The Medium or the Message: Fox News has a Crossroads Moment

One of the most amazing events of election night was likely missed by many viewers if they were not tuned in to Fox News Channel at just the right time. In the video below Fox News political analyst, former Bush senior adviser, and the man behind the Super PAC Crossroads GPS, argues with network’s decision to call Ohio for the incumbent.

Karl Rove on Fox News Election Night

What appears to happen is that Rove overrides the messages coming from the directors and sends Megyn Kelly on a bizarre journey deep into the bowels of the network to confront the back-end analysts who are making the state calls. The whole episode is notable since it is obviously unscripted and offers a glimpse into the way media outlets stage manage election nights.

Is GOTV a universally applicable answer for campaigns to the challenge of fragmented audiences?

By Andreas Jungherr

In his recent book Ground Wars Rasmus Kleis Nielsen^[i] offers an insightful look inside the workings of the Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) effort of Democratic candidates for US-congress during the campaign in 2008.  This detailed account of the goals, methods and actual practices of GOTV efforts is in and of itself interesting but it also offers insights to a much deeper and more decisive question present day campaigners face. Namely, how do campaigns and candidates effectively reach their potential voters in an age of abundant media choices, fragmented audiences and information saturation?  Personalized GOTV efforts, as described by Nielsen in his book, might offer a temporary answer. But an answer, as he will probably be the first to state, whose actual effectiveness over time, varying campaign contexts, and different countries has yet to be proven.

After the Pussy Riot Trial

By Denis Bochkarev

Coverage of the Pussy Riot trial has been widespread.  For those unfamiliar, the punk band/performance artists lip sank an original “punk prayer” entitled “Mother Mary, chase Putin out” from the alters of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.  Police arrested three of the five performing members in the days that followed and they have been imprisoned ever since.  Their trial was nothing short of a judicial farce leaving many observers to describe the formality (and consequential sentencing) as “medieval.”  The three members on trial were found guilty of “hooliganism to incite religious hatred” and will remain in prison for an additional nineteen months.  While the sentence surprises no one familiar with the Russian judicial system, what comes next?

Olympic Sized Protest

The Olympic Committee may stifle protest but it was alive and well in the 2012 London Games’ Opening Ceremony. See this article in Sports Illustrated for more on the statements made and the Olympic history of protest (excluding those made by the PLO in the murder of Israeli athletes in 1972). Political opinions were expressed last night in the pageantry about national healthcare, women’s suffrage, global cooperation, peace/war, internet repression & access, labor/capitalism, and more.

The Iraq War 10 Years Later: Are Formal Coalitions Needed for Mass Mobilization?

By  Catherine Corrigall-Brown

On February 15^th, 2003, millions of people from around the world took part in a series of coordinated protests against the impending war in Iraq. Although estimates of the number of participants ranged from six to thirty million, it was, without a doubt, the single largest protest event in human history to that date (BBC News 2003). Many scholars commented that the unprecedented level of successful global coordination against the war was made possible by the work of institutional leaders cooperating in large scale coalitions (Boekkooi, Klandermans, and van Stekelenburg 2011; Corrigall-Brown and Meyer 2010).  These types of coalitions seemed indispensable for this level of mobilization.  However, the recent success of the intentionally unorganized Occupy movement challenges us to reassess the necessity of formal coalitions between organizations and ask: in what contexts are formal coalitions needed for mass mobilization and how do formal organizational coalitions shape the nature of campaigns?

Talking to the media

Many of us who study collective action and social movements are interested in the processes through which preferred frames end up in the public sphere.  Sometimes we also play a role in this process by commenting on events as they unfold.  Often this commentary tends to be rather short – what one could call “talking heads” type of work.  An expert is needed to fill out or legitimize a story about protest.   Longer conversations get turned into a single quote from Professor X at the University of Y.  Although rewarding, this kind of work also poses a number of challenges. Newspapers tend to re-write.  Words put in quotations are not the same ones used in the actual conversation.  Sometimes questions are asked about movements or regions that are beyond one’s area of expertise.  Finally, there is the slippery slope between speaking about versus speaking on behalf of a group. 

PETA on The Daily Show: A Win or Loss?

OK, Daily Disruptors: I need some help with this one.

We know that most social movement organizations seek media attention, at least some of the time, for a variety of reasons. We also know that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is rather effective at using attention-grabbing (if often controversial and heavily criticized) techniques for getting media attention; they pride themselves on it. Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t avoid regularly hearing about what PETA is up to these days.

With that in mind, I’m trying to interpret this piece that appeared on The Daily Show in mid-February.

In it, Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac takes a satirical cut at PETA’s recent lawsuit filed on behalf of five of SeaWorld’s orca whales. The lawsuit declares the whales are slaves, putting SeaWorld in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s 13^th Amendment which outlaws slavery.

I would say Cenac’s report makes PETA look pretty bad. In a generous viewing, they seem… insensitive. In a critical one, they seem racist. At the very least, I can’t imagine this is what they had in mind when they agreed to do the interview.

But here’s where I get at little stuck. Even though PETA comes out of the report with egg on its face, does that mean this is a “loss” for PETA? If you were a PETA staff member, what would you have said when you watched it the first time? Or, if you were a researcher trying to code this media mention, how would you code it?

1. “Awesome! We just got 5 full minutes of free air time for one of our issues on a super-popular TV show!” [Code: Media Win]
2. “Oh no… we look like racists… during Black History Month… on a super-popular TV show… epic fail…” [Code: Media Loss]
3. “[your response here]”

Thoughts?

Occupy the Media

By Jeff Goodwin

I agree in a qualified way with the claim that the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has been successful in “changing the conversation” in the United States. In fact, there seems to be a general consensus about this success among sympathetic observers of OWS, a consensus broadly reflected in the second essay dialogue recently posted by Mobilizing Ideas. It seems that liberal and left analysts may disagree about whether the movement has or can develop the capacity to change institutions or state policies, but virtually all are in agreement about the conversation-changing impact of OWS.

Blogging, politics and social change

Back in 2008, the New York Times published an article titled “The Year of the Political Blogger.” The article focused on the inclusion of online “partisan” bloggers into the electoral process via political conventions and meetings. The director of the Democratic National Convention Committee told the NYT that “Credentialing more bloggers opens up all sorts of new audiences.” Yet, many bloggers felt that they were, to quote, “on the low-end of the totem pole” when it came to their inclusion vis-à-vis other members of the media.

Social movements documentary in the works: The Activists

Following Rima’s post about Time’s Person of the Year being named The Protestor, Daily Disruption readers will be interested to know of a documentary film project in the works called The Activists: War, Peace, and Politics in the Streets.  A social movements colleague and friend – Michael Heaney, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan – is heavily involved in its making.  He and filmmaker-journalist Melody Weinstein are raising money through Kickstarter to get the film to the finish line.  The Kickstarter site, which includes video previews, is here for interested eyes and potentially interested wallets.  This film is bound to be an important look into the lives and personal experiences of activists in the anti-war movement over the course of the last decade.