When Everything’s Quiet. The Media Practices of Political Organizing in Greece, Italy and Spain During Stages of Latency

While we know a lot about how communication technologies intertwine with social movements and political participation during moments of protest, we know a lot less about what happens in between the peak of mobilizations, when activists, politicians and journalists go back to their daily political organizing. However, in the current age of deep mediatization, communication technologies are deeply entrenched with the ordinary social practices that constitute the fabric of social movements and political participation during stages of latency. The paper begins to explore this topic and employs the media practice approach to investigates how activists, politicians and journalists interact with a broad range of communication technologies, services and devices in between peaks of mobilizations. To achieve this goal, the paper relies on 50 in-depth map-interviews with activists, politicians and journalists in Greece, Italy and Spain collected and analyzed in the framework of the research project PiCME – Political Participation in Complex Media Environments based at the Scuola Normale Superiore. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of the in-depth map-interviews performed with the software MAXQDA, the paper first develops a typology of media usages that links different types of media technologies, services and platforms – i.e. digital vs. non-digital, mass vs. interpersonal – to the types of political activities they are employed for – i.e. organizational activities, decision-making activities, discourse creation activities. Drawing on this typology, the paper then discusses how digital media and big data are ingrained in the daily life of politics, also paying attention to their combination with non-mediated and face-to-face forms of communication among activists, politicians and journalists.