In 2011, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) was thrust into the Western media spotlight through the murder of LGBTIQ activist, David Kato Kasule, and the now-infamous “Kill the Gays Bill.” During the last six years, SMUG and its members have continued to fight oppressive Ugandan governmental systems and conservative leaders that have been instigated by U.S. evangelical fundamentalists, most notably Scott Lively. And while SMUG and its members have fallen out of the Western media spotlight since 2012, SMUG continues its social justice activism with and for LGBTIQ Ugandans on the ground, while also building transnational coalitions with other LGBTIQ organizations both within and beyond the borders of Uganda. In this dissertation, I examine the ways in which SMUG utilizes its website (sexualminoritiesuganda.com) as a site for transnational and translocal coalition-building for the sake of social justice activism. To understand the ways in which SMUG is engaging in LGBTIQ activism with nuance, I build a conceptual framework for my analysis through five constructs of critical intercultural communication: critical cosmopolitanism, transnational activism, the global-local dialectic, power, and identity. Critical cosmopolitanism, as conceptualized in Communication Studies by Miriam Sobré-Denton and Nilanjana Bardhan (2013), “is a world- and Other-oriented practice of engaging in deliberate, dialogic, critical, non-coercive and ethical communication. Through the play of context-specific dialectics, cosmopolitan communication works with and through cultural differences and historical and emerging power inequalities to achieve ongoing understanding, intercultural growth, mutuality, collaboration and social and global justice goals through critical self-transformation” (p. 50, emphasis in original). Through this definition, I also work with critical cosmopolitanism as conceptualized by Walter Mignolo (2000, 2010, 2012) and Gerard Delanty (2006, 2009). For Mignolo (2000), critical cosmopolitanism “comprises projects located in the exteriority and issuing forth from the colonial difference” (p. 724) as “an argument for globalization from below” (p. 745) that works to dislodge West-centric modes of thinking. Delanty (2006) extends this definition, as critical cosmopolitanism “seeks to discern or make sense of social transformation by identifying new or emergent social realities” (p. 25). In this, critical cosmopolitanism is a project that asks us to consider the ways in which “diversality,” or “diversity as a universal project” (Mignolo, 2000, p. 743), can dislodge Western modernity, colonialism, imperialism, and globalization from above. To understand the ways in which SMUG is engaging in a critical cosmopolitan vision through its website, I examine for clues of transnational activism as a way of performing and engaging in critical cosmopolitanism through Bardhan (2011), Burgmann (2013), and Gledhill (2010). To complicate our understanding of transnational activism, I turn to the global-local dialectic, as conceptualized by Stuart Hall (1997). The global-local dialectic helps me to observe the ways in which SMUG is dislodging all-encompassing narratives that center globalization as a top-down-only mechanism that ceases all local particularities of culture from existing. Kraidy (1999, 2005) also helps me to investigate the ways in which the global and the local are always already present and in a dialectical tension in our postmodern and postcolonial world. To understand more about how these tensions function, I investigate the construct of power through sociologist Jonathan Hearn’s (2012), Theorizing Power. In it, he seeks to shift theorizing of power away from questions regarding what “we mean by power” to questions of “what do we have to bear in mind when studying power?” (p. 4). Through theorizing five oppositions associated with power—“(1) physical versus social power, (2) power ‘to’ versus power ‘over’, (3) asymmetrical versus balanced power, (4) power as structures versus agents, and (5) actual versus potential power” (p. 4)—Hearn helps me to complicate the ways in which power is observed and discussed in relation to SMUG, LGBTIQ Ugandans, Ugandan leadership, U.S. evangelism, and Western political involvement. Finally, I offer a conceptual framework for identity in critical intercultural communication research, including questions on how we theorize difference differently through John T. Warren’s (2008), “Performing Difference,” as well as offering a framework to understand cosmopolitan identity as constructed by Sobré-Denton and Bardhan (2013) and a framing for African queer sexualities through the works of Ugandan feminist scholars, Sylvia Tamale (2003) and Stella Nyanzi (2013). To address my research questions, I engaged in an ideological criticism (Foss, 2003, Hart & Daughton, 2005, Wander, 1983) of SMUG’s website to more fully understand the ideologies driving SMUG’s rhetorical choices. I chose to use ideological criticism as a methodological framework as it allowed me, the critic, to construct a critical framework with which to analyze a text. Ideological criticism also offered me the opportunity to bring critical rhetorical methods into conversation with critical intercultural communication constructs. Through this conceptual and methodological framework, I analyzed 110 screen shots of their website and all 54 articles included as content on their page over the course of 13 months. Through this process, I argue that SMUG is showing signs of a critical cosmopolitan vision in their website through their participation in peripheral partnerships and activism that speaks back to oppressive systems in ways that highlight globalization-from-below, as conceptualized by Walter Mignolo (2000, 2010, 2012). I also trouble the ways in which SMUG represents LGBTIQ Ugandans on the ground as I call for more intersectional representation that speaks more broadly to LGBTIQ Ugandan experiences in the everyday than SMUG is currently offering visitors. This dissertation research also highlights the difficulties of reading critical cosmopolitanism in one online mediated space, and that centering people and the relationships among people is critical when engaging in critical cosmopolitan research. I end this project with a call to critical intercultural communication scholars to offer more nuance around the representations of LGBTIQ people around the world that takes us beyond sensationalized subjects while also not erasing the devastating impacts of LGBTIQ hatred locally and globally.

