Alternative and Activist New Media

Over the last four decades, new modes of communication have redefined people’s engagement with media: media audiences are now also makers, influencers, followers, gamers, trolls, and data subjects. This turbulent social and technological context has created new opportunities for expression and activism around the world.

In this fully revised second edition, Leah Lievrouw considers the shift toward algorithmic media for political and cultural activism online – where data capture and big data analytics are not just tools for managing and moving people or information, but are themselves sites of creativity, connection, and contention. The book examines a range of events and developments: anti-facial recognition projects; open-source intelligence in citizen journalism; and new apps based on encryption and DIY local networks that support movements such as Occupy and Black Lives Matter. Alternative and Activist New Media charts the theoretical roots of contemporary internet-driven movements and provides a framework for understanding the changing face of protest in the age of algorithmic media.

​This timely new edition will be a useful addition to any course on digital activism and new media and society.​

Introduction Activism in the Age of Algorithmic Media

1 New Media Activism: Art & Design Influences

2 New Media Activism: Social Movement Theory

3 A Genre Framework for Alternative and Activist New Media

4 Speaking Noise to Power: Culture Jamming

5 The Culture of Creative Disobedience: Alternative Computing

6 Algorithms and Citizens: Participatory Journalism and OSINT

7 “Be Water”: Mediated Mobilization

8 Defying the Informatics of Domination: Commons Knowledge

Conclusion Recovering Knowledge and Trust



Notes

References

Index

“Leah Lievrouw offers an expert and accessible guide to how people adopt and adapt media in pursuit of social and cultural change. This new edition is an authoritative survey of communication and its discontents, from Dada to Black Lives Matter.”
Graham Meikle, University of Westminster

“This brilliant book is a must-read for those who want to appreciate the evolution of media activism in the age of algorithms. Lievrouw persuasively succeeds in the difficult task of uncovering the genealogy of the present without losing the vision of the future.”
Stefania Milan, University of Amsterdam

Leah A. Lievrouw is Professor of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.