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As with other communication technologies, the Internet influences the behaviour of individuals and organizations, intervening on the mode of interaction at the individual and collective levels. Even more than with other means of communication — such as press, telegraph, radio, television, telephone, fax, and so on — it seems that social scientists...
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Citations
... Social movements use the internet mainly for three purposes: mobilizing social support, managing their network, and creating public spaces for deliberation (Mosca & Della Porta, 2009). Indeed, today, a great deal of activism takes place online. ...
In a world of polarized societies and radical voices hogging the public digital sphere, this thematic issue aims at identifying the different strategies of old and new social movements in the extremes of the political debates by focusing on the interplay between polarization, uses of the internet, and social activism. In order to disentangle these interactions, this thematic issue covers a wide range of political settings across the globe. It does so by studying: (a) how opposing activists discuss politics online and its implications for democratic theory; (b) how social media uses and online discussions foster offline protests; (c) how the media and state-led-propaganda frame disruptive and anti-government offline protests and how this situation contributes to polarization in both democratic and non-democratic regimes; and finally (d) how civil society uses digital tools to organize and mobilize around sensitive issues in non-democratic regimes.
... Social movements use the internet mainly for three purposes: mobilizing social support, managing their network, and creating public spaces for deliberation (Mosca & Della Porta, 2009). Indeed, today, a great deal of activism takes place online. ...
In a world of polarized societies and radical voices hogging the public digital sphere, this thematic issue aims at identifying the different strategies of old and new social movements in the extremes of the political debates by focusing on the interplay between polarization, uses of the internet, and social activism. In order to disentangle these interactions, this thematic issue covers a wide range of political settings across the globe. It does so by studying: (a) how opposing activists discuss politics online and its implications for democratic theory; (b) how social media uses and online discussions foster offline protests; (c) how the media and state-led-propaganda frame disruptive and anti-government offline protests and how this situation contributes to polarization in both democratic and non-democratic regimes; and finally (d) how civil society uses digital tools to organize and mobilize around sensitive issues in non-democratic regimes.
... Social movements use the internet mainly for three purposes: mobilizing social support, managing their network, and creating public spaces for deliberation (Mosca & Della Porta, 2009). Indeed, today, a great deal of activism takes place online. ...
In a world of polarized societies and radical voices hogging the public digital sphere, this thematic issue aims at identifying the different strategies of old and new social movements in the extremes of the political debates by focusing on the interplay between polarization, uses of the internet, and social activism. In order to disentangle these interactions, this thematic issue covers a wide range of political settings across the globe. It does so by studying: (a) how opposing activists discuss politics online and its implications for democratic theory; (b) how social media uses and online discussions foster offline protests; (c) how the media and state-led-propaganda frame disruptive and anti-government offline protests and how this situation contributes to polarization in both democratic and non-democratic regimes; and finally (d) how civil society uses digital tools to organize and mobilize around sensitive issues in non-democratic regimes.
... La idea de "movilización" está inscrita en las propias acciones colectivas convocadas. Una campaña es, precisamente, un encuadre para dar sentido y orientación a la acción; refleja de manera sintética y con diversos recursos instrumentales y simbólicos los posicionamientos centrales que defienden sus impulsores, a la vez que cumple funciones centrales de reclutamiento, identificación y, sobre todo, movilización social (Mosca y Della Porta, 2009). Esto da pie a considerar cómo sectores de la ciudadanía en general, y no solo organizaciones y actores individualizables, son interpelados y se implican en algunas de las acciones aquí analizadas. ...
The paper analyzes the declaration of localities and provinces as pro-life in Argentina, through the campaign “Sumemos ciudades por la vida” (Let’s add cities for life), promoted by the Argentine Catholic Association (ACA) since 2011. We describe how this subnational campaign was developed and we also offer an interpretative lecture of its symbolic and political effects. From analyzing different sources (local bills, journalist articles, official press releases), the paper characterizes two moments in the campaign, which allows us to notice a greater incidence of religious actors and the political class in the moments in which the legalization of abortion was discussed at the national level. In addition to suggests different speeds of process of institutional secularization at the subnational level, many of the actions promoted by the campaign sustained a logic of exclusion of dissident positions. The strategy is also a relevant precedent for similar anti-gender’ transnational campaigns.
