Performing Media Activism in the Digital Age

This book represents a high-quality original contribution to the field, because it interrogates the performative aspects of social media activism and extends the notion of public space as a conflictual space. With case studies of social movements such as #NeverAgain, #ClimateStrike, and #BlackLivesMatter, this work is unmissable for scholars, activists, and practitioners. Professor Athina Karatzogianni, School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester. Performing Media Activism in the Digital Age breaks new ground by conceptualizing activism as a performance extending beyond public space and the moment of public gatherings to consider the more extended view of social or political movements as mediated social connections. The book utilizes primary data extracted from social media platforms by applying a social network analysis (SNA) approach to the people, organizations, and media that are trying to advance their particular agendas, with an eye toward a better understanding of the ways in which social movements operate in a networked society. The goal of social network analysis is to identify social structures within a movement such as communities or clusters and it seeks to locate influence within those structures. Social network analysis as applied to media activism represents an interdisciplinary field that encompasses social psychology, sociology, as well as graph theory, which should suggest this book will be of interest to scholars and students in these and related fields. In the digital age, social network analysis represents a paradigm shift as analytical and data visualization tools can be applied in an interdisciplinary manner. By combining data science and sociology or cultural anthropology, one has the means to visualize networks of individuals and organizations engaged in a social movement, to see how movements are organized (structured) into communities, clusters, and niches, and to visualize power structures within social movements to see who is influencing a network over extended periods of time. Neil M. Alperstein is Professor Emeritus in the Communication Department at Loyola University Maryland, USA. He is the founding director of the Emerging Media graduate program. He is the author of Celebrity and Mediated Social Connections (2019), Advertising in Everyday Life (2003), co-author of two books on online education, in addition to contributing book chapters and publishing numerous research articles.