scholarly journals Media Activism as Movement? Collective Identity Formation in the World Forum of Free Media

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 59-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilde C. Stephansen
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
World Social Forum ◽  
Media Advocacy ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Media Activism ◽  
The World ◽  
Free Media ◽  
Building Project

More than simply tools used by social movements to reach other substantive aims, media are increasingly becoming <em>subjects</em> of activism. This article contributes to advancing understanding of such media-focused activism through a case study of the World Forum of Free Media, a thematic forum for media activists and media advocacy organisations linked to the World Social Forum. Based on qualitative research conducted between 2008 and 2016—including participant observation, in-depth interviews and textual analysis—the article critically explores the extent to which the World Forum of Free Media can be considered a ‘free media’ movement in the making, and examines some of the challenges and contradictions that such a movement-building project entails. Drawing on social movement theory, specifically the concept of collective identity, it analyses efforts by forum organisers to mobilise a very diverse range of actors—from alternative media activists to policy- and advocacy NGOs—around a plural and inclusive ‘free media’ identity. While the World Forum of Free Media has to some extent succeeded in facilitating convergence around a set of core principles and ideas, it has so far struggled to develop a clear outwards-facing identity and mobilise a broad grassroots base.

scholarly journals Conceptualizing a distributed, multi-scalar global public sphere through activist communication practices in the World Social Forum

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-360
Author(s):  
Hilde C Stephansen
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Network Society ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
World Social Forum ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Media Activism ◽  
The World ◽  
Communication Practices

This article contributes to debate about how to conceptualize the global public sphere. Drawing on media practice theory and ethnographic research on media activism in the World Social Forum, it shows how ‘global publics’ can be constituted through a diverse range of activist communication practices that complicate both conventional hierarchies of scale and contemporary theorizations of publics as personalized networks. It develops an understanding of the global public sphere as an emergent formation made up of multiple, interlinked publics at different scales and emphasizes the significance of collective communication spaces for actors at the margins of the global network society.

scholarly journals Can Media and Technology Help Make “Another World Possible”? Reflections from the Media@McGill Research Delegation to the 2015 World Social Forum in Tunisia

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane Couture ◽  
Gretchen King ◽  
Sophie Toupin ◽  
Becky Lentz
Keyword(s):  
Communication Media ◽  
World Social Forum ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
Compte Rendu ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Many ◽  
Free Media ◽  
Media And Technology ◽  
Communication And Technology

This research-in-brief summarizes activities of our research delegation to the 2015 World Social Forum (WSF) in Tunis, including our participation in two associated events: the World Forum on Free Media (WFFM) and preparatory meetings for an eventual global Internet Social Forum (ISF). The WFFM and ISF provided rich terrain for our delegation to document and study contemporary struggles around communication media and technology issues. We report on these encounters as a way to foreground the many similar opportunities available to Canadian media, communication, and technology scholars at annual WSFs, in particular, the WSF coming to Montréal in August 2016. Notably, the 2016 WSF will be the first forum held since its inception in 2001 outside the global south.Ce texte résume les activités de notre délégation de recherche lors du Forum social mondial (FSM) de Tunis. Ces activités incluaient notre participation à deux événements associés : le Forum mondial des médias libres (FMML) et des rencontres préparatoires pour un éventuel Forum social d’Internet (FSI). Ces rencontres ont constitué de riches terrains pour documenter et étudier les luttes contemporaines concernant les médias et la communication. Ce compte-rendu vise à faire connaître aux médias et aux chercheurs canadiens les multiples opportunités offertes lors des forums sociaux annuels, en particulier lors du prochain Forum social mondial qui se déroulera à Montréal en août 2016. Ce forum sera le premier à se dérouler à l’extérieur du Sud global depuis sa création en 2001.

scholarly journals We are what we tell: an enquiry into NGOs' organizational identity and accountability

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Pianezzi
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Action Research Project ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Documentary Analysis ◽  
Over Time