Recent developments in communications technology have transformed how social movements might mobilize, and how they can organize their activities. This thesis explores some of the geographical consequences of the use of digital media for political activism. It does this by focusing on the transnationalization of protests. The aim is to analyse how movements with different organizational structures and political scopes are affected by their use of digital media. This is done with a specific focus on how digital media use influences or enables transnational modes of organization and activism. The thesis comprises four different case studies where each study examines a social movement with a specific organizational structure. There are, however, also important similarities between the movements. In each study, somewhat different perspectives and methodological approaches are used. Some of the methods used are semi-structured interviews, content analysis of written data (retrieved from Facebook as well as Twitter), and social network analysis. The analysis indicates that digital media do have a role in the transnationalization of protest. This role, however, differs depending on what type of social movement one studies. The organizational structure of social movements, together with their specific forms of digital media use, influences how the transnationalization of protests and movements is articulated and formed. In cases where a social movement has a hierarchical organizational structure, there is less transnationalization, whereas in social movements with a more non-hierarchical organizational structure one sees more transnationalization. The thesis concludes that the transnationalization of protests is affected by social movements’ organizational structure. The more decentralized the social movement, the more vibrant the transnational public. In order to explain how transnational social movements, using digital media, can emerge in cases where geographical distances might make such coalitions unlikely, the thesis introduces the notion of affectual proximity. This concept helps us understand how transnational social movements, connecting actors from all over the world, can emerge through digital media.

No description available.

Tesis para obtener el grado de Magíster en Estudios Internacionales / El movimiento ciudadano internacional Boicot, Desinversiones y Sanciones Contra Israel – BDS surge como respuesta frente a la persistente pasividad de la comunidad internacional respecto de la insostenible y desastrosa situación que vive el pueblo palestino ya sea en el exilio o bajo la discriminación, segregación y represión institucional, una realidad que se ha mantenido así por siete décadas. Los tres únicos objetivos de su campaña están basados en el Derecho Internacional y en resoluciones de Naciones Unidas, resoluciones que hasta la fecha no han sido cumplidas por el Estado Israelí. Se trata de una forma de lucha no violenta cuya estrategia de desinversión y boicot económico, académico y cultural a empresas e instituciones vinculadas a la ocupación han generado la presión suficiente para provocar cambios en la política exterior israelí, presentando una nueva imagen al exterior. La presente investigación tiene por objeto analizar el poder de atracción o Soft Power del BDS y su capacidad de empujar al Estado Israelí hacia la reconfiguración de su propaganda política o “hasbara” la cual constituye el núcleo de su diplomacia pública. / The Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions Against Israel campaign or BDS is an international social movement which emerges as a response to the international community’s persistent lack of determination regarding the unsustainable and devastating situation of the Palestinian people, who are living either in exile or under discrimination, segregation and institutional repression, situation they have been going through for seven decades. The three objectives of the BDS campaign are based on international law and on United Nations resolutions which, to date, have not been met by the Israeli State. BDS is a non-violent struggle whose divestment strategy and economic, academic and cultural boycott of companies and institutions linked to the Israeli occupation have produced enough pressure to make Israel change its foreign policy introducing a whole new image abroad. The purpose of this research is to analyze the power of attraction or Soft Power of the BDS and its ability to push the Israeli State towards the reconfiguration of its political propaganda or "hasbara" which constitutes the core of its public diplomacy. / 2018.01.01

