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The rise of a new media ecosystem: exploring 15M’s educommunicative legacy for radical democracy
Social Movement Studies
Abstract
This article explores the influence that the educommunicative dimension of the 15M Movement has had on the creation and consolidation of a new ecosystem of independent media. To this end, we rely on a document analysis of the movement’s minutes and manifestos and on the review of the editorial principles and educational activities of a sample of independent media. We also draw on ten in-depth interviews with key journalists and activists who actively participated in the 15M. We argue that the movement’s media activism had a clear educommunicative orientation that strengthened pre-existing media activism, opening windows of opportunity for media innovation. This contributed to the rise of a new media ecosystem of independent media characterised by three key elements: (1) synergies and mutual support; (2) the key role of the community of subscribers and users; and (3) an educational agency with a public service orientation. Finally, we illustrate that this new media ecosystem displays a clear educommunicative orientation. This orientation is rooted in the imaginary and practices of the 15M and is based on the revitalised civic role of journalism and on the value of information for radical democracy. This article advances social movement studies by engaging a dialogue between an educommunicative perspective and a media ecology lens. It articulates the relevance of media as educational agents and explores the impact of a social movement in the creation and shaping of a new media ecosystem.
... He suggests that it comprises government organizations, libraries, universities, newsrooms, media training, people, platforms, and informal and formal information. However, these new ecosystems' limits are inconsistent and understood [23]. ...
... Similarly in the mass media field, different initiatives have emerged, such as Eldiario.es, Infolibre, La Marea, all with clear links to 15-M, and which seek to promote journalism models whose driving motive are understood as exercising strict control of political and economic power (Barbas & Treré, 2022;Casero-Ripollés, 2020). In a similar vein, other initiatives include Maldita.es, which monitors and oversees the mass media and journalists' practices and the spreading of fake news. ...
... Similarly in the mass media field, different initiatives have emerged, such as Eldiario.es, Infolibre, La Marea, all with clear links to 15-M, and which seek to promote journalism models whose driving motive are understood as exercising strict control of political and economic power (Barbas & Treré, 2022;Casero-Ripollés, 2020). In a similar vein, other initiatives include Maldita.es, which monitors and oversees the mass media and journalists' practices and the spreading of fake news. ...
Social movement impact on democracy has primarily been treated in two ways in the literature: the role of social movements in promoting democratization in the form of regime change; and a more recent literature on the ways social movements initiate democratic innovation in governing institutions and norm diffusion in already existing democracy. In this article, we argue that to fully understand social movement impact on democracy, we need to look beyond these two main approaches, as important as they are. Using the emblematic case of Spain’s 15-M pro-democracy movement to illustrate our conceptual proposal, we draw on existing literature to argue that social movements can impact democracy in several key arenas currently not sufficiently considered in the literature. We provide examples of democratic impact emerging from the experimentation around the central problematic of ‘real democracy’ in the ‘occupied squares’ to highlight several ways social movements’ democratic impact might be explored. We develop the concepts of hybridity and democratic laboratory to analyze these impacts and discuss their relation to contemporary theorizing about democracy and movement outcomes. We argue that adopting this broader approach to the democratic impact of social movements leads to a more nuanced understanding of movement outcomes and ‘success’.
... Yet, the pedagogical potential of these online groups is not only limited to gig working domains: other scholars, like Treré(2020) and Barbas and Treré (2022), emphasized the educational dimension of online communication environments in the case of social movement activists. ...
This paper aims to understand the practices and meanings associated with the creation and use of private chat groups on instant messaging services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger and WeChat that are accessible only to platform workers of online food delivery services. We draw on participant observation in five countries (Italy, Spain, Mexico, China, and India), in-depth interviews with 68 food delivery couriers and digital ethnography ( Pink et al., 2015 ) within dozens of online private chat groups of food delivery workers. Our fieldwork shows that private chat groups are extremely relevant in the daily work of delivery workers and are appropriated to restore forms of mutualism not afforded by the food delivery apps. Following Costa (2018) and her concept of affordances- in-practice, we describe how the practice of online private chat groups created by platform workers affords: (1) the emergence of communities of practice; (2) resistance and contempt; (3) mutualism and solidarity. We argue that these workers ‘enact’ the affordances of instant messaging apps, to supplement – from below – the affordances of food delivery apps that were denied or ignored by food delivery companies. We argue that these affordances constitute cooperative affordances. This concept captures the cooperative nature of peer-to-peer communication that occurs within the informal online chat groups created by the workers themselves. Finally, this article contributes to affordance theory by highlighting how affordances are not immanent properties of artifacts, or ‘invariants’, as argued by Gibson (1979) , but can be ‘enacted’ by specific users, like food delivery workers, within specific social and cultural contexts.
