skip to main content
10.1145/1147261.1147279acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagespdcConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Oppositional and activist new media: remediation, reconfiguration, participation

Published: 01 August 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Over the last decade, the major firms and cultural institutions that have dominated media and information industries in the U.S. and globally have been challenged by people adopting new technologies to intervene and participate in mainstream media culture. In this paper key genres and features of oppositional and activist new media are described and cases are presented, and their implications for participatory design are briefly outlined.

References

[1]
Atton, C. Alternative Media. Sage, London, UK, 2002.
[2]
Atton, C. An Alternative Internet. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, UK, 2004.
[3]
Barbrook, R. HyperMedia freedom. In P. Ludlow (Ed.), Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2001, 47--58.
[4]
Belson, K. and Richtel, M. America's broadband dream is alive in Korea. New York Times, May 5 (2003), C1, C4.
[5]
Bolter, J. D. and Grusin, R. Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1999.
[6]
Braman, S. Defining Tactical Media: An Historical Overview. http://www.nyu.edu/fas/projects/vcb/case_911/reverberations/braman2.html
[7]
Carr, C. Dow v. Thing: A free-speech infringement that's worse than censorship. Village Voice, January 17 (2003) http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0304/carr.php
[8]
Castells, M. The Rise of the Network Society -- The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. 1. Blackwell, London, UK, 1996.
[9]
Cohen, J. (2004). Normal Discipline in the Age of Crisis. Unpublished manuscript, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.
[10]
Collins, J. Architectures of Excess: Cultural Life in the Information Age. Routledge, London, UK, 1995.
[11]
Delio, M. DMCA: Dow what it wants to do. Wired, December 31 (2002). http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,57011,00.html
[12]
Deuze, M. The web and its journalisms: Considering the consequences of different types of newsmedia online. New Media & Society, 5, 2 (2003), 203--230.
[13]
Downing, J. D. H., with T. V. Ford, G. Gil, & L. Stein Radical media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. Sage, London, UK, 2001.
[14]
Eco, U. Travels in Hyperreality. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, USA, 1986.
[15]
Economist. Who owns the knowledge economy? April 8 (2000), 17.
[16]
Economist. Patently absurd? June 23 (2001), 40--42.
[17]
Economist. A bad week for pirates. July 2 (2005), 57--58.
[18]
Economist. Emerging-market indicators: Broadband penetration. July 2 (2005), 90.
[19]
Eschenfelder, K. R. and Desai, A. C. Software as protest: The unexpected resiliency of U.S.-based DeCSS posting and linking. The Information Society, 20, 2 (2004), 101--116.
[20]
Ford, S. The Situationist International. A User's Guide. Black Dog Publishing, London, UK, 2005.
[21]
Frank, T. & Weiland, M. (Eds.) Commodify your Dissent. W. W. Norton, New York, USA, 1997.
[22]
Gamson, J. Gay Media, Inc.: Media structures, the new gay conglomerates, and collective sexual identities. In M. McCaughey & M. D. Ayers (Eds.), Cyberactivism: Online activism in theory and practice. Routledge, New York, USA, and London, UK, 2003, 255--278.
[23]
Garcia, D. & Lovink, G. The ABC of Tactical Media. http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors2/garcia-lovinktext.html.
[24]
Garrido, M. & Halavais, A. Mapping networks of support for the Zapatista movement: Applying social-networks analysis to study contemporary social movements. In M. McCaughey & M. D. Ayers (Eds.), Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice. New York and London: Routledge, new York, USA, and London, UK, 2003, 165--184.
[25]
Gleick, J. Patently absurd. New York Times Magazine, March 12 (2000), 44--49.
[26]
Graham, M. The threshold of the information age: Radio, television and motion pictures mobilize the nation. In A. D. Chandler, Jr. & JW. Cortada (Eds.), A Nation Transformed by Information. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, and New York, USA, 2000, 137--176.
[27]
Gray, C. (Ed.) Leaving the 20th Century: The Incomplete Work of the Situationist International. Rebel Press, London, UK, 1974.
[28]
Greenberger, M. The computers of tomorrow. Atlantic Monthly, 213, 5 (1964), 63--66.
[29]
Hebdige, D. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Routledge, London, UK, and New York, USA, 1979.
[30]
Hyde, G. Independent Media Centers: Cyber-subversion and the alternative press. First Monday, 7, 4, April (2002). http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_4/hyde/index.html.
[31]
Kahn, R. & Kellner, D. Oppositional politics and the Internet: A critical/reconstructive approach. Cultural Politics, 1, 1 (2005), 75--100.
[32]
Kidd, D. Indymedia.org: A new communications commons. In M. McCaughey & M. D. Ayers (Eds.), Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice. Routledge, New York, USA, and London, UK, 2003, 47--70.
[33]
Kling, R., Rosenbaum, H., and Sawyer, S. Understanding and Communicating Social Informatics. Information Today, Medford, NJ, USA, 2005.
[34]
Kollock, P. The economies of online cooperation: Gifts and public goods in cyberspace. In M. A. Smith & P. Kollock (Eds.), Communities in Cyberspace. Routledge, London, UK, and New York, USA, 1999, 220--242.
[35]
Lasn, K. Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge -- and Why We Must. Harper Collins, New York, USA, 2000.
[36]
Leibowitz, B. Hack, hacker, hacking. In T. F. Peterson, Nightwork: A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT. (Reprinted from The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery & Pranks at MIT, The MIT Museum, 1990). MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2003, 4.
[37]
Lessig, L. The Eugene Garfield Lecture. Department of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, May 8, 2003.
[38]
Lessig, L. The Future of Ideas. Random House, New York, USA, 2001.
[39]
Levy, S. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Doubleday, New York, USA, 1984.
