by Sara Xueting Liao The opening of 2020 has been unusual. Bushfires have been roaring in Australia for months. A weird flu season has caused thousands of lives in the U.S. Locusts in swarms have been tearing across East Africa. And in China, an epidemic brought by an infectious virus has been shaking the state’s…
Alternative media activism: Anybody hearing the audience?
by Pantelis Vatikiotis Research interest in alternative media has grown considerably over the last two decades in reference to the appropriation of digital technologies for activist purposes, but are we hearing the audience? The use of social media during uprisings sparked across the world in the emblematic year 2011 (Arab Spring, Indignados, Occupy Movement)…
Emotional Intelligence and Grassroots Epistemology
By Gino Canella, Ph.D. As media studies scholars, social scientists, and journalists focus on big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, they often fail to consider the importance of emotional intelligence. “Anger is loaded with information and energy,” Audre Lorde said in 1981. Emotion, according to Lorde, is data. Feelings are often…
Cyberactivism and Gender-Based Violence in Brazil: the case of networked activism led by Sabrina Bittencourt in João de Deus case
December 8th, 2018. João Teixeira de Farias, commonly known as “João de Deus” (“John of God” in Portuguese), the worldwide famous spiritual leader is on the news this time not because of his acclaimed “healing powers”, but surprisingly due to one of the biggest sexual scandals in the world, being accused of sexually abusing more…
#carnivalofresistance
In January 2017, upon the inauguration of Donald Trump, a petition to the British Parliament reached over 1,8 million signatures, asking for the prevention of the 45th President of the United States to the United Kingdom. A few weeks later, after debating the petition in Parliament, the Government responded that it “believes the President of the United…
Re-framing art activism? (New) research approaches to art and politics
by Paula Serafini Art activism has been written about. A lot. Politics and art are a good match, and events, exhibitions and publications that address the artistic and the political have been en vogue for a while now. So why keep writing about this stuff? There are a few straightforward reasons: new practices emerging,…
FAKE! and TRUE BELIEVER – two new activist videos by Tom Kalin
As we launch our new look at Re.framing Activism—one put together by the original founder of the website, Rachel Tavernor— we also bring you, below, two new videos about the practices of disinformation and the new US presidency made and published online by the great American filmmaker Tom Kalin, currently professor of experimental film at the European…
Paying for the Revolution in Monopoly Money
by Julian Gottlieb In my last post for RA, I made the case for movements to be more strategically adaptive; to evolve, pivot on issues, and tinker with new tactics. This may seem a bit obvious; duh! movements have to change with the times and try new tactics when old ones decay in efficacy over…
The Productivity of Protest
by Laura Portwood-Stacer I’m writing this post a few days after the world learned that Donald Trump had won enough electoral votes to become the 45th president of the United States. In the hours following the announcement, those who had feared this outcome (even if they didn’t really expect it) rapidly transitioned from denial to…
The Radical Potential of Media Publicity: The Case of City Plaza Refugee Squat in Athens
by Alexandra Iliadi* On 22 April 2016, activists from the Solidarity Initiative for Economic and Political Refugees, a coalition of anti-racist and left collectives, joined with refugees to squat an abandoned hotel in a central district of Athens. The seven-floor hotel City Plaza which had been closed and unused but remained fully equipped for almost…
“Words and actions”: Donald Trump, Rape Culture, and Hashtag Feminism
Rosemary Clark Donald Trump: I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look…I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You…
The Return of Revolutionary Narratives and the Future of Revolution
by Guobin Yang Recently, the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association was held in Philadelphia. The theme of the meeting was “Great Transformations: Political Science and the Big Questions of Our Time.” This sounded like a call for the return of grand narratives. A return, because there was once a time for grand…