Człowiek jest zwierzęciem symbolicznym pisał Ernst Cassirer w Eseju o człowieku (1998). To oznacza, że jako gatunek nie mamy bezpośredniego dostępu do rzeczywistości, tylko żyjemy w świecie zapośredniczonym przez symbole. Symboliczność naszego postrzegania świata polega na braku bezpośredniości, każda reakcja u człowieka zapośredniczona jest przez refleksję, która kumuluje się w języku, w zdolności do abstrahowania od kontekstu, w jakim pojawia się dany przekaz. Nasze istnienie w świecie i dla świata jest jakościowo inne niż reszty organizmów żywych. Inne to nie znaczy lepsze-z punktu widzenia biologii jesteśmy zepsutym zwierzęciem-odpowiadamy na bodźce z opóźnieniem. Z jednej strony zatem - mimo pewnej przewidywalności naszego zachowania - nigdy nie jesteśmy bezwzględnie zdeterminowani. Można przewrotnie powiedzieć, że nasze człowieczeństwo lokuje się w owym odstępie pomiędzy bodźcem a reakcją. Z drugiej strony nigdy nie jesteśmy do końca spontaniczni, a w konfrontacji ze światem zawsze pozostajemy uwikłani w sieć symbolicznych odniesień. Sięgając do tradycji socjologicznej, nie sposób myśleć o władzy symbolicznej bez postaci Pierre'a Bourdieu, który ustanowił ją ideą przewodnią swoich teoretycznych poszukiwań. To jej wszechobecność, arbitralność i niewidoczność powoduje, że dla badaczek i badaczy społecznych stano-wi ona nieustający przedmiot refleksji. Przestrzeń społeczna jest dla autora Rozumu praktycznego zawsze ustrukturyzowana przez sieć relacji stanowiących pole władzy symbolicznej.
Con un lenguaje directo y una narración compleja y cautivadora, esta reconstrucción etnográfica emerge como un potente registro elaborado desde el corazón mismo del movimiento 15M, el proceso ciudadano noviolento que inundó en 2011 las calles del Estado español contra la ofensiva de ajuste neoliberal y las élites políticas.
Panfletos, transcripciones de vídeos, intervenciones en las asambleas, interacciones en los dispositivos de comunicación virtual, recortes de prensa así como testimonios registrados en entrevistas en profundidad se alternan con el propio diario de campo de la autora, trenzando los acontecimientos, las decisiones colectivas y las trayectorias individuales que sostienen este viaje por la intrahistoria de un estudio de caso.
Este libro (que ofrece diversas lecturas: desde el análisis teórico en el marco de las ciencias sociales a la crónica activista) permite comprender los momentos en los que este movimiento floreció desafiando la propia lógica del campo político en su apuesta por refundar la praxis política y la democracia. Pero también los sucesivos cierres que asediaron la dinámica participativa; incluso uno de los más extremos: la deriva patriarcal.
Aborda, con afecto pero sin reservas, cómo se gestó, desarrolló y vació este enorme proceso de movilización ciudadana.
This chapter explores the pedagogical dimensions of activist media practices and articulates a series of conceptual tools for analysing and constructing knowledge around these practices. It also contributes to the theory of media practices in contexts of communication activism. Departing from the pedagogical perspective of Communication for Social Change, I analyse the limitations of theories of activist media practice and argue that the epistemology of Educommunication can contribute to improving our understanding of these practices. For this, I propose using ‘Educommunicative diagnosis’ as a toolbox for analysing activist media practices.
El 15-M, impulsado en mayo de 2011, por un movimiento de ciudadanos que reivindican la regeneración del sistema político, ha provocado un gran impacto sobre la esfera pública. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar los cambios que se están produciendo en la producción y distribución de noticias a partir del ejemplo de este movimiento social. Su uso de los medios sociales revela una novedosa estrategia consistente en la creación de nuevas noticias, al margen de las elites periodísticas y políticas, para introducir sus demandas en la agenda de los medios convencionales y para impulsar procesos de monitorización democrática.
Background/Context:
Educational research addressing social movements appears to be growing rapidly, but, with a few exceptions, this body of literature has remained largely isolated in pockets stretched across myriad fields of educational scholarship. Awareness and dialogue across researchers is limited because social movement-focused educational research lacks the structure, identity, profile, and networks of a field of scholarship.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study:
The purpose of this article is to explore how educational researchers have addressed social movements in their scholarship. Through presenting the findings from a wide-ranging literature review, we aim to generate greater awareness of social movement-oriented educational scholarship and argue for a more united field of research on social movements and education.
Research Design:
We conducted an extensive review of educational scholarship with an explicit focus on social movements. Our sample included over 370 publications from myriad fields of educational research, including adult education, higher education, social foundations of education, and other fields addressing K–12 schooling.
Findings/Results:
We found that most of the educational literature addressing social movements can be grouped into one of two categories: the study of education and learning in social movements, and the study of the influence of movements on formal education. The first category of scholarship, produced primarily (though not entirely) in the field of adult education, has the appearance of a research program, with researchers engaged in scholarly conversation with shared theoretical touchstones. The second category of scholarship does not have the appearance of a research program, as it is produced across a number of fields that do not appear to be in dialogue. Although there is little sign of mutual awareness across these two large categories of literature, we found that researchers on both sides of the divide have much in common, including theoretical, methodological, and topical interests.