PurposeThis study offers a critical inquiry into accountability vis-à-vis organizational identity formation. It investigates how accountability evolves in the transformation of an NGO operating in the field of migration management from an informal grassroots group into a fully-fledged organization.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is the outcome of a participatory action research project on Welcome Refugees (WR), a UK-based NGO. The project involved documentary analysis, focus group and semi-structured interviews, field notes, and participant observation. The analysis draws from poststructuralist theorization to explain the interplay between organizational identity and different forms of NGO accountability over time.FindingsThe study shows how different forms of accountability became salient over time and were experienced differently by organizational members, thus leading to competing collective identity narratives. Organizational members felt accountable to beneficiaries in different ways, and this was reflected in their identification with the organization. Some advocated a rights-based approach that partially resonated with the accountability demands of external donors, while others aimed at enacting their feelings of accountability by preserving their closeness with beneficiaries and using a need-based approach. These differences led to an identity struggle that was ultimately solved through the silencing of marginalized narratives and the adoption of an adaptive regime of accountability.Practical implicationsThe findings of the case are of practical relevance to quasi-organizations that struggle to form and maintain organizational identity in their first years of operation. Their survival depends not only on their ability to accommodate and/or resist a multiplicity of accountability demands but also on their ability to develop a shared and common understanding of identity accountability.Originality/valueThe paper problematizes rather than takes for granted the process through which organizations acquire a viable identity and the role of accountability within them.

Identity Formation in Street Demonstrations

2019 ◽  
pp. 309-327
Author(s):  
Bert Klandermans ◽  
Jacquelien van Stekelenburg
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Union Member ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Category Membership ◽  
Central Mechanism ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
The World ◽  
Group Members

Every day, somewhere in the world, citizens take to the streets to vent their anger about grievances they share. A central mechanism in our understanding of protest behavior is identity formation. To experience shared grievances and emotions, a shared identity must develop. We address the question with whom protesters identify. Rather than examine whether dynamics of identification determine mobilization and participation, we will assess whether dynamics of mobilization and participation foster identification. We distinguish deductive and inductive identity formation. Taking the deductive route, people deduce a shared identity from a higher-order category membership they share; for example, being a union member. Taking the inductive route, a collective identity emerges as group members interact. Hypotheses derived from this conceptualization are tested. We present data on identification from a study of 81 demonstrations and 16,597 participants in eight European countries. We find that inductive and deductive identity formation have different antecedents.

scholarly journals Collective identity construction in international collaborations

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
Ying Zhang ◽  
Chris Huxham
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Joint Venture ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Case Study Research ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Interorganizational Collaborations ◽  
Cross National

This article explores the dynamic processes of collective identity formation among the participating organizational members in interorganizational collaborations that cross national boundaries. A longitudinal, qualitative multi-case study research approach was adopted in the empirical investigation of collective identity in three international business collaborations that involve a Sino-British strategic partnership, a Sino-Australian, and a Sino-Polish joint venture. Based on the analyses of the data collected from in-depth interviews, participant observation, and archival materials, a theoretical framework of collective identity (re)formation is developed. It suggests that two inseparable elements (states and processes) constitute a cyclic and enduring process of collective identity formation through partners’ orchestrating discursive resources involving a common sense of ‘we-ness’. The shifts between various states are driven by partners’ processes of negotiation, integration, solidification, and reformation of collective identity. A deconstruction process may also emerge, giving rise to the termination of the collaborative relationship. The research presented in this article advances the understanding of collective identity formation in the field of organizational identity by extending the discursive perspective of collective identity into the context of interorganizational collaborations that cross national borders. This research also provides further empirical evidence on the active role played by organizational members in the use of cultural narratives as strategic resources to express their identity beliefs, which differs from the deterministic view of culture in shaping organizational members’ behaviors.

scholarly journals Disabled Capitalists: Exploring the Intersections of Disability and Identity Formation in the World of Work

2012 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin Galer
Keyword(s):  
Identity Development ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
The World ◽  
Liberal Individualism

<p><em>Many people with disabilities share the mainstream ethos that participation in the competitive workforce constitutes a primary feature of their identity. While unpaid work may fulfill the desire to be productive and provide a sense of purpose and contribution, the cultural imperative to achieve personal autonomy partly through material independence situates paid employment at the centre of personal identity formation. While disability activists struggle to carve out an empowered collective identity instilled with rights-based protections, many people with disabilities identify with the liberal individualism upon which participation in the capitalist labour market is largely based. Individuals with disabilities seek not simply to shrug off an identity defined by burden, but to claim an identity marked by self-fulfillment. Within the world of paid work, then, tension and compatibility co-exist regarding the nature and value of identity development for people with disabilities.</em></p> <p><em>&nbsp;</em></p> <p><strong>Keywords:</strong> disability, work, employment, identity, identity politics, disability activism</p>

Identity and Persuasion: How Nations Remember Their Pasts and Make Their Futures

2000 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Consuelo Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Normative Realism ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
The World