[40]
Lievrouw, L. A. Our own devices: Heterotopic communication, discourse and culture in the information society. The Information Society, 14, 2 (1998), 83--96.
[41]
Lievrouw, L. A. and Livingstone, S. Introduction. In L. A. Lievrouw & S. Livingstone, Handbook of new media (Updated Student Edition). Sage, London, UK, 2006, 1--14.
[42]
Lipinski, T. A. The commodification of information and the extension of proprietary rights into the public domain: Recent legal (case and other) developments in the United States. Journal of Business Ethics, 22 (1999), 63--80.
[43]
Litman, J. Mickey Mouse emeritus: Character protection and the public domain. University of Miami Entertainment and Sports Law Review, 11, 2 (1994), 429--435.
[44]
Litman, J. Digital Copyright. Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, USA, 2001.
[45]
Lovink, G. & Richardson, J. Notes on Sovereign Media. http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/lovink-richardsontext.html.
[46]
Ludlow, P. (Ed.) Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2001.
[47]
Markoff, J. (2002). Protesting the Big Brother lens, Little Brother turns an eye blind. New York Times, October 7, C1.
[48]
May, T. C. Crypto anarchy and virtual communities. In P. Ludlow (Ed.), Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2001, 65--79.
[49]
McCaughey, M. & Ayers, M. D. (Eds.) Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice. Routledge, London, UK, and New York, USA, 2003.
[50]
McDonough, T. Introduction: Ideology and the Situationist Utopia. In T. McDonough (Ed.), Guy Debord and the Situationist International. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2002, ix--xx.
[51]
Meikle, G. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. London and New York: Routledge, in association with Pluto Press Australia, 2002.
[52]
Meikle, G. gwbush.com: Tactical media strike. M/C Reviews, April 12 (2000). http://reviews.media-culture.org.au/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=50.
[53]
Meinrath, S. Studying the rise of Indymedia: Confusions and conclusions. Paper presented at the annual conference of the International Communication Association, New Orleans, LA, May 31, 2004. http://www.saschameinrath.com/writings.html.
[54]
Mitchell, W. J. T. Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003.
[55]
Nissenbaum, H. Hackers and the contested ontology of cyberspace. New Media & Society, 6, 2 (2004), 195--217.
[56]
Peretti, J. My Nike media adventure. The Nation, April 9, 2001. http://www.thenation.com/
[57]
Peretti, J. Culture Jamming, Memes, Social Networks, and the Emerging Media Ecology: The "Nike Sweatshop Email" as Object-to-Think-With. MIT Media Lab, 2001. {See original Peretti/Nike correspondence, available at http://www.shey.net/niked.html.}
[58]
Peterson, T. F. Nightwork: A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2003.
[59]
Platon, S. & Deuze, M. Indymedia journalism: A radical way of making, selecting and sharing news? Journalism, 4, 3 (2003), 336--355.
[60]
Posener, J. Spray it Loud. Pandora, London, UK, 1982.
[61]
Rheingold, H. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (rev. ed.) Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 2000.
[62]
Rheingold, H. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Perseus Books, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2002.
[63]
Rimensnyder, S. Mugging for the cameras: Tune in to International Surveillance Camera Awareness Day. Reason, September 6, 2001. http://reason.com/hod/sr090601.shtml.
[64]
Schrage, M. The Relationship Revolution. Merrill Lynch Forum. http://www.ml.com/woml/forum/index.htm.
[65]
Sholette, G. Interventionism and the historical uncanny. In N. Thompson & G. Sholette (Eds.), The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. North Adams, MA: MASS MoCA Publications, distributed by MIT Press, North Adams, MA, 2004, 133--142.
[66]
Star, S. L. and Bowker, G. How to infrastructure. In L. A. Lievrouw and S. Livingstone (Eds.), Handbook of New Media (Updated student edition). Sage, London, UK, 2006, 230--245.
[67]
Sunstein, C. Republic.com. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA, 2001.
[68]
Taylor, P. From hackers to hacktivists: Speed bumps on the global superhighway? New Media & Society 7, 5 (2005), 625--646.
[69]
Temkin, E. Defiant programming: The culture of Easter eggs and its fandom. Paper presented at the annual conference of the International Communication Association, San Diego, CA, May 24--27, 2003.
[70]
Thomas, D. Hacker Culture. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, USA, and London, UK, 2002.
[71]
Thomas, J. The moral ambiguity of social control in cyberspace: A retro assessment of the "golden age" of hacking. New Media & Society 7, 5 (2005), 599--624.
[72]
Thompson, N. & Sholette, G. (Eds.) The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. North Adams, MA: MASS MoCA Publications, distributed by MIT Press, North Adams, MA, 2004.
[73]
Touraine, A. The Return of the Actor. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MA, USA, 1988 {1984}.
[74]
Vegh, S. Classifying forms of online activism: The case of cyberprotests against the World Bank. In M. McCaughey & M. D. Ayers (Eds.), Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice. Routledge, New York, USA, and London, UK, 2003, 71--96.
[75]
Viénet, R. The Situationists and the new forms of action against politics and art. In K. Knabb (Ed.), Situationist International Anthology, Bureau of Public Secrets, Berkeley, CA, USA, 1981 {1967}, 213--216. (Reprinted from Internationale Situationiste #11, October 1967).
[76]
Wark, M. A Hacker Manifesto. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA and London, UK, 2004.
[77]
Winseck, D. Wired cities and transnational communications: New forms of governance for telecommunications and the new media. In L. A. Lievrouw & S. Livingstone (Eds.), Handbook of New Media (1sted.). Sage, London, UK, 2002, 393--409.
[78]
Wright, S. Informing, communicating, and ICTs in contemporary anti-capitalist movements. In W. van de Donk, B. D. Loader, P. G. Nixon, and D. Rucht (Eds.), Cyberprotest: New Media, Citizens, and Social Movements. Routledge, London, UK, 2004, 77--93.