Conclusions/Recommendations:
We conclude the literature review by arguing for the establishment of a more united field of research on social movements and education. We posit that an interdisciplinary and multi-perspective field devoted to understanding the educational dimensions and implications of social movements would not only benefit researchers and their scholarship but also pose and answer new and important questions related to formal, non-formal, and informal education. A more united field of inquiry related to social movements and education would also raise the profile of this scholarship such that it could have greater influence on educational policy and practice, as well as on social movements themselves.
Purpose
Starting from the assumption that knowledge becomes all the most important for movements in times of crisis, as old structures are challenged and new are to be envisaged and proved feasible, in this theoretical article we suggest ways to expand the toolkit of social movement studies in order to empirically address knowledge practices as a meaningful part of contemporary progressive activism.
Design/methodology/approach
We start from arguing that, in their effort to pursue or resist social and political changes, contemporary progressive social movements form collective spaces of knowledge production that are true laboratories of innovation. For this reason, we begin by making a case for accounting more explicitly for knowledge production within social movement studies not as a substitution for but, rather, as a necessary complement to current cultural approaches. Building on extant literature on the nexus between movements and knowledge, we then outline the peculiarities of movement knowledge.
Findings
On these bases, we outline the core components of what we call repertoires of knowledge practices - that is, the set of organizational practices that foster the coordination of disconnected, local, and highly personal experiences and rationalities within a shared cognitive system able to provide movements and their supporters with a common orientation for making claims and acting collectively to produce social, political, and cultural changes.
Originality/value
We conclude by identifying some promising avenues of research to further develop our understanding of movement practices of knowledge production and transmissions.
In this article, we draw on ethnographic research to examine some key communication activism practices of Spain's indignados (15M) movement. The 15M radically transformed communication activism in Spain through its strong political-pedagogical orientation. Here lies the greatest 15M lesson for Communication for Social Change: Ordinary citizens in countries like Spain are rejecting traditional roles as “beneficiaries” of institutional communication campaigns. Instead, they have become active political actors who are able to generate their own processes of political pedagogy and communication. We conceptualize this lesson by positing the existence of three principles of 15M communication activism as a school of politics: the principles of pedagogical sovereignty, action, and networking.
El ámbito de la educación mediática transita en un terreno científico que a lo largo del tiempo ha sido etiquetado con un extenso catálogo de denominaciones diferentes. “Educomunicación”, “alfabetización mediática” o “competencia digital” son sólo algunos ejemplos de los vocablos que encontramos con mayor frecuencia a la hora de sumergirnos en el campo de estudio que aboga por empoderar al ciudadano en el sentido crítico ante sus medios. Más allá de la preferencia de los diversos autores ante unas u otras opciones terminológicas, se hace necesaria una revisión conceptual que trate de arrojar luz acerca de las particularidades teóricas y semánticas relativas a los diversos sustantivos y adjetivos que conviven en el entramado léxico que rodea a la educación mediática. De este modo, el presente artículo se fundamenta en un recorrido histórico a través de las nomenclaturas que mayor influencia alcanzaron en las últimas décadas, a la vez que trata de ofrecer las claves actuales para caminar hacia una convergencia que establezca un criterio sólido y común en lo referente a la cuestión terminológica de la educación mediática.
In this article we develop the notion of the technology-media-movement complex (TMMC) as a field-definition statement for ongoing inquiry into the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in social and political movements. We consider the definitions and boundaries of the TMMC, arguing particularly for a historically rooted conception of technological development that allows better integration of the different intellectual traditions that are currently focused on the same set of empirical phenomena. We then delineate two recurrent debates in the literature highlighting their contributions to emerging knowledge. The first debate concerns the divide between scholars who privilege media technologies, and see them as driving forces of movement dynamics, and those who privilege media practices over affordances. The second debate broadly opposes theorists who believe in the emancipatory potential of ICTs and those who highlight the ways they are used to repress social movements and grassroots mobilization. By mapping positions in these debates to the TMMC we identify and provide direction to three broad research areas which demand further consideration: (i) questions of power and agency in social movements; (ii) the relationships between, on the one hand, social movements and technology and media as politics (i.e. cyberpolitics and technopolitics), and on the other, the quotidian and ubiquitous use of digital tools in a digital age; and (iii) the significance of digital divides that cut across and beyond social movements, particularly in the way such divisions may overlay existing power relations in movements. In conclusion, we delineate six challenges for profitable further research on the TMMC.
