Robertson A. (ed.) (2018) ‘Screening Protest: Visual narratives of dissent across time, space and genre’. London & New York: Routledge.
‘In this book, the authors provide an important addition to existing research on the media representations of protest. Whereas this body of literature tends to focus on the press and on the textual, this book is analysing protest on screen, which inevitably implicates the visual. It does so in a systematic way and comparatively across different protests and a variety of broadcasters, presenting an impressive amount of data in an engaging way.’ – Bart Cammaerts, Professor in Politics and Communication, The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
ISBN: 978-1-138-04217-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-04213-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-17389-4 (ebk)
Robertson, A. (2018) ‘Introduction’, in A. Robertson ed. Screening Protest: Visual narratives of dissent across time, space and genre. London & New York: Routledge.
Robertson, A., Chiroiu, L. & Grecu, D. (2018) ‘Protest on global television: protest maps, violence and voice’ in A. Robertson ed. Screening Protest: Visual narratives of dissent across time, space and genre. London & New York: Routledge.
Robertson, A., Chiroiu, L. & Ceder, M. (2018) ‘The protest paradigm and global television news narratives of dissent’ in A. Robertson ed. Screening Protest: Visual narratives of dissent across time, space and genre. London & New York: Routledge.
Schrettle, K. (2018) ‘Mediating Democracy: global television news and the Greek protests of 2015’ in A. Robertson ed. Screening Protest: Visual narratives of dissent across time, space and genre. London & New York: Routledge.
Hänska, M. & Bode, M. (2018) ‘How the ubiquity of eyewitness media changes the mediation and visibility of protests in the news’ in A. Robertson ed. Screening Protest: Visual narratives of dissent across time, space and genre. London & New York: Routledge.
Becker, K. (2018) ‘Icons of Protest in the Visual Cultures of News’ in A. Robertson ed. Screening Protest: Visual narratives of dissent across time, space and genre. London & New York: Routledge.
Robertson, A. & Gojowy, A. (2018) ‘Protest, Place, In Pictures. The public square in Al Jazeera English photo essays’ in A. Robertson ed. Screening Protest: Visual narratives of dissent across time, space and genre. London & New York: Routledge.
Robertson, A. (2018) ‘From Robin Hood to Mr. Robot: Popular Cultural Narratives of Protest on Television’ in A. Robertson ed. Screening Protest: Visual narratives of dissent across time, space and genre. London & New York: Routledge.
Grecu, D. & Robertson, A. (2018) ‘Audio Visuals: protest and the popular music screen’ in A. Robertson ed. Screening Protest: Visual narratives of dissent across time, space and genre. London & New York: Routledge.
Cowman, K. (2018) ‘The Militant Suffrage Campaign on Screen’ in A. Robertson ed. Screening Protest: Visual narratives of dissent across time, space and genre. London & New York: Routledge.
Widestedt, K. (2018) ‘Breaking news from Petrograd, 1917: remediated revolution as popular history’ in A. Robertson ed. Screening Protest: Visual narratives of dissent across time, space and genre. London & New York: Routledge.
Robertson, A. (2015) ‘Activists’, chapter 6 of Media and Politics in a Globalizing World. Cambridge: Polity.
Robertson, A. (2015) ‘What’s Going on? Making Sense of the Role of the Media in the Arab Uprisings’. Sociological Compass, Volume 9, Issue 7, pp. 531-541.
Robertson, A. (2013) ‘Connecting in crisis:‘old’ and ‘new’ media and the Arab Spring’ International Journal of Press/Politics 18: 325-341.
Robertson, A. (2012) ‘Narratives of Resistance: Comparing Global News Coverage of the Arab Spring’, New Global Studies Vol 6, Issue 2, Article 3.
A Global Media Café
at the Department of Media Studies, Karlavägen 104
JMK-salen, 4th floor
Thursday 8 November 2018
This was a day of presentations about turbulent politics in troubled times and above all mediations of protest, designed to start a conversation with colleagues, students, interested members of the public and kindred spirits from abroad about the issues at the heart of the Screening Protest Project and to celebrate the publication of a project anthology.
