Media and Politics

WE WELCOME ALL PANEL AND PAPER PROPOSALS ON MEDIA AND POLITICS. BELOW ARE SOME SPECIFIC IDEAS FROM THE SECTION CHAIRS. Media, social participation and democracy In contemporary democracies, the establishment of a public space being more open and accessible to the less favored groups, popular movements and communities is a major challenge. The role of the media is both part of the problem and the solution. On the one hand, they strengthen or even produce distances and the bursting of the public space. On the other hand, their use by social movements and civil society can establish connections between different public spaces, include marginalized populations and help regain the public nature of certain issues. This panel proposes a discussion of both sides, focusing on the plurality of voices in the public space. It will the debate concentration of media, the representation of collective action or less favored people in mass media as well as the appropriation of media by these groups. Controversy building in the light of new media technologies Recently, the development of the Internet has allowed the proliferation of new forms of militant and citizen expression, overcoming obstacles that used to obstruct participation in the public debate and resulting in the emergence of new types of controversies. This panel proposes a discussion on the influence of media in the emergence (or in the consolidation) of public issues, but also the influence of Internet (notably of its social networks) over mass media. The panel searches also to debate how social movements and citizen collectives have been using media and the ICTs in order to interfere in this process. How to build the media controversies capable of serving a movement in the new media era? Who has "the right" to speak on behalf of a movement or community and how do we build this legitimacy? Collective and connective action The analysis of public space and contemporary social movements must take into account both the logics of collective action and those of "connective action" but also their interactions. It is in the cross-fertilization between everyday life and politics, between the internet world and the public squares, that claims are expressed and that citizenship and social movements emerge. This panel proposes to discuss how initiatives in the communities and streets sum up with actions online to question the dominant order. It will also debate the construction of a new information ecology, where different types of media interact and converge, favouring the organization of collective action and the legitimacy of new sources of knowledge. Media and political leadership Political parties, social movements and citizens' associations are subject to a growing media approach, especially from television. This panel examines what is the influence of the presence of journalists in the internal dynamics of activist groups. We will ask how the mediatisation of activism can contribute to its personalization. Why do journalists tend to focus on a few charismatic figures and how they select these individuals? Can activists resist against this process? If so, by which procedures and practices? Moreover, the development of the Internet has contributed to the emergence of a new type of leadership, promoted by an apparently more democratic access to the public sphere. How do this process influence the formation of a new type of public leadership ? By what criteria ? What influence could it have on the organisation and the discourses of concerned movements ? The media manufacturing of the political illegitimacy of women Women keep underrepresented in political organizations and, even further, in leadership positions. Qualitative difference sums up to this quantitative shift: while female political leaders are first regarded as "women", their male colleagues are treated as "leaders" and not as "men". By crossing the research on sexual division of activist work and the research on the relationship between media and politics, this panel will address the following question: How will the media coverage of the political sphere challenge the political illegitimacy of women ? Media strategy and community building Political and social activism, shared engagement and struggle, are often at the root of a strong unifying community feeling amongst social movements, ensuring them a certain continuity. Besides collective actions, communication tools used to connect activists enhance the building process of such a feeling : itinerant theater companies, local radio stations or pamphlets. Internet, its broadcasting and discussion platforms as well as its social networks, has led to an important decrease in communication costs, hence allowing new forms of both external and internal communication. This panel will address the following questions: how do social movements use the media to create alternative public spaces and form a community ? What are the new media practices that can emerge from this tendency ? What are the political and organisational consequences of these strategies on the movements ? Section Chair Ana Cristina Suzina is a PhD student in Political and Social Sciences at Université Catholique de Louvain. She has worked for 15 years in communication projects for social movements and NGOs in Brazil. She has completed a Master degree on Political Sociology (2008, Universidade Federal do Paraná) and another one in Political Science (2012, Université Catholique de Louvain). Her doctoral research, financed by CAPES, focuses in the use of media by social movements and civil society in Brazil. Section Co-Chairs Manuel Cervera-Marzal gets a PhD in political science at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He is currently working at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and he benefits from an Honorary Fellowship from the Hoover Chair in Economic and Social Ethics. His research concerns the Spanish Party Podemos. Floriane Zaslavsky is a PhD Candidate in sociology at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris). After completing a master’s degree in Public Affairs at Sciences Po (Paris), she completed an MPhil at the EHESS, doing a dissertation on the influence of Internet on the economy of arranged marriages in India. She is currently working on her thesis, focusing on the use of the media by the dalit movement in India (movement led by and for the populations still considered as “untouchables”).