Sociology’s marginality to public discussion of the current economic, social and political crisis stems partly from naïveté about the sociology of its own knowledge, in particular about its interlocutors’ interests. Historically, sociology has repeatedly re-established its intellectual relevance through dialogue with movements for social change; this article argues that another such dialogue is overdue. Starting from existing discussions of social movements and their knowledge production, the article focuses on the organisational dimension of such knowledge and explores how this is elaborated in the current movement wave. Looking at movement spaces of theoretical analysis, new popular education processes and movements’ knowledge creation institutions, the article highlights potential contributions to renewing sociological processes of theorising, teaching and engaged research respectively, paying particular attention to movement practices of ‘talking between worlds’. It concludes with a call for a dialogue of critical solidarity between public sociology and new forms of social knowledge production.
The methods literature regarding sampling in qualitative research is characterized by important inconsistencies and ambiguities, which can be problematic for students and researchers seeking a clear and coherent understanding. In this article we present insights about sampling in qualitative research derived from a systematic methods overview we conducted of the literature from three research traditions: grounded theory, phenomenology, and case study. We identified and selected influential methods literature from each tradition using a purposeful and transparent procedure, abstracted textual data using structured abstraction forms, and used a multistep approach for deriving conclusions from the data. We organize the findings from this review into eight topic sections corresponding to the major domains of sampling identified in the review process: definitions of sampling, usage of the term sampling strategy, purposeful sampling, theoretical sampling, sampling units, saturation, sample size, and the timing of sampling decisions. Within each section we summarize how the topic is characterized in the corresponding literature, present our comparative analysis of important differences among research traditions, and offer analytic comments on the findings for that topic. We identify several specific issues with the available guidance on certain topics, representing opportunities for future methods authors to improve our collective understanding.
La crisis económica e institucional que vive el periodismo en España ha contribuido a una revitalización sin precedentes de medios y experiencias comunicacionales gestionadas por movimientos sociales y organizaciones no lucrativas. Este nuevo repunte de la participación ciudadana alcanza plena visibilidad a partir del estallido del movimiento 15M en mayo de 2011, que ha ayudado al fortalecimiento de la estructura y las redes del Tercer Sector, a la vez que a las primeras retransmisiones coordinadas a gran escala entre radios comunitarias del Estado español. El artículo intenta dar cuenta de la fisonomía de un sector emergente al margen del binomio de los medios públicos y privados-comerciales. Su metodología combina técnicas de observación y revisión documental con el análisis cualitativo de entrevistas estructuradas en profundidad a coordinadores y comunicadores ciudadanos que participaron en estas coberturas.
Esta aportación se justifica en la necesidad de analizar el contenido participativo que los jóvenes interactivos transmiten en el uso de TIC y de las redes sociales durante el origen del movimiento social del 15M. Los objetivos se han dirigido a comprobar cómo los jóvenes sienten, viven y experimentan la ciudadanía democrática a través de los soportes digitales y mediáticos, participando en el lugar público de la plaza donde se está formando una más informada ciudadanía digital entre la convergencia tecnológica, la hipertextualidad y la no linealidad. Se ha tratado de identificar tanto el contenido educativo de sus interacciones e implicaciones como el uso de los soportes digitales mediáticos en su organización colectiva. La metodología utilizada es el estudio de caso en profundidad, realizado durante los días de la acampada en la plaza pública, recogiendo observaciones, entrevistas, información de las redes sociales (Twitter, Facebook, n-1 y Tuenti), noticias de los medios de comunicación así como de los medios generados en la acampada, y todas las fotografías y cartelería del evento. Desde esta perspectiva tecnoeducativa se analiza cómo estos jóvenes ensanchan sus relaciones comunicativas y se conectan en red construyendo nuevos significados de lo educativo, lo social y lo político. El análisis de sus discursos nos descubre una reapropiación de los jóvenes de las TIC participando en la comunicación pública y aportando nuevas perspectivas para la educación ciudadana.
The present article draws from fieldwork on the indignados (or 15M) movement in Spain to propose a new approach to the study of protest movements in the digital era: 'media epidemiography'. This composite of the terms 'epidemiology' and 'ethnography' is used as a heuristic to address the research challenge of today's swiftly evolving techno-political terrains. I argue that viral media have played a key role in Spain's indignados movement, with Twitter as the central site of propagation. Protesters have used Twitter and other viral platforms to great effect and in a range of different ways, including as a means of setting the tone and agenda of the protests, spreading slogans and organizational practices, and offering alternative accounts of the movement. These developments may signal the coming of an era in which political reality is shaped by viral contents 'shared' by media professionals and amateurs - an age of viral reality.
This chapter explores the relationship between the indignados movement in Madrid and other mobilizations that have arisen at the local level in recent years. It suggests the existence of a learning process which on the basis of certain collective experiences, both failed and successful, links past mobilizations with the construction of an inclusive frame, the respect for a deliberative process of decision-taking and the strategic use of humor at the heart of the new movement. The analysis of this process aims to contribute to a better understanding of the early success of the indignados in terms of social support and participation.