Higher Seminar/Public lecture
From Cold War to Information War: RT and the global media environment
Professor Stephen Hutchings, University of Manchester
The theme of propaganda has dominated much media coverage of the Skripal spy poisoning scandal and recent interference in the elections of various Western countries, including Sweden in the autumn of 2018. In this context, a narrative has emerged which sets the Kremlin at the centre of a web of cyber-warriors and media machinery, all centrally coordinated to attach a single audience. At this seminar, Hutchings explained why the reality is much more complicated, and Russian media discourses are more complex than often presented. This matters, as such misrepresentations of Russian media strategies undermine efforts to tackle them, and feed spirals of mutual hostility.
Book Launch
Screening Protest. Visual Narratives of Dissent Across Time, Space and Genre
(Routledge 2018)
Introduction and overview of the book (Alexa Robertson)
While often overlooked in the excitement surrounding digital media, the screen provides a fruitful, analytical focus and brings together a range of scholarly perspectives on the study of protest mediations on television and in film. In this brief overview, Robertson explained how the book (and the project from which it emerged) explores how visual narratives of protest wander across borders – territorial, temporal and generic. Chapters compare coverage of major protests in recent history by global news channels and consider how geopolitical agendas, newsroom culture and the ubiquity of eyewitness footage shape the narration of global protest events. Twinned with the concept of screen, a focus on narrative makes it possible to compare such news stories with popular cultural depictions of the protester, in films and television series such as The Hunger Games, Robin Hood and Suffragette.
Protests on global television: visualizing newsworlds, violence and voice (Luiza-Silvia Chiroiu)
With the scholarly literature highlighting the increasingly transnational nature of contemporary protest, this presentation explored the extent to which protest is depicted as a ‘global’ issue on television news. It compared the depiction of protest between 2011 and 2018 in the newsworlds of four global news channels – BBC World (BBCW), CNN International, (CNNI) Al Jazeera English (AJE) and RT (formerly Russia Today) – each moored in a different cultural setting and with a different relation to political power, using visualization of quantitative data to clarify the complex interface between world politics in turbulent times and a rapidly evolving media landscape.
Whose ‘voice’ do we see? Images of protest in visual journalism on screen (Karin Becker)
In this contribution, Becker looked at still and moving images of protest on global news screens. Despite finding many visual themes in common, she argued that there are distinct contrasts that cannot be accounted for only by differences of medium. For the broadcast journalist, it has become common to film from street-level, jostled by the crowd and engulfed in teargas when the conflict turns violent. The visual style is participatory, and includes visual attributes similar to amateur footage. In contrast, still photographs from these protests often adhere to a style that is less ‘documentary’ and more ‘expressionistic’, to use Solaroli’s distinction. She concluded by reflecting on these styles as representing different professional responses to user-generated content, and as visualizing different voices.
Militant Suffrage on Screen (Krista Cowman, University of Lincoln)
Against the backdrop of the centenary of ‘Votes for Women’ in the UK, Cowan explored the main screen representations of the British Women’s Suffrage campaign. The flamboyant campaigns of the Women’s Social and Political Union, the largest militant society, were at their height as public cinemas arrived in Britain. Cowman argued that the Union’s large ‘set piece’ demonstrations as well as its smaller more violent actions proved irresistible to newsreel photographers while opponents of the campaign were able to enjoy comic feature films that ridiculed the potential of suffrage to disrupt gender roles. From century-old depictions of suffrage on screen, through Fame is the Spur (1947), Mary Poppins (1964), Shoulder to Shoulder (1974), and up to Suffragette (2015), she discussed why women’s suffrage has struggled to come to screen as well as fruition.
