Abstract
Articulations between social movements and instituted politics is a central topic for the analysis of contemporary episodes of collective action worldwide, given, on the one hand, their inherent conflictive nature and, on the other hand, the collaborative trends that characterise participatory and citizen governance. Based on a systematic literature review of previous studies, this paper analyses the role played by the appropriations of social media by recent episodes of collective action, showing that communication has become a core trans-inter-mediating dimension for understanding the interrelationships between instituting collective action and instituted politics. According to the findings of previous studies, we may summarise the following trends in the communicative repertoires of current collective action: 1) a transition from cyber-activism towards techno-politics in contemporary social movements, in a tendency that brings them closer to the communicative behaviour of political parties in the digital arena; 2) the complementation, in a radically new way, of the processes of visibility and articulation of collective action, generating a dual and parallel process of visibilising articulations and articulating visibilities; 3) the emergence of new capacities of social movements for the importation of new issues into public debate, or thematisation, generating a growing and different access to the sociopolitical agenda thanks to the peculiarities of social media; and 4) the appropriations of ICTs by both social movements and instituted politics becomes a possible line of continuity between both arenas, by providing a space for techno-articulation that would allow to overcome the conflicts between both dimensions.
Presenters
Lázaro M. Bacallao PinoStudent, PhD in Social Sciences, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Social movements, Collective action, ICTs, Social media, Instituted politics
