Anastasia Kavada

Bio: Anastasia Kavada is an academic researcher from University of Westminster. The author has contributed to research in topics: Social movement & Social media. The author has an hindex of 14, co-authored 29 publications receiving 654 citations. Previous affiliations of Anastasia Kavada include RMIT University.

Creating the Collective: Social Media, the Occupy Movement and Its Constitution as a Collective Actor*

Abstract: This paper examines the process through which Occupy activists came to constitute themselves as a collective actor and the role of social media in this process. The theoretical framework combines Melucci's (1996) theory of collective identity with insights from the field of organizational communication and particularly from the ‘CCO’ strand – short for ‘Communication is Constitutive of Organizing’. This allows us to conceptualize collective identity as an open-ended and dynamic process that is constructed in conversations and codified in texts. Based on interviews with Occupy activists in New York, London and other cities, I then discuss the communication processes through which the movement was drawing the boundaries with its environment, creating codes and foundational documents, as well as speaking in a collective voice. The findings show that social media tended to blur the boundaries between the inside and the outside of the movement in a way that suited its values of inclusiveness and direct participation. Social media users could also follow remotely the meetings of the general assembly where the foundational documents were ratified, but their voices were not included in the process. The presence of the movement on social media also led to conflicts and negotiations around Occupy's collective voice as constructed on these platforms. Thus, viewing the movement as a phenomenon emerging in communication allows us an insight into the efforts of Occupy activists to create a collective that was both inclusive of the 99% and a distinctive actor with its own identity.

Engagement, bonding, and identity across multiple platforms: Avaaz on Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace

Abstract: This article explores the role of social media platforms in transnational activism by examining the case of Avaaz.org, an international advocacy organization aiming to bring people-powered politics to global decision-making. Focusing on the Avaaz website, its channel on YouTube, its page on Facebook and its profile page on MySpace, the article investigates the affordances of these platforms for identity-building, bonding, and engagement. The empirical data is derived from features analysis of the selected web platforms, as well as textual analysis of the comments posted by users. The findings show that while social media platforms make individual voices more visible, their design helps Avaaz to maintain a coherent collective voice. In terms of bonding, platforms allow individual activists to communicate with the organization and to spread its message to their existing social networks, but opportunities for private interpersonal communication with other Avaaz supporters are limited.

Social Movements and Political Agency in the Digital Age: A Communication Approach

Abstract: Digital media pose a dual challenge to conventional understandings of political agency. First, digital media destabilize long-held assumptions about the nature of collective action, about social movements and their capacity to effect change. This is because digital media are thought to facilitate more decentralized, dispersed, temporary and individualized forms of political action that subvert the notion of the collective as singular, unified, homogeneous, coherent, and mass. One way of resolving this challenge is to view the collective in looser terms, as a process rather than as a finished product, a conceptualization that can be influence our understanding not only of social movements, but also of other political actors and of society as a whole. Second, digital media highlight the need to take communication seriously in how we conceptualize both collective action and political agency. Placing communication at the centre allows us to develop this looser and more processual understanding of the collective by studying it as a process that is constituted in and through communication. Inspired by organizational communication and particularly the work of Taylor and van Every (2000), this essay proposes a conception of collective action as emerging in conversations and solidified in texts. This conceptualization allows for a more multiplex and variegated view of political agency that takes into account the specific context where agency is exercised and the power that different actors can exert in a communicative process of negotiation, persuasion and claim-making.

Editorial: media and the ‘populist moment’:

Abstract: References to populism have suffused the media coverage of recent political events. From the election of Donald Trump to the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, Podemos and the Five Star Movement, populism is set forth as the common denominator that explains the appeal of a disparate set of politicians and political formations. Populism has also become, quite predictably, a fervently debated topic within academic research. Many of these debates focus on the role of the media in this ‘populist moment’ and particularly in the circulation of populist discourses and fake news, in the emergence of a new type of computational propaganda, as well as in fuelling ‘people power’ and grassroots sovereignty. Still, debates on the relationship between media and populism, and indeed on whether a ‘populism moment’ is actually upon us, are not yet settled. The fact that populism is a vague and slippery concept, which becomes invested with contradictory meanings in different political and national contexts as well as academic schools of thought, does not help in this regard. On the one hand, populism can refer to demagogy and propaganda, to manipulating the people in support of leaders and policies that are presented as if they are serving the interests of the many. Populism also creates unity by bringing people together against a common enemy. Thus, in its darker manifestations, populism can include the ‘othering’ and repression of specific ethnic, religious or political groups. On the other hand, populism can also be defined in more positive terms, as an effective strategy of uniting the people for progressive social change. In his provocative essay for this special Crosscurrents section, Paolo Gerbaudo considers populism also in this more positive light by drawing on the work of Laclau (2005) and particularly on his view of populism as ‘a political logic that involves an appeal to the entirety of the political community against a common enemy, and in particular against unresponsive political elites’. Gerbaudo critically interrogates the ‘elective affinity’ between social media and populism. Built with commercial interests in mind, ‘social

E-mail lists and the construction of an open and multifaceted identity: the case of the London 2004 European Social Forum

Abstract: Known for its internal plurality, the 'movement for alternative globalization' regularly comes together in events such as the European Social Forum (ESF), which are integral to the process of networking and cross-fertilization among its diverse participants. Yet apart from physical meetings, 'alter-globalization' activists also meet in a variety of online spaces. This article investigates the role of such spaces in the communicative process of collective identity construction by examining three email lists devoted to the organizing of the London 2004 ESF - a European list, a national and a national-factional. Considering collective identity formation as a communicative process, the article has focused on the design of the selected lists and the social context or 'we' that each one helped constitute. It also explored the communicative affordances of the lists for the process of collective identity formation by looking at bonding, trust-building and interactivity. The results show that depending on their purpose, accessibility and geographical scale, the email lists served as distinct but overlapping loci of collective identity. These settings displayed varying degrees of breadth and heterogeneity in terms of their themes and focus, their types of author, as well as the language in which messages were written. They also exhibited different degrees of interactivity with the factional list helping the formation of a cohesive collective identity for its members, while the European one allowed the emergence of a much looser, open and fragmented sense of the collective.

The Production of Space

Abstract: ‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age@@@The Playing Self: Person and Meaning in the Planetary Society

Abstract: Introduction Part I. Theory of Collective Action: 1. The construction of collective action 2. Conflict and change 3. Action and meaning 4. The process of collective identity Part II. Contemporary Collective Action: 5. conflicts of culture 6. Invention of the present 7. The time of difference 8. Roots for today and for tomorrow 9. A search for ethics 10. Information, power, domination Part III. The Field of Collective Action: 11. A society without a centre 12. The political system 13. The state and the distribution of social resources 14. Modernization, crisis, and conflict: the case of Italy Part IV. Acting Collectively: 15. Mobilization and political participation 16. The organization of movements 17. Leadership in social movements 18. Collective action and discourse 19. Forms of action 20. Research on collective action.

The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics

Abstract: From the Arab Spring and los indignados in Spain, to Occupy Wall Street (and beyond), large-scale, sustained protests are using digital media in ways that go beyond sending and receiving messages. ...