El siguiente artículo tiene por objeto indagar en la relación
entre comunicación y ONG desde las apropiaciones
tecnológicas y los nuevos usos comunicacionales que
emergen en el ciclo de protestas que se inaugura en 2011,
en particular desde movimientos socio-comunicacionales
que se definen y estructuran en red como el 15M. Desde
la perspectiva de la comunicación para el cambio social,
se resumen los rasgos del viejo modelo modernizador que
aún domina en muchas organizaciones y se apuntan pistas
para seguir profundizando en la comunicación entendida
como espacio de empoderamiento y promoción de la
cultura de la cooperación y la movilización ciudadanas.
This article aims at exploring the relationship between
communication and NGOs from the technological
appropriations and the new communication uses of the
cycle of protests that emerge from 2011, in particular
from social and communicational movements, which
define and structure themselves in the form of networks
such as the 15M. From the perspective of communication
for social change, we summarize the main features of
the old modernizing model which still dominates in many
organizations, and propose clues in order to deepen
in the understanding of communication as a space for
empowerment and promotion of citizen cooperation and
mobilization cultures.
El modelo de comunicación tradicional ha sido superado. El periodismo, tal y como se concebía hasta ahora, está viendo modificado el papel que desempeñan todos sus actores: el producto informativo, los roles de emisor y receptor, los soportes, las audiencias, la formación académica... El motor de cambio está simultáneamente activado en fuentes, medios, periodistas y audiencias, pero, además, se está produciendo una redefinición de las rutinas productivas que dirigen la demanda empresarial hacia un perfil de periodistas con especialización tecnológica polivalente en multimedia. Este artículo revisa las transformaciones más significativas que el periodista contemporáneo tiene que afrontar, pretendiendo aportar una visión realista del escenario profesional que se vislumbra.
En el presente artículo se analiza el concepto de ciudadanía en sus diferentes significaciones (ciudadanía política, jurídica, social, económica, ecológica e intercultural), con el fin de justificar la actualidad del concepto de ciudadanía mediática, sobre todo por su validez en el ámbito de la educomunicación. El objetivo último es reconstruir la dimensión social, ética y política de la educomunicación a partir de un fundamento filosófico práctico. En esta tarea de fundamentación, cabe apelar a dos enfoques muy potentes en la actualidad como son la ética dialógica y el enfoque de las capacidades, por su vinculación con el ámbito comunicativo y por su contribución a la noción del desarrollo humano, presente en los programas de educación mediática de organismos internacionales como la UNESCO o la Comisión Europea. A partir de la fundamentación filosófica ofrecida, los criterios para evaluar y reconstruir la dimensión práctica de la educomunicación son la participación cívica, la libertad como desarrollo y la autonomía crítica, consideradas asimismo como fines de los sistemas educativos en sociedades plurales y democráticas, sobre todo desde un modelo deliberativo y participativo de democracia. Tras esta argumentación, el artículo concluye a favor de la interdisciplinariedad en el estudio de la educación mediática, un proyecto educativo que es crucial para la reactivación de la sociedad civil y el empoderamiento de la ciudadanía en el actual contexto comunicativo.
This article seeks to analyze the mobilizations that are currently taking place in Spain as a result of the multidimensional crisis unleashed in 2008. The authors study the ‘15M movement,’ or that of the Spanish indignados, by focusing on three analytical axes: the cognitive, emotional, and relational processes feeding the construction of a social movement identity. First, the article refers to the diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing tasks performed by 15M participants to define the problematic situation and attribute blame, articulate a solution to the problem and devise strategies to achieve that end, and motivate participants to sustain their engagement and remedy the situation. Second, the article concentrates on the emotions that were ‘mobilized’ by social movement organizations linked to the 15M (e.g. outrage or indignation), and those emotions that emerged spontaneously during the ‘encounters’ that took place in the public space: joy, efficacy, and empowerment. Finally, the article addresses the relational aspects entailed in the process of identity construction, that is, the activation and de-activation of both ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ ties between 15M members and previous and/or current political and social collectives within the ‘progressive field.’ In following this triple objective, the article describes the process of identity-synchronization that has allowed people with no previous political participation and with different and oftentimes opposing politico-ideological trajectories to feel part of the movement. The data come from 17 in-depth interviews and eight focus groups with key activists, ethnographic observations in camps and assemblies in both Bilbao and Madrid during the summer of 2011, and visual materials displayed in web pages and Facebook accounts associated to the 15M.
This article argues that whilst some academic disciplines have been richly innovative in both their approaches to, and work with movements, for the most part social movements are still considered as objects of knowledge for researchers and academics, rather than as knowledge producers in their own right. It considers the ethical and methodological dilemmas that arise from this situation and instead proposes an ethics of engagement with critical subjectivities whose contextual and situated knowledge is both independent of the academy and valuable in its own right.