... The use of technology and social networking services (potentially) sets the young generation apart from others, notably through its capacity to personalize information and through the speed of interaction. The use of digital communication for (unconventional) political discussions, their emancipatory potential, as well as their potential to repress social movements and grassroots mobilization, have been widely discussed in the discipline (Flesher Fominaya and Gillan 2017; Mosca and della Porta 2009;Bakardjieva et al. 2012). Early on, enthusiasts have argued that the Internet would provide new opportunities for civic and political engagement and social movements (Castells 1996;Norris 2002). ...
This chapter takes stock of the scholarly puzzlement over recent protests in France. While some scholars have wondered whether the ‘contentious French’ (Tilly, 1986) are not that contentious anymore (Chabanet et al., 2018), recent mobilizations indicate a revival of street politics. We argue that France no longer fits its traditional portrait of an endemically contentious country. Our analysis shows that young people in France are characterized by consistently lower levels of political participation, notably when looking at disruptive forms. The rather comforting vision of a disputing, disaffected or dissatisfied, but engaged youth, constituting a force of change, requires to be revisited. However, our main findings also suggest that an emerging ‘post-contentious’ turning point does not necessarily amount to a broader process of acquiescence. The chapter concludes that French youths’ social exclusion seems to be extending itself in the form of a new type of political exclusion.
... First, the Internet is transforming movements into online organizations. As Juris (2006) affirms, the Internet not only provides movements with a technological infrastructure, but also fortifies their organizational logic on the basis of network-like configurations, using multiple channels that are radically decentralized to facilitate coordination and communication; however, such configurations run the risk of having weaker and less cohesive structures (Mosca & della Porta, 2009). ...
La mercantilización y la participación política digital: el “Movimiento 15-M” y la colectivización del Internet
A mercantilização e a participação política digital: o Movimento 15-M e a coletivização da internet
DOI: 10.5294/pacla.2018.21.4.3
The objective of this article is to analyze an emerging process in the network society: the commodification of the Internet and political communication. This strategy of technological capitalism is becoming increasingly present in the lives of citizens around the world, and it represents a new challenge for critical thinking. In this article we will show the debate around this process and we will point out a few examples. However, despite the existence of this process of commodification, society is not taking a passive attitude. On the contrary, we have cases of social movements, such as the Spanish 15-M, which identified this process and designed a strategy to try to reverse it. However, and despite the efforts of this movement, many of the achievements of the 15-M against commodification have lost their validity. In this paper we review the current state of the debate on the commercialization of politics and, through a qualitative study, we show how the 15-M defined this process and established instruments to fight it. In the conclusions we discuss this process and show its current situation in Spain.
... Since the 2008 election of Obama as the first black president of the United States, these groups have used Internet media to spread the rumor that Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim, a socialist, and that he attended terrorist training schools in Indonesia during his childhood ... these conspiracy theories are used by some whites to voice racial anxiety and concern over the shifting racial demographics of the country (Gosa 2011, 15). Mosca and della Porta (2009) also note the creation and communication of counterknowledge as one way social movements mobilise, by creating epistemic communities to counter those of the establishment, and construct new identities. Thus, counterknowledge can be defined as alternative knowledge which challenges establishment knowledge, replacing knowledge authorities with new ones, thus providing an opportunity for political mobilisation. ...
‘Post-truth politics’, particularly as manifested in ‘fake news’ spread by countermedia, is claimed to be endemic to contemporary populism. I argue that the relationship between knowledge and populism needs a more nuanced analysis. Many have noted that populism valorises ‘common sense’ over expertise. But another populist strategy is counterknowledge, proposing politically charged alternative knowledge authorities in the stead of established ones. I analyse countermedia in Finland, where they have played a part in the rise of right-wing populism, using a combination of computational and interpretive methods. In my data, right-wing populists advocate counterknowledge; they profess belief in truth achievable by inquiry, not by mainstream experts but alternative ones. This is a different knowledge orientation from the valorisation of ‘common sense’, and there is reason to believe it is somewhat specific to contemporary right-wing anti-immigration populism. Populism’s epistemologies are multifaceted but often absolutist, as is populism’s relationship to power and democracy.
