Social Movement Media: problems and prospects beginning with some definitions…..

Reluctance in Media Studies scholarship until the past decade to take social movement media seriously

Typical absence of media and communication from social movement studies; or if presence, lack of problematization

Variable uses of the concept/term ‘social movement’ The ‘mob’ The ‘rational actor’ ‘New’ Social Movements

Likewise regarding the concepts/terms ‘civil society’ and ‘global civil society’

Current tendency to emphasize digital networks and efficiency of communication and social mobilization, and neglect expressive culture and symbolism; or the reverse

Infrequency of research on actual uses and reception of social movement media John Downing, “Audiences and readers of alternative media: the absent lure of the virtually unknown,” Media, Culture & Society 25.5 (2003), pp

How to develop affordable face-to-face interactions within transnational social movements among leaderships, and media/information activists, in order to ‘ground’ technically mediated routine interactions

Within that context, language, language and language – not merely different tongues, but different stylistic formats and different levels of formal education and organizational experience

The relation between social movement media activism and ‘radical’ public relations activism.

In the ‘development’ context, ‘development’ as a highly politicized but ostensibly apolitical process (Arturo Escobar), with ‘development communication’ as a set of techniques; vs. self-generated, politically engaged social movement media expanding ‘globalization from below’.