Social movements are arising in unexpected places, producing effects not nor mally associated with our traditional understandings of either politics or movements. No longer, and perhaps never, solely the highly visible, modernist expressions of resistance to the state, movements are not only enacting poli tics through protest and cultural contestation, but are generating diverse knowledges. From heated debates over the meaning of Italy’s alter-globaliza tion movement; to careful direct-action strategizing in Chicago’s cooperative bookstores; to conferences on Native American environmental justice issues, contemporary movements are important sites of knowledge creation, refor mulation and diffusion. We call these “knowledge-practices.” Building on interdisciplinary approaches to the study of social movements, we argue that when we recognize movements as processes through which knowledge is gen erated, modified and mobilized, we gain important insights into the politics of contemporary movements. This recognition also has important method ological implications. It requires that we shift the mode of engagement in our research, blurring established social scientific boundaries and promoting a more relational-symmetrical approach. [Keywords: Social movements, knowledge-practice, modes of engagement, place-basedness]
Although adult education has long been associated with social movements, the relevance of social movement theory has hardly been explored. This stems in part from limitations in the sociological theory of social movements: new paradigms are emerging which provide a basis for theorizing adult education in terms of cognitive processes in social movements. These have general implications for our understanding of adult education's role in society, and are not relevant only to those committed to, or to studying, "new social movements". The paper first considers briefly the notion that adult education is itself a "movement". The development of social movement theory is then traced, and reasons for its limited impact on adult education theory explored. A new approach to understanding social movements, in terms of "cognitive praxis", is then outlined and its implications for adult education discussed.
En el escenario de digitalización informativa se ha producido una profunda transformación del periodismo. El modelo tradicional de los medios impresos entró en crisis, y en las últimas dos décadas han surgido medios nativos digitales que aportan una renovación en formatos y contenidos periodísticos, así como en las estructuras empresariales que los producen. Es el caso de El Confidencial, elDiario.es e infoLibre, que han logrado crecer y afianzarse a nivel nacional como referencias informativas. En este artículo analizamos sus principales características comunes (como ser propiedad de comunicadores o la comunidad de socios/as) y diferenciales (como muros de pago y código ético) así como algunas claves de su trayectoria para concluir los factores de su mayor o menor éxito y consolidación. También evaluamos las métricas de redes digitales para identificar diferentes políticas de gestión de la interacción, concluyendo un muy reducido peso de estas en la predicción del número de seguidores.
The purpose of this paper is to systematically review and trace the lineage of theoretical debates around social movement learning in the field of adult education. We compiled articles, books and conference proceedings on adult education and social movements from Google Scholar using the software Publish or Perish and manually filtered the data to only include those that explicitly address the topic. Based on the data, we identified key literature that scholars cross-referenced, which extended the review to include the literature from the 1970s until today. We argue that the theoretical debates about social movements and education can be characterised by four phases: 1) popular education within and for social movements, 2) the Old/New Social Movement debate and its radical influence on adult education, 3) conflict and pushback between scholars, and 4) social movement learning as a confluence of literature. We argue that it is only when scholars writing about popular education interacted with scholars promoting the idea of ‘new’ social movements that the current proliferation of ‘social movement learning’ emerged. Thus, the knowledge production of social movement learning itself has been a result of a dynamic and historical movement in the field of adult education.
Framed in debates about the crisis of democracy, the book analyzes one of the most influential social movements of recent times: Spain’s “Indignados” or “15-M” movement. In the wake of the global financial crisis and harsh austerity policies, 15-M movement activists occupied public squares across the country, mobilized millions of Spanish citizens, gave rise to new hybrid parties such as Podemos, and inspired pro-democracy movements around the world. Based on access to key participants in the 15-M movement and Podemos, and extensive participant observation, the book tells the story of this remarkable movement, its emergence, evolution, and impact. In so doing, it challenges some of the core arguments in social movement scholarship about the factors likely to lead to movement success. Instead, the book argues that movements organized around autonomous network logics can build and sustain strong movements in the absence of formal organizations, strong professionalized leadership, and the ability to attract external resources. The key to understanding its power lies in the shared political culture and collective identity that emerged following the occupation of Spain’s central squares. These protest camps sustained the movement by forging reciprocal ties of solidarity between diverse actors, and generating a shared set of critical master frames across a diverse set of actors and issues (e.g., housing, education, pensions, privatization of public services, corruption) that enabled the movement to effectively contest hegemonic narratives about the crisis, austerity, and democracy, influencing public debate and the political agenda.
Social movements are builders of what are known as "grammars of democracy", that is, values, participatory experiences, political cultures, languages and structures for articulating demands. This article analyses the 15M or indignados (outraged) movement in Spain; a collective action that went beyond classical protests in response to the economic crisis and proposed changes in democratic practices. Social movements, particularly from the 1990s onwards, have focused on democracy as both a means and an end in order to address what they perceive as authoritarian globalization. The article approaches 15M mainly as a space for mobilization articulating the heterogeneity of the movement as well as its effects in Spain (antieviction struggles, PAH, social tides, etc.) with a direct reference to the master frame of 'radical democracy'. Methodologically, this work is based upon interviews, focus groups and participant observation conducted from May 2011 to June 2012 during the occupation of public squares and subsequent mobilizations. The text situates this phenomenon in the core of the New Global Movements, and connects it with a decade of similar collective actions in Spain and other parts of the world. Finally, aspects such as the role of the Internet as a tool for and driving force of new models of democracy and the scale of assemblies in relation to deliberative democracy are also discussed.
