Abstract
This thoughtful book asks why protests and demonstrations are often sidelined or misrepresented by the mainstream media, and whether this is at all to do with the tensions and frictions between different activist groups. This book draws on and develops previous discussion and debate on protest and the public sphere, social movements and the articulation of political dissent. The abiding intention is to think about the problems faced by protest campaigns in their attempts to engage with a wider public. This book also attends to work on alternative media forms and examines the ways in which they differ from mainstream media. Honouring autonomy in the articulation of dissent and tolerating horizontal structures of communication are two key differences. The distinction between ideal and actuality is drawn, with the big question being how to avoid the factional splits and hostilities that have all too often divided protest organisations in the past and instead move to a less divisive, more cohesive movement. Or in other words, how to achieve solidarity while embracing difference. This book looks into the innovative communication strategies of particular coalition protest movements, seeking to bring out the connections between often very different movements and the potential they have for unsettling the boundaries between alternative and mainstream spaces. Dissent is polyvocal, and this is both a weakness in that it can be dismissed for not being sufficiently unified in purpose or position and a strength in that it represents the recognition of difference and the toleration of contestation that is a measure of an effective public sphere. In covering all this, Pollyanna Ruiz offers an important set of reflections on coalition protest movements in the contemporary world and on the various lessons we can take from them in the future.