Strategic Narratives of Protest on Global Television News (Alexa Robertson & Stephen Hutchings)
In an encounter between the Screening Protest and Reframing Russia projects, the final presentation of the morning focused on the role of mediations of dissent in the global information war. Robertson talked about the strategic use of speaking actors compared across protests and newsroom discourses, as reported by five global broadcasters with different relations to geopolitical power – the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, those that began in Ferguson in the US, and the Occupy Central or ‘Umbrella’ protests in Hong Kong – with a response by Hutchings.
Symposium
Creative Interruptions (presentation by Aditi Jaganathan, Brunel University London)
A member of the Creative Interruptions research team, Jaganathan presented a study that analyses how different generations of Black and Asian activists in the UK have mobilised screen media. A central concern is to better understand the motivations of those cultural activists, from the 1980s to the present day, who have selected either film or digital platforms as a space for resistance. Through a process of co-creation, different constituents involved in anti-racist screen activism (producers, archivists, campaigners) are brought together in the project, which seeks to reconceptualise creative screen production of the Black and Asian diaspora. In focus are the ‘screen-based creative and artistic strategies’ of creative activists.
More about the Creative Interruptions Project
Respondent: Nadja Schaetz
You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-70 – film screening & discussion (Victoria Broackes, Emily Harris, Geoffrey Marsh, V&A)
The exhibition with this title, that originated at London’s V&A explored how the years 1966-70 shook the foundations of post-WWII society and shaped the lives we live today. They set the agenda that is at the heart of the current fierce struggle between Western liberal values and Fundamentalism of all sorts, but also saw an optimistic idealism that motivated people to come together and question established power structures. Lines can be traced from the civil rights movement to multiculturalism, from the permissive society to feminism and gay liberation, from the hippie movement to environmentalism. The exhibition also documented how – somewhat contradictorily – the period heralded the commodification of sharing and led to surveillance culture and screen overload. The exhibition provoked visitors into questioning how far these revolutions have come and what still needs to be done, and serves as an impactful reminder of the power of protest and performance. A new film by award-winning director Emily Harris documents the interaction of the public with this past, and gives unprecedented access to behind-the-scenes stories from some of the key people who demonstrated, agitated, acted, organised and galvanised the revolutions of the late 1960s. It includes interviews with Yoko Ono, Michael Lang (organiser of the Woodstock festival), Jonas Mekas (godfather of American avant-garde cinema), Twiggy and others. As well as a screening of the film, the curators of the exhibition gave insights, at this session, into their curatorial process and shared stories about the meeting between artefact and public, and between exhibition and screen.
Respondent: Karin Becker
Invited Speakers
Krista Cowman Professor of History and Director of Research, University of Lincoln, previously from the School of Cultural Studies, Leeds Metropolitan University. She is a specialist on women and politics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the suffrage movement, and community campaigns in the inter-war era through which women attempted to shape and control their environments. She was a consultant on Suffragette, the film starring Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep. (Confirmed.)
Victoria Broackes Senior Curator and Geoffrey Marsh Director of London’s V&A Department of Theatre and Performance. Broackes and Marsh were co-curators of the David Bowie Is and You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-70 exhibitions.
Emily Harris Film-maker whose awards include Best Director (for Love is Thicker than Water, Bracine Portugal), Best Feature Film (Borges and I, London Independent Film Festival) and Best Short Film (Three Towers, Raindance). She is Head of Digital Recording at the V&A Museum, where she creates film content for the Theatre and Performance Department. (Confirmed.)
Stephen Hutchings Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester, and formerly Professor of Cultural Studies and Russian at the University of Surrey. He is the director of the ‘Reframing Russia’ project, which takes as its starting point the radical reconfiguration of national identitied and interests on the global stage by transformations in the global news media landscape. It explores the complex reality of RT, which is too often dismissed as a mouthpiece of the Putin regime, and the consequences of the mediatization of political conflict. (Confirmed.)
Aditi Jaganathan PhD student at the Media, Culture and Communications at Brunel University London, who does work on Black British film and anti-racist activisms. Aditi is a member of the Creative Interruptions project.