With over five years of hindsight following historic protests around the world, we review scholarship published on “Social Movement 2.0” (SM2.0)—our shorthand for the convergence of Web 2.0 platforms and protest, movements, or other resistance activities. Initially, we review 97 articles as offering disparate assumptions concerning social movement, agency, and the relationship between humans and new communication technologies (NCTs). We suggest SM2.0 scholarship could benefit from following debates in social movement rhetoric and media ecology. Particularly, building upon rhetoricians’ critiques of traditional movement theory, we encourage scholars to amplify the constitutive meanings and identities created through NCTs in protest (rather than rely upon functional paradigms). Building upon media ecology scholarship, we critique SM2.0 analysis that leverages technological determinism or isolationism to address media’s power in social change. We feature instead scholarship that unpacks the relationship between media and the unique contexts in which protestors build networks of resistance. We call for greater complexity in scholarship at the intersections of movement and media.
This is a book for activists, students, scholars of social movements and adult education and for the public interested in the contemporary movements of our times. From the streets of Barcelona and Athens, the public squares in Cairo, Tunis and Tripoli, the flash mobs and virtual learning of the #Occupy movement, and the shack dwellers of South Africa people around the world are organising themselves to take action against the ravages of a capitalism that serves the greedy while impoverishing the rest. Social movements have arisen or re-arisen in virtually every sector of human activity from concerns about the fate of our planet earth, to dignity for those living with HIV/AIDS, to feeding ourselves in healthier ways and survival in places of violent conflict. At the heart of each of these movements are activists and ordinary people learning how to change their lives and how to change the world. This book offers contemporary theoretical and practical insights into the learning that happens both within and outside of social movements. Social movement scholars present work linked to the arts, to organic farming, to environmental action, to grassroots activists in the Global South, to the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement, the shackdwellers movements, school reform and the role of Marx, Gramscii and Williams in understanding social movement learning. The greatest contribution of this inspiring book is to remind us that learning and education in social movements help to make a difference. Not only does this collection enable us to understand how we might theorise and historicise learning in diverse contemporary social movements, but its contributors do so with outspoken and passionate commitment to 'Learning and Education for a Better World.' - Professor Miriam Zukas, Executive Dean, Birkbeck, University of London The burning demand for such a text comes from our contemporary moment that is witness to a world where nearly everything is commercialised, marketised or commodified. This text shuns an essentialist discourse while simultaneously and masterfully offering unprecedented insights into social movement learning and education. The book is numinous. - Professor Robert Hill, University of Georgia, USA This is a book we have all been waiting for. The editors have brought together an amazing cadre of international adult educators to probe the intersection of social movements and learning, and to build theory around the many social actions that are taking place globally. A must read for students and professors everywhere. - Leona English, PhD, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada Accessible, engaging, often inspirational, the essays that comprise Learning and Education for a Better World offer deep insights on the role of social movements as agencies of learning, struggle and transformation. From case studies that include the occupy movement, popular education in Latin America, political cinema and the Egyptian Revolution to reflections on resistance, aesthetics and the role of organic intellectuals, this collection will be of interest to educators, social scientists, humanists and activists alike. An interdisciplinary tour-de-force. - Professor William Carroll, University of Victoria, Canada This is such a timely collection of essays, bringing together critical reflections on experiences of social action from across the globe. This book is to be commended to the widest possible readership. - (From the Preface by) Emeritus Professor Marjorie Mayo, Goldsmith's College.
Spain has become a remarkable democratic laboratory in which millions of citizens are experimenting with new forms of political expression. This book examines the dynamics of this political laboratory, showing that the upheavals it is experiencing are likely in the near future to affect democracies elsewhere in the world. Examining the new means of participation that were established in fields where digital communication tools enabled the launch of novel dynamics of political action, the reader will gain access to a comprehensive analysis of the reshaping and mutation process that has affected fields such as activism, political parties and political participation. Using a case study of the Spain between 2011 and 2015, the book focuses on the changes that have taken place in politics and communication in Spain, paying particular attention to the 15M movement and its disruptive, innovative strength in all matters related to politics and communication. The chapters cover political repertoires and the hybridization of horizontal and vertical political logics; the appearance of new political parties; the establishment of monitoring mechanisms as an essential means of political expression and participation; and the subversion of rationality across media as a product of the communication strategies implemented by online political activism. Showing that Spain is not just at the forefront of democratic innovation, but that it is a political laboratory in which trials are taking place that tell us much about the future of democracy everywhere, this book will be of great use to scholars of political theory, democracy and philosophy. © 2017 Ramón A. Feenstra, Simon Tormey, Andreu Casero-Ripollés and John Keane. All rights reserved.
