Abstract
Given the increasing speed in which contemporary society engages with and through media products and systems, understanding the role of social movement actors in relation to this dynamic is much needed. This volume from Victor Pickard and Guobin Yang is a welcomed entry to the media activism literature. Organized into four parts and composed of 12 chapters, readers of the volume will find it overall to be comprehensive and engaging.
A useful organization tool for the volume is the introductory essays that work to set the tone for readers. W. Lance Bennett’s foreword, “What is Media Activism?” poses a question with no definitive answer, yet sets parameters for the subject covered in the volume. The introduction from the editors additionally grounds this position and sets the stage for the corresponding chapters. “Media activism” in this volume is concerned with a series of processes as they are invoked in various settings. As Pickard and Yang note, “Just as activists benefit from a diversity of tactics, media activist scholars benefit from a diversity of theories and methodologies.” Each of the four sections features a short prelude to define the categorical break up of media activism in this edited collection.
Section 1: Communication for Social Change is the theoretical portion of the volume. Four chapters highlight various positions in which we can view media activism as a practice that instigates broader social changes, inviting us to rethink relationships we have toward media environments. Two engaging pieces come from Jeff Landale and Sascha Meinrath who focus on structural dimensions related to digital access and inclusion. Focusing on “digital enfranchisement,” the authors state that efforts regarding digital equality need to step outside top-down approaches. Enfranchisement means both platforms of access and tools that enable citizens to engage with digital spaces. Second, Clemencia Rodríguez focuses on media ecologies that demonstrate the way community and citizens’ media centers “on subjects and their actions rather than focusing on media technologies,” highlighting the complexity of media use and embedded cultural values.
In Section 2: Policy Interventions, three chapters consider the policy-making process related to media activism. Mark Lloyd’s chapter maps the contemporary struggles of the Federal Communications Commission—a U.S. federal agency—in developing a diverse media environment. Complimenting Lloyd’s chapter, Carolyn Bylerly demonstrates the dynamic between media policy and women’s advocacy efforts. Des Freedman closes Part 2 with a focus on media activism scholarship and a call for scholars to develop research that is more than reformist. Instead, media policy scholarship should utilize an “inside/outside perspective” to change media systems.
While the first two sections discussed theoretical positions and policy, Section 3: New Political Genres focuses on the digital tools media activism incorporates. The three chapters are case studies that do not fall into the trappings of technological determinism. Perhaps most important in these chapters is the authors’ focus on the agency which activists must constantly exert when using such tools. Activists in these cases utilize digital tools and technologies to various ends as means of expression and to engage with power dynamics that perpetuate social inequalities. As the chapters demonstrate, digital technologies end up not being solely a means of liberation, but a reflexive practice that activists must carry out when challenging institutions and promoting social justice.
In Section 4: Feminism’s Digital Wave, two chapters utilize feminist research to highlight the role of social relations. Christina Dunbar-Hester’s focus on “technical practice” connects with Section 3, but avoids a “technocratic discourse that collapses wider social, political, and moral questions into narrow technical questions.” Both chapters demonstrate the intersectional nature of gender and race as embedded in activist practices. Issues related to identity shape the underlying intentions and actions of activists; and the authors ask us to reflect critically on the role that such relations exert.
This volume is well worth the time of anyone with an interest in media reform. Although media environments might seem more than an arm’s length away from the citizenry, this volume does an excellent job demonstrating that collectives can do something about media environments. The decision to cover media activism as a field of perspectives, rather than a singular one, is a strength of the book that lends itself to interdisciplinary approaches. One area this volume lacks, however, is engagement with racialized social systems. Aisha Durham’s chapter on hip-hop feminism comes closest—as her work highlights the structural exclusions that black women face and thus work to counter. The shifting racial dynamics in the United States and struggles over racial matters demonstrate a dimension of media activism that has its own rich history and contemporary struggles, as noted Lori Lopez Asian American Media Activism (2016), Allison Pearlman Public Interest: Media Advocacy and Struggles Over U.S. Television (2016) and Ray, Brown, and Laybourn’s “The evolution of #BlackLivesMatter on Twitter,” in Ethnic & Racial Studies, 2017. This limitation of the collection should be addressed within the subfield of media activism studies—conversing with the field of critical race scholarship where some of this research has been undertaken. Media Activism in the Digital Age is a useful starting point and theoretical anchor for addressing structural and cultural inequalities related to our media systems.