Robertson, A. (2018) ‘From the Screen to the Street: Protest and Popular Cultural Narratives of Dissent’. Paper presented at the conference entitled ‘1968-2018: Protest, Performance and the Public Sphere’, University of Warwick, 7-9 June
Robertson, A. (2018) ‘Screening Protest – Comparing mediations of dissenting voices across time, space, and genre’. Paper presented in the ‘Visualizing the Voice(s) of Protest on Global Screens’ panel at the ICA Annual Conference, Prague, 24-28 May
Becker, K. (2018) ‘Whose ‘voice’ do we see? Images of protest in visual journalism on screen’. Paper presented in the ‘Visualizing the Voice(s) of Protest on Global Screens’ panel at the ICA Annual Conference, Prague, 24-28 May
Robertson, A., Chiroiu L. & Grecu, D. (2018) ‘Protests on global television: Visualizing Newsworlds, Violence and Voice’. Paper presented in the ‘Visualizing the Voice(s) of Protest on Global Screens’ panel at the ICA Annual Conference, Prague, 24-28 May
Robertson, A., Chiroiu L. & Ceder, M. (2018) ‘Strategic Narratives and Protest Coverage on Global Television News: Reporting the Voices of Dissent from the Ukraine, the US and Hong Kong’. Paper presented in the ‘Visualizing the Voice(s) of Protest on Global Screens’ panel at the ICA Annual Conference, Prague, 24-28 May
Robertson, A. (2017) ‘Desperately Seeking Global News: the Newsworlds of Al Jazeera English, BBC World, CNN International and RT’, Reuters Institute/International Journal of Press Politics conference, Oxford, 27-29 September
Robertson, A. (2017) ‘Fake News and Failed States: the strategic narratives of RT’. Paper presented at the Future of Journalism Conference, Cardiff, 14-15 September
Robertson, A. (2017) ‘From Robin Hood to Mr. Robot: popular cultural narratives of protest on television’. Paper presented at the European Sociological Association Conference entited (Un)Making Europe: Capitalism, Solidarities, Subjectivities’ conference, Athens, 29 Aug – 1 September
Karlsson, M (2017). “Policing the crisis in early Swedish cinema – A different story about (mass) media, violence and dissent.” Paper presented at the XXVII IAMHIST International Conference, Media and history: Crime,Violence and Justice. Paris, 10-13 July
Karlsson, M (2017) “Between Presence and Representation – An Exploration of Mayday in Early Swedish Cinema”, paper presented at the conference. Tracing entanglements in media history, Lund University, 17-19 May
Becker, K. (2017) ‘Where have all the icons gone?’ Images of protest in transnational news’,paper written for workshop/symposium ’News Images and Icons in theDigital Age: Photojournalism in Transition”, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, 8-11 January
Bode, M. (2016) ‘Verification processes and the ecology of eyewitness media’. Presentation at the symposium “Photography in Print & Circulation” Valand Academy and the Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg, 17-19 November
Robertson, A. (2016) ‘Protest on Television: Contesting the Past and Present in Popular Cultural Narrative’. Paper written for ECREA, Prague, 9-12 November
Becker, K. (2016) ‘TransnationalRepresentations of Protest in the News’. Panel presentation at ECREA, Prague, 9-12 November
Becker, K. (2016) ’Contemporary Visual Icons of Protestin the News’, COMET Lecture Series, University of Tampare, 27 October
Becker, K. (2016) ‘TransnationalRepresentations of Protest in the News,’ Communication Seminar Series, Schoolof Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 7 September
Becker, K. (2016) ‘Envisioning aCommon Space: Challenges to Research and Critique in Contemporary VisualStudies’, keynote lecture, International Visual Sociology Association meetings, Lillehammar, 22 June
Hänska, M. & Bode, M. (2016) ‘Verification processes and the ecology of eyewitness media in the news’. Presentation at the Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft (HIIG), Berlin
Karlsson, M. (2016) ‘Moving Images, Moving Expectations: An Exploration of Mediated Protets in Early Cinema’ Presentation at the London School of Economics, Media and Communications PhD Symposium
Robertson, A. (2015) ‘Taking to the Screens. A narrative approach to the study of televisual depictions of protest in complex media ecologies’. Paper presented at the conference on ‘Protest Participation in Variable Communication Ecologies. Meaning, Modalities, Implications’, Alghero, 24-26 June
Robertson, A. (2015) ‘Protests of Elsewhere’. Paper presented at the World Politics and Popular Culture conferenc in London, 20-21 November
