another enables a different kind of discussion toemerge; a discussion which offers a new lens through which to see socialmovements in the digital age. Theories of media materiality help augment existingsocial movement theories by making the experience, image and outcome of a socialmovement dependent (to an extent) on the communication technologies used tomake it happen. Findings suggest that geography becomes just another aspect of the story told about or experience of a social movement today as our worldviewsincreasingly adopt characteristics of the technologies we use to communicate.TRANSCRIPT
Media materiality theorists cast social movement theories in a new light
Egypt
LibyaTunisia
Iran
Debate: Do social media play a role in recent protests in the Middle East and/or northern Africa?
Yes No
Connecting Two Bodies of Theory• What analytical advantages do we get from
setting existing sociological theories of social movements in dialogue with theories of media materiality?
+
“All revolutions write their own scripts, and their media are part of the process. In such contexts, communication and politics are not separate acts, for the altering of public affect, the mobilization of opinion, and the promotion of further participation are part of the revolutionary process” –Sreberny-Mohammadi and Mohammadi, 1994: xxi
An example in which the two bodies are considered together.
Sociology of Revolutions Theory
• Revolutions are:
“Rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below… What is unique to social revolution is that basic changes in social structure and in political structure occur together in a mutually reinforcing fashion. And these changes occur through intense sociopolitical conflicts in which class struggles play a key role” (Skocpol 1979, Cited in Foran, 2005, p. 7).
Modernization
Mass frustration
Dissident elite political movements
Unifying motivations
Severe state political crises
A permissive world context
Media Materiality Theory
This is different from this
Artifacts & Ecologies
Conclusions:
