MC401      Half Unit
Mediated Resistance and Activism

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Additional requisites:

Students are required to prepare a statement of no more than 200 words in response to the following question, which must be submitted when selecting this course on LSE for You: Why are you interested in the intersection of media, communication and activism?

Please do not email the teacher with personal expressions of interest as these are not required and do not influence who is offered a place

This course focuses on the various ways in which citizens, activists and social movements use, appropriate and shape media and communication technologies to resist, to mobilise for resistance, and communicate strategically, but also how resistance, protest and movement discourses are represented and mediated, by activists themselves through movement and social media as well as by the mainstream media. The course will address several aspects of the intricate relationship between media and communication, resistance and activism. The course is organised around the core-concept of the 'mediation opportunity structure' referring to the opportunities for agency through media and communication, as well as the structural constraints preventing agency and stifling dissent. Legacy media, alternative media, social media, hashtags and apps will be considered and a dialectical perspective on power and the relationship between agency and structure is adopted with a particular emphasis on strategies of resistance, protection and circumvention.

At a theoretical level this course is situated at the intersection of social movement theory, political theory and media and communication theory. The different lectures will focus on various aspects of the mediation opportunity structure, including action repertoires, media strategies, self-mediation practices, mainstream media representations, networked opportunities – using examples from various regions in the world. Some case-studies will be situated at a local level of analysis, others at a national, while again others might relate to regional contexts or even transnational levels of contestation.

Seminar discussions revolve around relevant readings as well as case study presentatio

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars totalling a minimum of 20 hours across Winter Term. This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of term.

All students are expected to complete advanced reading, prepare seminar presentations and submit one essay of 1500 words.

• Bailey, Olga, Cammaerts, Bart and Carpentier, Nico (2007) Understanding Alternative Media. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
• Barassi, Veronica (2015) Activism on the Web: Everyday Struggles Against Digital Capitalism. London: Routledge.
• Bennett, Lance and Segerberg, Alexandra (2013) The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the personalization of Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bonini, Tiziano and Trere, Emiliano (2024) Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power. Cambridge, MA: MITPress.
• Cammaerts, Bart (2018) The Circulation of Anti-Austerity Protest. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.
• Cammaerts, Bart, Matoni, Alice and McCurdy, Patrick (eds) (2013) Mediation and Protest Movements. Bristol: Intellect.
• della Porta, Donnatella and Diani, Mario (2020) Social Movements: An introduction - 3rd edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Dencik, Lina and Leistert, Oliver (eds) (2015) Critical Perspectives on Social Media and Protest: Between Control and Emancipation. London: Rowman and Littlefield.
• Downing, John (2001) Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Earl, Jennifer and Kimport, Katrina (2011) Digitally Enabled Social Change: activism in the Internet Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Fenton, Natalie (2016) Digital, Political, Radical. Cambridge: Polity.

• Jackson, Sarah J., Bailey, Moya and Welles, Brooke Foucault (2020) #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice. Cambridge, MA: MITPress.

• Lievrouw, Leah (2023) Alternative and Activist new media - 2nd Edition. Cambridge: Polity.
• Mortesen, Mette, Neumayer, Christina and Poell, Thomas (eds) (2019) Social Media Materialities and Protest: Critical Reflections. New York: Routledge.

Essay (100%, 3000 words)