Becker, K. (2015) ‘Visual Iconsof Protest in the News,’ paper presented for 4th International Visual Methods Conference, Brighton, 16-18 September
Grecu D. (2015) ‘Where have all the protest songs gone? Popular culture and protest – an analysis of The Billboard Year End Rock Charts.’ Paper presented at the World Politics and Popular Culture conference in London, 20-21 November
Prague, 27 May 2018
Visualizing the Voice(s) of Protest on Global Screens
Panel at the ICA Annual Conference, hosted by the Visual Communication Division and division on Global Politics and Social Change
The panel explores the visualization of voice in screening protest, and offers a preview of the project anthology, Screening Protest, to be published by Routledge in the summer of 2018. With the screen as its conceptual focus, the panel addresses the broad phenomenon of how protest is represented and what voices are heard and seen in global media.
Screening Protest – Comparing mediations of dissenting voices across time, space, and genre
Alexa Robertson, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University
Representations of protest on screen and the televisual narratives that frame them tie the five papers in the panel together. Robertson argues that, as a multidimensional and contradictory concept, the ‘screen’ provides a key to comparing (1) what is made visible, and what is obscured or screened out; (2) spaces of public vs. domestic or private viewing, embedded in the mobile, digital environment; (3) sites of past, present and imagined futures, not least across genre.
Protests on global television: Visualizing Newsworlds, Violence and Voice
Luiza-Silvia Chiroiu (presenter), Alexa Robertson, Diana-Andrea Grecu, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University
With the scholarly literature highlighting the increasingly transnational nature of contemporary protest, this paper explores the extent to which protest is depicted as a ‘global’ issue on television news. It compares the depiction of protest between 2011 and 2016 in the newsworlds of four global news channels – BBC World (BBCW), CNN International, (CNNI) Al Jazeera English (AJE) and RT (formerly Russia Today) – each moored in a different cultural setting and with a different relation to political power, using visualization of quantitative data to clarify the complex interface between world politics in turbulent times and a rapidly evolving media landscape.
Whose ‘voice’ do we see? Images of protest in visual journalism on screen
Karin Becker, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University
In this paper, Becker looks at still and moving images of protest on global news screens. Despite finding many visual themes in common, she argues that there are distinct contrasts that cannot be accounted for only by differences of medium. For the broadcast journalist, it has become common to film from street-level, jostled by the crowd and engulfed in teargas when the conflict turns violent. The visual style is participatory, and includes visual attributes similar to amateur footage. In contrast, still photographs from these protests often adhere to a style that is less ‘documentary’ and more ‘expressionistic’, to use Solaroli’s distinction. The paper concludes by reflecting on these styles as representing different professional responses to user-generated content, and as visualizing different voices.
Strategic Narratives and Protest Coverage on Global Television News: Reporting the Voices of Dissent from the Ukraine, the US and Hong Kong
Alexa Robertson (presenter), Luiza-Silvia Chiroiu, Madeleine Ceder, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University
This paper considers how the ‘voice’ of protest in global television news varies according to protest site and newsroom culture. The focus is on the strategic narrative and its relation to the classic, but nation-based reporting of the ‘protest paradigm’, where the story is typically one of confrontation between protesters and police, and lacks accounts of claims and grievances. Drawing on an analysis of 381 television news mediations of protest ny five broadcasters during 2014, the paper charts the strategic use of voice in the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, those that began in Ferguson in the US, and the Occupy Central or ‘Umbrella’ protests in Hong Kong. It transpires that while some broadcasters silenced protesters’ voices through ‘marginalization devices’ familiar from the literature, other broadcasters included a broader range of voices and, in some settings, privileged the dissenter..
