Dr Bart Cammaerts, STC. S213

Available primarily for students on the following programmes: MSc Media and Communications, MSc Media, Communication and Development, MSc Media and Communications (Research), MSc Media and Communications (Media and Communication Governance) and MSc Politics and Communication. Other students may only attend subject to numbers, their own degree regulations and at the discretion of the teacher responsible.

This course aims to examine the various ways in which citizens use, appropriate and consume media and technologies to resist, but also how resistance is represented and mediated by citizens themselves, the mainstream media and movement media. The course will address several aspects of the intricate relationship between media and communication, resistance and citizens.

The course will be organised around the core-concept 'mediation opportunity structure' referring to the opportunities for agency through media and communication, as well as the structural constraints in place to prevent agency and stifle opposition. Both ICTs and more traditional media are considered and a dialectical perspective on power and the relationship between agency and structure is adopted with a particular emphasis on strategies of resistance.
The different lectures will focus on various aspects of the mediation opportunity structure - mainstream media representation, self-mediation, counter-hegemony, networked opportunities - using examples from various regions in the world, but mostly relating to mature democracies and to a lesser extent emerging and non-democracies. Some case-studies will be local, others nation-wide, while again others might relate to regional contexts or even transnational levels of governance.

Lecture/seminar (two-hours) x 10 LT.
(Seminars may be given by different teachers.  They do not necessarily deal with the same topics each week, but they will all cover the same ground).

All students are expected to complete advanced reading, prepare seminar presentations and submit one essay of 1,500 words.

Mouffe, C. (2005) On the Political: Thinking in Action, Routledge; Dahlgren, P. (2009) Media and political engagement : citizens, communication, and democracy, Cambridge/New York : Cambridge University Press.; Cammaerts, Bart, Matoni, Alice and McCurdy, Patrick (eds) (2011) Mediation and Protest Movements. Bristol: Intellect. ; Cammaerts, B. and Carpentier, N. (eds.) (2007) Reclaiming the Media: Communication Rights and Democratic Media Roles, ECREA book series, Bristol: Intellect. ;Chadwick, Andrew (2006) Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ;Curran, James (2002) Media and Power. London: Routledge; Downing, J. (2001) Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; della Porta, Donnatella and Diani, Mario (2006) Social Movements: An introduction - 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing; Johnston, Hank (ed.) (2009) Culture, Social Movements, and Protest. Farnham: Ashgate.; Martín-Barbero, Jesús (1993) Communication, Culture and Hegemony: From the Media to Mediation. London: Sage.; McCaughey, Martha and Michael D. Ayers (eds) (2003) Cyberactivism: online activism in theory and practice. London: Routledge.; Street, J. (2001) Mass Media, Politics and Democracy, London: Palgrave.; van de Donk, W., Loader, Brian D., Nixon, Paul G. and Rucht, Dieter (eds) (2004) Cyberprotest: New media, citizens and social movements. London: Routledge.; Opel, Andrew and Pompper, Donnalyn (eds) (2003) Representing Resistance: Media, civil disobedience, and the Global Justice Movement. Westport, Conn.: Praeger; Bailey, O., Cammaerts, B. and Carpentier, N. (2007) Understanding Alternative Media, Maidenhead: Open University Press.

A written assignment of not more than 3,000 words.