... The group around "Coruptia Ucide", led by Florin Badita, a 29-year-old activist and data analyst, contributed to organizing protest events throughout the following two years and played a significant role in the mobilization for the 2017 protests. Hence, even though the discussion on advantages and disadvantages of new communication technologies for social movements has often been quite polarized (Mosca-della Porta 2009) and the benefits of the internet for activism are equally hotly debated (Bakardjieva-Svensson-Skoric 2012), our observations suggest that the use of ICT has played an important role in the spiral of protests and mobilization in Romania since 2011. ...
The present article analyzes the new culture of protest in Romania, a type of engagement we define as recreative activism. During the past years, young and culturally-inclined citizens started demanding more and more to have a share in the political process. To explain the novelty of this phenomenon, we argue that patterns of cultural consumption in the scene contributed to the spiral of ever-increasing participation in pro-tests throughout the past six years, mainly drawing on in-depth interviews with activists and adherents of the Romanian alternative scene. This data was further supplemented by inferences derived from participative ob-servation and content analysis. Three main protest waves were analyzed and critically put in context: the Rosia Montana (2013), Colectiv (2015), and OUG 13 (2017) protests. Our main findings are that recreative activism has its roots in the concomitance of cultural consump-tion and noninstitutionalized political participation, as well as in a certain disenchantment of protest partici-pants with post-communist politics. Further, recreative activism is characteristic for nonconventional political involvement, which requires less commitment than classic activism and is less influenced by ideologies.
... Within the last ten years, increasing attention has been directed to the role of digital technology in the organization of social movements. Digital technology is often praised as a useful tool for coordinating action, building networks, practicing media activism, physically manifesting emerging political ideals (Juris, 2005), elaborating political opinions (Mosca, 2010), facilitating mobilization, and creating permanent assemblies (Mosca & della Porta, 2009). Far from rejecting the value of face-to-face interactions, online spaces are generally seen as complementing them. ...
... Far from rejecting the value of face-to-face interactions, online spaces are generally seen as complementing them. Some see offline participation as a driving force behind online activism (Norris, 2001), while others argue that real communities emanate from cyberspace (Mosca & della Porta, 2009). These studies argue that for a movement to survive, grow and express alternative political imaginaries in today's socio-political climate, digital technology is inescapable. ...
Capitalism in all its variants, and the market disconnect economic exchanges from social relations (Adler, 2001; Polanyi, 2001). As such, it has always been perceived as a potentially dangerous system, prone to systematically destroy affective links (Adler & Heckscher, 2006; Tönnies, 1988). The current phase of advanced capitalism dominated by financial logics can even result in the subjugation of life (Banerjee, 2008; Fleming, 2013a, 2013a). Emancipating from this subjugation not only requires putting capitalism in question (Adler, 2013; Parker, 2002), but also realizing collective processes of territorial (Pickerill & Chatterton, 2006), economical (Gibson- Graham, 2006), and political re-appropriation at the local level.
In this sense, pre-capitalist and community-based forms of organizing, which re-socialize the economy and re-integrate it in a territory, benefit from a renewed interest (Adler, 2013; Gibson-Graham, 2006). In fact, establishing an intentional community involves a rejection of the norms established in the surrounding environment for trying out alternative social arrangements (Kanter, 1972; Pitzer, 2014). As such, it constitutes political attempts to appropriate civil society through the (re)creation of meaning, without confronting directly with the sources of power (Schehr, 1997).