InfoLibre y eldiario.es son dos medios de reciente aparición que, ante la crisis que vive el periodismo, han nacido únicamente en formato digital. Estos diarios se presentan como defensores de los principales ideales democráticos, la libertad de prensa y la defensa de los derechos humanos, entre otros. Su fórmula mixta de financiación les permite obtener ingresos de dos maneras: a través de las aportaciones que realizan sus socios y mediante la venta de espacios publicitarios. En esta comunicación se analizan las diferencias y similitudes presentes en ambos.
The Internet is causing major changes in the field of political activism. One particularly significant case is the 15M movement, which emerged from a popular initiative organized in several Spanish cities in 2011. Based on the analysis of these protests as a case study, this paper has two aims: first, to examine the role of digital technology – websites and social networks – in the online organization of political activism; second, to analyse the relationships established between the conventional media on the one hand and activists on the other. The methodology combines the technique of in-depth interviews and qualitative analysis of reports, working papers and file data about 15M. The findings show an intensive use of digital technology by activists, both of their own social networks (for example, N-1) and commercial ones (Facebook or Twitter). These digital tools enabled them to disseminate their own information and optimize their internal organization. The indignados established an interplay between online activism and offline actions. Digital technology facilitated the organization of the mass gatherings in the streets. The possession of communicative and technical skills played an important part in organizing 15M. On the other hand, the relationship between journalists and activists was a difficult one. The indignados did not follow the established patterns of the journalists’ work routines. The latter had to resort to the demonstrators’ websites and social networks to obtain information. The activists recognize that the conventional media were crucial to the protests achieving a widespread impact in the news.
This paper argues that the new social movements are particularly privileged sites for emancipatory praxis. Old social movements are differientiated from new, and the new social movements are interpreted primarily as defenses of the threatened lifeworld and ecosystem. The specific nature of the learning challenges within particular movements is examined. The author hypothesizes that diverse movements may be crystallizing into a new historic movement.
focus on political reform movements
the field in 1970 / macro theory and research on movement emergence / micro theory and research on recruitment to activism
movement maintenance and change / macro development: SMOs [social movement organizations] and the larger organizational environment / micro processes in movement development (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The purpose of this article is to show how adult education is linked to the emerging crisis of modernity; in fact, education has been conceived from its very beginning as part of the project of modernity. If adult education follows the same paths as traditional education, it will end up, like modernity, in crisis too. A sign of this crisis in our field is the increasing split between vocational training and personal development. I will develop my argument by using the example of the so-called “new movements”: new movements herald a cultural transformation, where the individual becomes increasingly a central focus and where social transformation will occur through the transformation of the person. It is argued that adult education will develop its full potential only once it has admitted that it is, as a discipline, another expression of the same cultural transformation the new movements foreshadow.
Una idea central en este trabajo es que en las teorías contemporáneas sobre los movimientos sociales se está produciendo un proceso de convergencia entre supuestos de la tradición interaccionista del comportamiento colectivo y las teorías constructivistas que se desarrollan en Europa y Estados Unidos desde hace diez años. La continuidad entre estos enfoques se considera que es consecuencia de la vigencia que siguen teniendo algunos supuestos formulados por el primero que plantean cuestiones básicas para la sociedad occidental, como el significado social de las formas de participación en la vida pública, la importancia de los movimientos sociales en los procesos de definición colectiva de los problemas sociales y los aspectos de desidentificación individual asociados a la modernización. Otros elementos aquí analizados para explicar la persistencia de esta aproximación clásica en la investigación de los movimientos sociales son el énfasis en su reflexibilidad y en sus elementos dramatúrgicos y su capacidad para revisar algunos supuestos que constituyeron elementos de sesgo hace treinta años, como la contraposición entre comportamiento colectivo y organización social, que subyace a la concepción del primero como "desviado" e irracional.
Este libro incluye un análisis de la comunicación como proceso total, además de la caracterización de las formas dominantes y alternativas. El autor centra su atención en los mensajes, ya que es en estos donde aparece con toda claridad la intención del emisor. Hay pues, mensajes distintos según se trata de lo educativo, lo publicitario y lo propagandístico. Las herramientas que ofrece la semiótica resultan útiles, siempre que se las emplee de una manera utilitaria, sin perderse en los "términos que remiten a otros términos". El uso de esos recursos sirve para comprender el porqué del lenguaje en las relaciones sociales y no el lenguaje como un fin en sí mismo. 211p.
Comunicación/educación: Itinerarios transversales
- J A Huergo
Comunicación, internet y democracia deliberativa en el 15M
- J Candón
La comunicación social como instrumento de desarrollo de comunidades rurales y urbanas
- J Díaz Bordenave
Social movements: A cognitive approach
- R Eyerman
- A Jamison
An introduction to qualitative research. Sage
- U Flick
Animación e intervención sociocultural
- I Gil-Jaurena
- R M Goig-Martínez
- A Barbas-Coslado
La reflexividad de los movimientos sociales: Una revisión de las teorías sobre la sociedad de masas y el comportamiento colectivo
- J Gusfield