Militant Suffrage on Screen
Krista Cowan, School of History and Heritage, University of Lincoln, United Kingdom
Against the backdrop of the centenary of ‘Votes for Women’ in the UK, this paper explores the main screen representations of the British Women’s Suffrage campaign. The flamboyant campaigns of the Women’s Social and Political Union, the largest militant society, were at their height as public cinemas arrived in Britain. Cowman argues that the Union’s large ‘set piece’ demonstrations as well as its smaller more violent actions proved irresistible to newsreel photographers while opponents of the campaign were able to enjoy comic feature films that ridiculed the potential of suffrage to disrupt gender roles. From century-old depictions of suffrage on screen, through Fame is the Spur(1947), Mary Poppins(1964), Shoulder to Shoulder(1974), and up to Suffragette(2015), the paper asks why women’s suffrage has struggled to come to screen as well as fruition.
Response
Alexandra Segerberg, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University
Stockholm, 13 May 2016
Screening Protest Symposium
Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University
This event brought together scholars who share an interest in media and protest, and who approach the study of protest mediations through different theoretical and empirical entry points.
Verification processes and the ecology of eyewitness media in the news
Mike Bode, visual artist, and Max Hänska, De Montfort University
Footage recorded by ordinary citizens of protests in the Arab Spring, throughout Occupy and up to the refugee crisis in Europe of 2015 has become a ubiquitous feature of online flows. In tandem with this, Bode and Hänska argue that user-generated content has also become more important in the newsroom. In this talk, they describe how eyewitness media is systematically collected, processed and authenticated by verification hubs, based on interviews at the BBC in London.
Individualising Engagement: Representations of Social Media and Political Engagement in the Canadian Press
Delia Dumitrica, Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam
From students protesting the schools’ dress codes to local communities challenging urban development plans, online platforms are thought to empower citizens who voice dissent. But traditional media constitute crucial sites for the articulation of new horizons of democratic expectations too. In this paper, Dumitrica presented the results of a qualitative analysis of stories about this published in the Canadian press between 2006-14.
Rethinking Justice in a Globalizing Age: The Case of Climate (In)Justice, Activists and the Media
Anna Roosvall, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University
In this paper, Roosvall argued that justice – a concept traditionally related to the nation – needs to be re-thought in a globalizing age. Building on interviews with indigenous activists at the UN climate summits in Durban 2011 and Paris 2015, as well as analyses of media reporting from these and other summits, the paper discusses different scales of justice in relation to climate change, media ecology, indigenous peoples and protest.
Visual Icons of Protest in the News: new wine in old wineskins?
Karin Becker, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University
In this presentation, Becker traced a shift in the visual cultures of journalism, using transnational media coverage of protest as a point of entry. Based on a pilot study of selected coverage of protests in Greece (2008), Tehran (2009) and Cairo (2011), she proposed a framework for interrogating the changing relationships between still and moving images in global media reporting of protest.
Protests and Places in global television news 2011-15
Alexa Robertson, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University
This paper asked how representations of protest in global television news over a six-year period varied according to protest site and issue, and to newsroom culture. The reporting of seven global newsrooms was compared: BBC World, CNN International, Deutsche Welle, Euronews, Al Jazeera English, RT and China’s CCTV. Although largely quantitative in approach, the analysis drew preliminary ‘maps of meaning’, to borrow Stuart Hall’s phrase, in which contemporary protest plays out on screen.
Stockholm, March-April 2016
Media and Protest Public Lecture Series
Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University
This series of six lectures, hosted by Stockholm’s Senior University – a non-profit organization that organizes lecture series, seminars and excursions for pensioners – examined the mediation of contemporary activism from a variety of scholarly vantage points, presenting Screening Protest themes and results to a broader audience.
