Barassi, Veronica. 2009. Mediated Resistance: Alternative Media, Imagination and Political Action in Britain. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

This research explores the connection between political imaginations, media technologies and social movements in Britain. The relationship between media and dominant ideologies is a central issue of academic debate, but the role of alternative media in the construction of oppositional political discourses is largely under-investigated. This research project explores this relationship by relying on the theories and methodologies of both anthropology and media studies and provides an original and cross-disciplinary reflection on alternative media and political identity; on internet technologies and new forms of political imaginations; and on the possibilities and challenges people encounter in the everyday construction of mediated political action.

Drawing from the ethnographic context of campaigning organisations and the Trade Union Movement - and looking in particular at the case of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign - this thesis argues that internet technologies have become the channels within which new political imaginations and possibilities are embedded and transmitted. Yet, to understand the way in which these new political imaginations are re-defining the terrain for political action, it is important to explore the complex dialectics between transformation and continuity - between the technical and the social - rather than emphasising disruption and novelty. It is only by looking at continuity that scholars can understand the complex and imaginative negotiations that enable activists to re-imagine social change in order to adapt to the techno-historical transformations of the last fifteen years.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00028604
Keywords:	social movements, resistance, media technologies, internet technologies, politics
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Anthropology
Date:	2009
Item ID:	28604
Date Deposited:	01 Jun 2020 16:01
Last Modified:	08 Sep 2022 12:30
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/28604

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