Suchergebnisse

Anti-corruption efforts from the grassroots that make use of digital media to hinder corrupt behaviors are flourishing worldwide. In many cases, these efforts see activists interact with big data along with other types of data. They do this in the framework of broader communicative infrastructure in which activists create, employ, and spread big data to support their struggles. As well, they do so differently, according to a diverse range of activists' local situations across the world. The article uses examples of anti-corruption efforts in Brazil, India, and Spain to illustrate how the grounded theory method might help researchers to produce knowledge that escapes a universalistic and global vision of datafication detached from activists' lived and local experiences. The article first briefly outlines what grounded theory is, the main steps in a grounded theory study, and its applications in media and communication studies. It then moves to a broader discussion of two relevant elements of grounded theory – sensitizing concepts and theoretical sampling – in taking into consideration data-enabled activism as an emergent phenomenon that might take many shapes. Then, it considers the emphasis on the situation in which data-enabled activism spreads out through a brief discussion of one relevant development of grounded theory, which is situational analysis, to solve the tension between the global and the local in data-enabled activism.

In the past decade, literature flourished that investigated the nexus between social movements and media from a media practice perspective. The article draws on this body of work to show how we might apply practice theory following at least three different approaches on social movements and media: media-as-practices, media-related-practices, and media-in-practices approaches. Then, it proposes an operational definition of practice to investigate social movements and media from a media-in-practices approach, also introducing the method of media practices maps interviews. Finally, the article applies the media-in-practices approach at the analytical level focusing on the practice of coordinating the workflow in the daily grassroots political engagement of Greek, Italian, and Spanish activists.

El empleo de paquetes de software para apoyar diferentes etapas de la investigación es cada vez más común entre los académicos de investigación cualitativa. La revisión del libro de Di GREGORIO y DAVISDSON, uno de los más recientes publicados en este tópico, pone particular atención a su primera parte. Allí, las autoras proponen y discuten algunos aspectos innovadores sobre el análisis de datos cualitativos asistido por computadora, tales como la emergencia del proyecto E como un "género" que influye en la totalidad del diseño de la investigación cualitativa. La revisión presenta de modo resumido la segunda y tercera partes del libro, más pragmáticamente orientadas al uso de los paquetes de software en la investigación cualitativa. Finalmente, la revisión finaliza con algunas observaciones críticas sobre el libro, el cual es una herramienta esencial de aprendizaje y reflexión para académicos y estudiantes de la investigación cualitativa de diferentes campos de investigación e indagación.

Social movements are also producers of symbolic resources, since they construct new collective identities and provide alternative system of meanings to societies. This was particularly significant with regard to recent struggles against work insecurity in Italy. There, in a discursive context dominated by the so-called 'flexibility political mantra', activists raised their voice in order to identify a novel social problem, precarity, and a novel social subject, precarious workers. The paper starts from these premises in order to investigate the so-called media sociali, a particular kind of media practice that had been developed by Italian activists involved in the long protest campaign against precarity, namely the Euro Mayday Parade (EMP). Probably, the media sociali are the most evident attempt to construct a fresh imagery based on precarious workers living and working conditions and to provide an alternative cultural grammar able to speak about precarity. The paper gives back the most important mechanism on which the media sociali rests through the living voices of activists involved in their elaboration: the mechanism of political socialization and social networking as well as the mechanism of diffusion and mutual recognition. Moreover, the paper proposes further reflections about the way in which those activists involved in the EMP perceived the media sociali. In doing so, the paper presents different ways of interpreting political conflict in contemporary Italian social movements and argues that the media sociali are an interesting attempt to overcome both mainstream and independent media in the construction of precarious workers' imagery and political socialization. Interviews with activists and social movement generated documents are the main data source, investigated according to a qualitative analysis approach.

Social movements are also producers of symbolic resources, since they construct new collective identities and provide alternative system of meanings to societies. This was particularly significant with regard to recent struggles against work insecurity in Italy. There, in a discursive context dominated by the so-called 'flexibility political mantra', activists raised their voice in order to identify a novel social problem, precarity, and a novel social subject, precarious workers. The paper starts from these premises in order to investigate the so-called media sociali, a particular kind of media practice that had been developed by Italian activists involved in the long protest campaign against precarity, namely the Euro Mayday Parade (EMP). Probably, the media sociali are the most evident attempt to construct a fresh imagery based on precarious workers living and working conditions and to provide an alternative cultural grammar able to speak about precarity. The paper gives back the most important mechanism on which the media sociali rests through the living voices of activists involved in their elaboration: the mechanism of political socialization and social networking as well as the mechanism of diffusion and mutual recognition. Moreover, the paper proposes further reflections about the way in which those activists involved in the EMP perceived the media sociali. In doing so, the paper presents different ways of interpreting political conflict in contemporary Italian social movements and argues that the media sociali are an interesting attempt to overcome both mainstream and independent media in the construction of precarious workers' imagery and political socialization. Interviews with activists and social movement generated documents are the main data source, investigated according to a qualitative analysis approach.

This article investigates the role of digital media in mechanisms that sustain the achievement of social movement outcomes during key phases of mobilizations that aim to impact policymaking. It does so by comparing two anti-corruption initiatives in Brazil that became legislative bills through popular petition and included the employment of digital media to support them: the Ficha Limpa (or Clean State Law) and the Ten Measures Against Corruption (TMAC) campaigns. Based on in-depth interviews with key activists and secondary sources, including an analysis of the campaigns' digital media content, this study evaluates three types of outcomes in the political realm: access, agenda, and policy responsiveness. Although both anti-corruption initiatives elicited public preference and placed their legal inputs in the public agenda of the political system, they were not equally successful in converting their ideas into new legislation. The Ten Measures was a campaign that occurred when the digital affordances for civil society actors were considerably higher, but it did not achieve positive outcomes as the Ficha Limpa did. This article suggests that initiatives focusing more on online mobilization strategies without a clear advocacy approach to negotiate with (and pressure) public officials do not seem to be enough to promote policy changes.