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Communication, Institutions and Power

This article explores the concept of communication within social movements and its role in challenging power structures and promoting change. It discusses the origins of communication, means of conveyance, and the changes that occur when communication changes. It also examines the necessary components of collective action and the relationship between media, social ties, and activism.

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Communication, Institutions and Power

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  1. Communication, Institutions and Power Spring, 2017 Gary Fields

  2. What is Communication?

  3. What is Communication? • 16th century origins from Latin “communicare” meaning to “share.” • When we “share” something, we are engaged in an act of “exchange.” • When we exchange, we are essentially “trading.” • From the Oxford English Dictionary, trade and communication are inextricably linked.

  4. Adam Smith (1776) “The division of labor, from which so many advantages are derived, is not the effect of any human wisdom but instead derives from the propensity in human nature to truck, barter, and otherwise exchange one thing for another.” Book 1, Chapter 2

  5. Means of Conveyance • The Body (including voice) • Infrastructure

  6. What is Communication? • Connection:enabling information and materials to circulate from one point to another. • Mobility: Movement of materials or meaning from one point to another. • Exchange: Transfer of materials, meanings, men/women from one point to another. • Infrastructure: A system of accessenabling materials meanings, and people to move from one point to another.

  7. Communication involves… • Distance • Time • Access • Connection

  8. What Changes When Communication Changes? • Economic Life • Technology • Politics / Institutions • Work • Consumption • Boundaries • Property • Truth • Conflict / Power

  9. “History must be mobilized if we are to understand the present.”

  10. The Border

  11. Shenzhen – Mango Jeans

  12. Shenzhen – Foxconn Electronics

  13. Guangdong – Workshop of the World

  14. What is a Social Movement?

  15. What is a Social Movement? • …Collectivities acting with organizational coherence outside institutional channels with the aim of challenging, resisting or overturning such systems.Snow / Soule, 2011: 6 • …an organized effort to change laws, policies, or practices by people without power to make change through conventional channels. Francesca Polleta • …an effort by individual / group actors to confront a perceived injustice by mobilizing political, economic, and cultural power collectively in order to remedy the injustice and chanage the values of society. Marshall Ganz • …an organized effort to redefine society’s cultural values in order to promote change. Touraine, 2002: 90

  16. What is Necessary for Collective Action?

  17. What is Necessary for Collective Action? • Injustice • Trigger that amplifies Injustice. • Claim (Story) that explains why is it necessary to correct Injustice, and seeks to attract people to the cause by projecting a vision of something better. • Communications Infrastructure that spreads the story about Injustice, the Trigger, and the Claim. • Repertoires (practices) that challenge structures of power that elicit consent.

  18. Order and Consent Society functions on the basis of consent in which individuals / organizations submit to institutionalized rules of power and order. Social movements challenge institutionalized rules of power and the systems of belief underlying power in presenting an alternative.

  19. ‘Hegemony’ and Theorizing Order Society consists of a political order which rules through law and force, and a civil society which rules through consent. For Gramsci, such consent was the basis of ‘culture’ in which a dominant ideology or world view prevailed. Gramsci use the term cultural hegemony to describe dominant ideologies to which we give our tacit consent. Breaking this cultural hegemony was the key to social change.

  20. Order, Consent and Social MovementsKey Questions How do people come to understand their consent to order as somehow intolerable? How do people come to act collectively to change what they believe to be intolerable?

  21. Snow / Soule5 Questions 1) What is the nature of the injustice or grievance? 2) Why do movements emerge in time and place? 3) Who are the participants and how do they come to take part? 4) How do movements pursue their aims? 5) What are the outcomes of social movements?

  22. Communication and Social Movements • How is communication situated in modelling protest and social movements? • What is the relationship of media to collective activity? • How do we understand communication and the notion of social “ties” between people? • What are the different arguments about media, social ties and collective action?

  23. Gladwell / Strong Ties What makes people participants in activism? [Degree of personal connection between individuals and movement – STRONG TIES.

  24. Gladwell / Weak Ties What kinds of connections does social media promote? Social media promotes weak ties between individuals. Weak Ties promote networks; strong ties promote hierarchies.

  25. Repertoires / Ties What does Gladwell argue are the types of repertoires necessary for social movement? What type of ties are necessary to promote such repertoires

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