Why are Thinkings ‘Kicking off Everywhere’?
Alexa Robertson, 9 March 2016
This first lecture in the series gave an overview of the role of the media in recent political turbulence. The British journalist Paul Mason claimed in his eponymous book that the mediatized protests of recent years amount to a global revolution. The lecture surveyed the analytical tools and concepts on offer to make sense of such developments.
Media, Indigenous Peoples and Climate Justice
Anna Roosvall, 16 March 2016
The second lecture looked at how climate change is a global problem with unevenly distributed local impact. Many indigenous people live in particularly vulnerable areas, such as the Arctic, and demands for climate justice can be heard from these groups. Roosvall explained how indigenous activists work and how the media report about their climate activism and protests.
The Power of the Image in Protest
Karin Becker,23 March 2016
In this lecture, Becker drew attention to the fact that news coverage of contemporary protests is often largely comprised of visual narratives. It can seem at times that the same images recur, even though protests take place in different sites, address different problems, and are reported in different media. How do ‘iconic images’ arise? And what do they mean – historically, in the media, and among activists?
Mobile Technology and Protest
Christian Christensen, 6 April 2016
In this lecture on the role of smartphones in social movements, Christian Christensen, Professor of Journalism at Stockholm University, explained how social media like Twitter and Facebook have fundamentally altered the way we get information and reach out to others around the world.
The Protests of Yesterday and Tomorrow in News and Popular Culture
Alexa Robertson, 13 April 2016
Demonstrators have not always been able to use Twitter and YouTube to reach out. This lecture was about how popular cultural narratives have been important vehicles for mobilization through the ages, and how once-silenced voices of dissent can now be heard through contemporary television drama. What do films like ‘Suffragette’ (2015), ‘The Hunger Games’ (2012-15), ‘Pride’ (2014) and ‘V for Vendetta’ (2005) – among many others – say about protest?
Who Can We Trust?
Alexa Robertson & Mike Bode, 20 April 2016
How are we to navigate through the new media landscape? How do we know what is true and credible and who has the power over the new narratives we encounter? In this final lecture, Alexa Robertson and Mike Bode talked about the different agendas of global news broadcasters, and verification strategies for the use of user-generated content, in the reporting of protest.
2015 – 2018
Screening Protest Seminars
Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University
At these seminars, we invite colleagues and students to listen to guest researchers and updates on our ongoing work.
23 October 2015
Aesthetics of Propaganda: uses of media for popular protest
Gürkan Özturan, Turkish journalist and activist
At this seminar, Özturan talked about the Gezi Park protests and the change of discourse in Turkey following the Occupy Movement in opposition politics, and spoke about developments in media pluralism and freedom in recent years.
6 November 2015
Crisis and Critique: a History of Media Participation
Anne Kaun, Södertörn University
In this presentation, Kaun offered a differentiated analysis of the role of social media in facilitating protests by considering a potential gap between different temporalities of media practices on the one hand, and political practices on the other. Drawing on the New York-based cases of the Unemployed Workers Movement in the 1930s, the Tenants’ Movement in the 1970s and the Occupy Wall Street Movement of 2011, she argued the need to re-politicize media infrastructures as means of communication to tackle democratic problems emerging from divergent temporalities.
4 December 2015
Do You Hear the People Sing “Lift Your Umbrella”?’
Tim Rühlig, Goethe University of Frankfurt
At this seminar, Rühig presented the results of fieldwork he did in Hong Kong during the Occupy Central Movement of 2014, and how the pro-democracy movement used YouTube music videos as a vehicle for mobilization.
29 January 2016
Digital Media and the Transnationalization of Protests
Michael Dahlberg-Grundberg, Umeå University
Dahlberg-Grundberg talked about his doctoral dissertation, in which he explored some of the geographical consequences of the use of digital media for political activism, by focusing on the transnationalization of protests. The more decentralized the social movement, he found, the more vibrant the transnational public. In order to explain how transnational social movements, using digital media, can emerge in cases where geographical distances might make such coalitions unlikely, he argued for the utility of the notion of affectual proximity, to help understand how transnational social movements, connecting actors from all over the world, can emerge through digital media.