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Unmaking as Agonism: Using Participatory Design with Youth to Surface Difference in an Intergenerational Urban ContextProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3501930(1-16)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
  • (2020)Designing Technologies with and for Youth: Traps of Privacy by DesignMedia and Communication10.17645/mac.v8i4.32618:4(229-238)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2020
  • (2020)Black Memes Matter: #LivingWhileBlack With Becky and KarenSocial Media + Society10.1177/20563051209810476:4Online publication date: 18-Dec-2020
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
PDC '06: Proceedings of the ninth conference on Participatory design: Expanding boundaries in design - Volume 1
August 2006
149 pages
ISBN:159593460X
DOI:10.1145/1147261
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • CPSR: Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 August 2006

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. access
  2. activism
  3. alternative media
  4. digital arts
  5. hacktivism
  6. indymedia
  7. intellectual property
  8. internet
  9. new media
  10. policy
  11. social movements
  12. social networks

Qualifiers

  • Article

Conference

PDC'06
Sponsor:
  • CPSR
PDC'06: Expanding Boundaries in Design
August 1 - 5, 2006
Trento, Italy

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 49 of 289 submissions, 17%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)19
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)5
Reflects downloads up to 27 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Unmaking as Agonism: Using Participatory Design with Youth to Surface Difference in an Intergenerational Urban ContextProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3501930(1-16)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
  • (2020)Designing Technologies with and for Youth: Traps of Privacy by DesignMedia and Communication10.17645/mac.v8i4.32618:4(229-238)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2020
  • (2020)Black Memes Matter: #LivingWhileBlack With Becky and KarenSocial Media + Society10.1177/20563051209810476:4Online publication date: 18-Dec-2020
  • (2019)Virtual HubsProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300471(1-12)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
  • (2017)Critical Design Research and Information TechnologyProceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems10.1145/3064663.3064747(983-993)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2017
  • (2016)Collaborative Participation in Personalized Health through Mobile DiariesE-Health and Telemedicine10.4018/978-1-4666-8756-1.ch058(1155-1185)Online publication date: 2016
  • (2016)Social media resources for participative design researchProceedings of the 14th Participatory Design Conference: Short Papers, Interactive Exhibitions, Workshops - Volume 210.1145/2948076.2948081(49-52)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2016
  • (2016)Research Strategies for Mobile HealthcareMobile Technologies as a Health Care Tool10.1007/978-3-319-05918-1_3(43-55)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2016
  • (2016)Mobile Technologies as a Support Tool for HealthMobile Technologies as a Health Care Tool10.1007/978-3-319-05918-1_2(11-41)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2016
  • (2015)Creating frictionProceedings of The Fifth Decennial Aarhus Conference on Critical Alternatives10.7146/aahcc.v1i1.21198(145-156)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2015
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media