In this post, REFRAME co-managing editor Dr Tanya Kant interviews Re.Framing Activism editor Dr Eleftheria Lekakis on her new monograph: Consumer Activism, Promotional Culture and Resistance. Dr Lekakis’s book takes as its premise that consumption and resistance are entwined. From buying fair-trade, to celebrity advocates for social causes, to subvertising and anti-consumerist grassroots movements, consumer…
Category: media research
Controlled death narrative: Worlding in China and the communication logic of totalitarianism
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…
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,…