Identity struggles are once again a salient problem in world politics. This article aims to throw light on the sources, dynamics, and consequences of identity formation and mobilization. It makes two theoretical arguments. First, because collective memory is both a seemingly factual narrative and a normative assessment of the past, it shapes a group's intersubjective conceptions of strategic feasibility and political legitimacy. This is why collective identity is above all an expression of normative realism: a group's declaration to itself and to others about what it can or cannot do; what it will or will not do. Second, at critical junctures competing actors assert or contest the normative realism underlying collective identity. They do this through rhetorical politics, deploying their powers of persuasion in order to engage the constitutive elements of the group's shared identity. In practical terms, rhetorical politics is structured by a dominant frame: a historically shaped discursive formation that does two things. It articulates in readily accessible ways the fundamental notions a group holds about itself in the world and allows or disallows specific strategies of persuasion on the basis of their presumptive realism and normative sway. Within this frame, rhetorical politics engenders acollective field of imaginable possibilities:a restricted array of plausible scenarios about how the world can or cannot be changed and how the future ought to look. Though circumscribed, this field is vulnerable to endogenous shifts, precisely because actors' rhetorical struggles introduce conflicts over the descriptive and prescriptive limits of what is “realistically” possible. Such conflicts may in fact produce a new dominant rhetorical frame and profoundly influence a nation's political and economic development. Two contrasting cases from Latin America offer empirical support for these arguments. The article shows that the sharp developmental divergence between Costa Rica and Nicaragua can be properly understood only through close analytical scrutiny of the different rhetorical frames, fields of imaginable possibilities, and collective identities that rose to prominence at critical points in these countries' colonial and postcolonial histories.

Allies Forging Collective Identity: Embodiment and Emotions on the Migrant Trail

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chandra Russo
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
The U.S

This article examines how embodied experience and the accompanying emotions help social movement allies to forge collective identity. The analysis is based on the Migrant Trail, an annual protest event in which allies of the border-justice movement spend a week walking seventy-five miles through the U.S.-Mexico borderlands to protest migrant deaths. Original data include four years of participant observation, interviews conducted during the 2011 Migrant Trail, and surveys conducted a year and a half after the event. Findings suggest that embodied and emotional experiences help allies overcome challenges such as social distance from beneficiaries, a lack of credibility in the movement, and no lineage of resistance. This study contributes to an understanding of collective identity formation among allies and offers an illustrative case for the important role embodiment plays in the emotions of collective action.

Discrimination, Advocacy, and Collective Identity

2021 ◽  
pp. 16-32
Author(s):  
Emily Cury
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Muslim American ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
Collective Group ◽  
The World ◽  
Muslim Minorities ◽  
The Impact ◽  
American Nation

This chapter begins with the links between discrimination, identity formation, and minority advocacy. It examines how Muslim minorities and immigrants from disparate ethnic, national, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds think of themselves, and act, as members of a collective group with a unified set of interests. It also highlights the impact of Muslim advocacy organizations in their ability to frame and communicate a particular Muslim American collective identity. The chapter recounts anti-Muslim prejudice that has deep roots in American history and the European Orientalist discourse that has been adopted by the American nation since the inception of that prejudice. It discusses the construction of Islam as a false religion and how Muslims from around the world are racialized as Arab, non-white, and therefore biologically and morally inferior.

Becoming Politicized

2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Barkas ◽  
Xenia Chryssochoou
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Socialization ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
Economic Vulnerability ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Identity Model ◽  
Beliefs About The Future ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
The Way

Abstract. This research took place just after the end of the protests following the killing of a 16-year-old boy by a policeman in Greece in December 2008. Participants (N = 224) were 16-year-olds in different schools in Attiki. Informed by the Politicized Collective Identity Model ( Simon & Klandermans, 2001 ), a questionnaire measuring grievances, adversarial attributions, emotions, vulnerability, identifications with students and activists, and questions about justice and Greek society in the future, as well as about youngsters’ participation in different actions, was completed. Four profiles of the participants emerged from a cluster analysis using representations of the conflict, emotions, and identifications with activists and students. These profiles differed on beliefs about the future of Greece, participants’ economic vulnerability, and forms of participation. Importantly, the clusters corresponded to students from schools of different socioeconomic areas. The results indicate that the way young people interpret the events and the context, their levels of identification, and the way they represent society are important factors of their political socialization that impacts on their forms of participation. Political socialization seems to be related to youngsters’ position in society which probably constitutes an important anchoring point of their interpretation of the world.

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