However, alternative organizations drifting and challenging dominant institutions necessarily face the essential challenge of being embedded in (and dependent of) the larger system while resisting it (Cheney, Cruz, Peredo, & Nazareno, 2014; Meira, 2014). Hence they are always at risk of being co-opted (Flecha & Ngai, 2014; Vieta, 2014) or caught in a process of degeneration (Cornforth, 1995). If scholars have well documented the paradoxes and tensions existing in the everyday life of alternative organizations, we still know little about the conditions under which a sustainable process of re-appropriation of economic exchanges, life and work is possible. How do people interact within these autonomous geographies, and with the larger society, so as to construct a project of collective empowerment? The present dissertation builds on an ethnographic study of Longo Maï – a European network of intentional communities created in 1973 to experiment an alternative mode of living – to explore how a group of people construct, maintain and develop a community aimed at producing collective empowerment and social innovations.
This question is addressed in three parts: we first look at how the group interacts with the larger society, then focus on how they relate with each other inside their territories, and finally, we explore how production is organized in a small world of equals. It is proposed first that the neutralization of symbolic threats coming from the environment helps the group in creating an alternative culture of exchanges; second, that the use of the territory allows the group to frame specific political actions and to craft an oppositional relational structure based on friendship and hospitality; and finally, that the existence of a functional hierarchy allow them to survive as an economic unit. These aspects have been identified as essential conditions in the shaping, maintenance, and development of Longo Maï, as an enduring collective project of empowerment and social transformation. More precisely, the analysis shows that Longo Maï is continuously shaping a productive community in which economic exchanges, work and life are re-embedded in social relationships and in a territory.
From this analysis, we conceptualize praxis-based form of collective empowerment facilitating the ongoing production of social innovations. Instead of relying on a strong and unified ideology, actors experiment various and fragmented practices which incorporate political beliefs. This praxis approach, associated with the crafting of a perpetual democratic dialogue, and with the nurturing of hospitable practices, facilitates the production of social innovations through the crafting of collective forms of empowerment based on a re-appropriation of life .
This study contributes to ongoing discussions around the possibility of constructing sustainable community-based and value-rational organizations (Adler, 2013; Cheney et al., 2014; Gibson-Graham, 2006; Stohl & Cheney, 2001) by analyzing collective processes of enduring and empowering social transformation at the small group level (Fine, 1979; Fine & Harrington, 2004; Harrington & Fine, 2000). It can also contribute to current discussions on processes of collective empowerment (Drury & Reicher, 2005; Rao & Dutta, 2012; Vallas, 2006) leading to social innovation. More largely, this is a story of an organization facing several contradictions and striving to survive, not only in spite of them, but also with them. As such, this study can contribute to organization theory by analyzing processes through which ambiguity and disorder are accepted in daily organizational life (Robertson & Swan, 2003; Stark, 2011; Thanem, 2006), and appropriated so that to facilitate the maintenance and development of the organization.
... 73-106;della Porta, 2006;Reiter et al., 2007, pp. 63-72), and the use of new media in general (Bennet, 2003;Cottle & Lester, 2011;della Porta & Mosca, 2005;Langman, 2005;Mosca & della Porta, 2009) and social media in particular (Bajpai & Jaiswal, 2011;Christensen, 2011;Procter, Vis, & Vox, 2011;Rahimi, 2011;. ...
The study of new media use by transnational social movements is central to contemporary investigations of social contention. In order to shed light on the terrain in which the most recent examples of online mobilization have grown and developed, this paper combines the interest in the transnational dynamics of social contention and the exploration of the use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) for protest action. In specific terms, the study investigates how early twenty-first century social movement coalitions used Internet tools to build symbolically transnational collective identities. By applying a hyperlink network analysis approach, the study focuses on a website network generated by local chapters of the World Social Forum (WSF), one of the earliest social movement coalitions for global justice. The sample network, selected through snowball sampling, is composed of 222 social forum websites from around the world. The study specifically looks at hyperlinks among social forum websites as signs of belonging and potential means of alliance. The analysis uses network measures, namely of cohesion, centrality, structural equivalence and homophily, to test dynamics of symbolic collective identification underlying the WSF coalition. The findings show that in early twenty-first century transnational contention, culture and place still played a central role in the emergence of transnational movement networks.
