Hybrid media activism: Ecologies, imaginaries, algorithms

摘要

For those working at the intersection of social movement and media studies, Emiliano Trere's Hybrid media activism is a long-awaited text. Trere's existing publications, both individual and collaborative, have offered nuanced elucidations of activist media use, applying a media-ecological framework to case studies including the Mexican protest movement #YoSoyl32, the Spanish Indignados and the Italian student Anomolous Wave movement. Elsewhere, Trere has drawn out the conceptual implications of media-ecological approaches for understanding the dynamic role of media technologies within activism. Hybrid Media Activism affords Trere the opportunity to bring his theoretical and empirical materials together in a more sustained way. In order to elucidate the need for a more complex conception of activist uses of media, the book's opening chapter begins by detailing three 'spectres' that persist in media analysis, according to Trere: technological instrumentalism (or the notion that technologies are neutral channels for activists); functionalism (which treats the dynamics of social movements as pre-given and neglects the role of media technologies in co-constituting these dynamics); and technological determinism (which, conversely, over-states the role of media technologies and frames it as a driving or determining force of activism - as with early narratives of Twitter revolutions and smart mobs). Criticism of these spectres is coupled with discussion of a further five 'fallacies' that, Trere suggests, are commonplace within academic analyses of media technologies. One of these fallacies, for instance, is the error of focusing too much on singular media platforms - such as Facebook - without considering their position in a wider media environment.