11 March 2016
Reporting the 1989 uprising in the GDR
Astrid Otto, Inst. for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin
At this seminar, Astrid Otto presented her research on the comparative analysis of news stories broadcast during the uprising that toppled the Berlin Wall.
7 October 2016
Crowds/publics/audiences: historical snapshots of the mass in the media
Kristina Widestedt, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University
The attraction between masses and the media was explored in this historical study of media representations of ‘the crowd’ in different emotional modes and with various registers of preferred collective action. By comparing the behaviour of the mass in consensual and contentious settings, Widestedt sought to contribute to the understanding of protesters by shedding light on their ‘others’ – the consenting public.
10 March 2017
Visual Analysis of the ‘crisis’
Jelena Jovicic, Department of Sociology, Stockholm University
In this seminar, Jovicic presented a study of the portrayal of asylum-seekers and refugees in German newspapers. Working in the interface between sociology, criminology and visual studies, her aim was to explore the practices of criminalization of migration as reflected in changing political and media discourses.
12 May 2017
Filming Revolution
Alisa Lebow, University of Sussex
In this presentation, film scholar and practitioner Alisa Lebow spoke about her work with documentary film and its relation to ‘the political’. With her interactive website ‘Filming Revolution’ (filmingrevolution.org), she spoke about why some interactive projects have productively resisted the compulsion to narrate a story.
19 May 2017
Activist Media in Turkey
Gürkan Özturan, Turkish journalist and activist
In this return visit, Özturan spoke about how recent developments had ushered in one of the darkest periods in Turkish media history. At a time when even basic facts became subject to censorship, he argued the unprecedented need for platforms providing accurate and verified information and sites for open public discussion. Özturan described the work of journalist activists to maintain such a platform: dokus8NEWS.
26 October 2017
Screening Protest at the Higher Seminar
Alexa Robertson
Results of ongoing analyses conducted within the framework of the Screening Protest project were presented at this faculty seminar, with a presentation exploring how the struggle with a double-edged problem of representation has played out on global television, in the television of the 1960s, and in television drama.
Thurs 8 Feb 2017
The Circuit of Protest
Bart Cammaerts, London School of Economics
In this talk, Cammaerts presented a conceptual framework, denoted as The Circuit of Protest, in order to theorise as well as study the various ways in which social movement discourses and frames circulate through a society. He argued that this circulation is increasingly mediated and shaped by what he has called the mediation opportunity structure. The Circuit of Protest has four core-moments: 1) the production of movement discourses, frames and a collective identity, 2) a set of self-mediation practices to disclose and examine the movement frames, as well as create memories, 3) the mainstream media representations of protest and the movement and 4) the reception of the self-mediation practices and mainstream media representations by non-activist citizens. Cammaerts studied each of these moments in the context of UK’s anti-austerity movement (Occupy, UK Uncut and student protests) by using frame analysis, interviews with activists, two content analyses, a survey and focus groups with non-activist citizens.
Other studies conducted within the framework of the project
Schaetz, N. (2018) “‘The Hate in Our Midst’: The 2017 Unite the Right Rally and Representations of Voice, Race, and Emotions in CNN International and Al-Jazeera English”
Chiroiu, L. (2016) “Protesting Sport: A Comparative Study of Media Representations of the London Olympics, Sochi Olympics and Brazil World Cup in AJE, BBCW and RT”
Schrettle, K. (2016) “Mediating Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Framing of the Greek Crisis in 2015 in BBCW, DW, and Euronews“.
Wang, T. (2015) “A Comparative Study of Television Coverage of the 2014 Hong Kong Protests on Global Media BBC World News and CCTV News“.
Grecu, D (2015) “Popular Culture and Protest- Contemporary Protest Soundtrack. An Analysis of The Billboard Year End Rock Charts“.