This dissertation explains why Taiwan and South Korea experienced democratic breakthrough in the late 1980s, when Singapore failed to do so. It explains this variation in democratic outcomes by specifying the causal mechanisms underpinning the international-domestic political interface of democratic development in these cases. New empirical evidence discovered in the course of this research has confirmed that transnational networks of nonstate and substate actors were an indisputable source of external pressures on the authoritarian governments of Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore during the late 1970s and early 80s. Foreign human rights activists, Christian missionaries and ecumenical workers, members of overseas diaspora communities, journalists, academics and students, along with legislators in key democratic countries allied to the target governments, were found to have raised the international profile of political repression by flagging them as reprehensible human rights abuses. Within the context of an international normative environment where human rights was increasingly considered a legitimate international concern, these transnational actors generated a negative international opinion of the target governments. Such grassroots pressures had the potential to raise the cost of political repression for these target governments with the effect of curbing repressive state behavior, thereby protecting key domestic actors with the potential to effect democratic breakthrough. The extent to which these external pressures could effectively constrain repressive state behavior depended, however, on the immediate geopolitical circumstances of each case. Geopolitical circumstances were also important because they could affect the strength of the protection regime. Thus, the exposition of the transnational protection regime as the causal mechanism underpinning the international-domestic political interface of democratic development requires that we specify the exact role of agency within the international normative and geopolitical contexts in which they operate. This dissertation develops such an abstracted causal model for the purposes of application in other cases and for policy analysis.

This dissertation explains why Taiwan and South Korea experienced democratic breakthrough in the late 1980s, when Singapore failed to do so. It explains this variation in democratic outcomes by specifying the causal mechanisms underpinning the international-domestic political interface of democratic development in these cases. New empirical evidence discovered in the course of this research has confirmed that transnational networks of nonstate and substate actors were an indisputable source of external pressures on the authoritarian governments of Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore during the late 1970s and early 80s. Foreign human rights activists, Christian missionaries and ecumenical workers, members of overseas diaspora communities, journalists, academics and students, along with legislators in key democratic countries allied to the target governments, were found to have raised the international profile of political repression by flagging them as reprehensible human rights abuses. Within the context of an international normative environment where human rights was increasingly considered a legitimate international concern, these transnational actors generated a negative international opinion of the target governments. Such grassroots pressures had the potential to raise the cost of political repression for these target governments with the effect of curbing repressive state behavior, thereby protecting key domestic actors with the potential to effect democratic breakthrough. The extent to which these external pressures could effectively constrain repressive state behavior depended, however, on the immediate geopolitical circumstances of each case. Geopolitical circumstances were also important because they could affect the strength of the protection regime. Thus, the exposition of the transnational protection regime as the causal mechanism underpinning the international-domestic political interface of democratic development requires that we specify the exact role of agency within the international normative and geopolitical contexts in which they operate. This dissertation develops such an abstracted causal model for the purposes of application in other cases and for policy analysis.

A tese de doutorado intitulada Mulheres Negras em Movimento, analisa o processo de formação do ativismo transnacional de mulheres negras na América Latina, entre os anos 1980 e 1995. A abordagem metodológica utilizada vem da Teoria do Confronto Político, da Sociologia Relacional e dos estudos sobre Ativismo Transnacional. O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar o processo de formação da Rede de Mulheres Afro Latino-Americanas, Afro-caribenhas e da Diáspora RMAAD. Este processo é reconstruído a partir da trajetória de oito ativistas latino-americanas e do funcionamento dos espaços internacionais de ação política para os movimentos sociais, em particular as Conferências Mundiais da ONU e os Encontros Feministas Latino-americanos, que permitiram o desenvolvimento da ação política coletiva aqui analisada. A hipótese do trabalho é que as conexões entre as ativistas negras latino-americanas produziram, a partir de repertórios discursivos disponíveis, um novo enquadramento interpretativo crucial para produzir a mobilização, o Feminismo Negro Latino-americano. Procura-se demonstrar que este processo culminou na formação de um movimento transnacional de mulheres negras, ou seja, de um movimento que transcendas fronteiras nacionais. / The doctoral thesis entitled Black Women in Movement analyzes the process of formation of transnational black women activism in Latin America between the years 1980 and 1995. The methodological approach used comes from Political Confrontation Theory, Relational Sociology and studies on Transnational Activism. The objective of this work is to analyze the process of formation of the Network of Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean and Diaspora Women - RMAAD, based on the trajectory of eight Latin American activists and on international spaces of political action for social movements as the UN World Conferences and the Latin American Feminist Meetings that allowed the development of political action. The hypothesis of the work indicates that the connections between Latin American black activists produced, during this period, an interpretative framework, Latin American Black Feminism, based on discursive repertoires, that mobilized this population of women culminating in the formation of a transnational movement, that is, a movement that transcends national boundaries.

A tese de doutorado intitulada Mulheres Negras em Movimento, analisa o processo de formação do ativismo transnacional de mulheres negras na América Latina, entre os anos 1980 e 1995. A abordagem metodológica utilizada vem da Teoria do Confronto Político, da Sociologia Relacional e dos estudos sobre Ativismo Transnacional. O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar o processo de formação da Rede de Mulheres Afro Latino-Americanas, Afro-caribenhas e da Diáspora RMAAD. Este processo é reconstruído a partir da trajetória de oito ativistas latino-americanas e do funcionamento dos espaços internacionais de ação política para os movimentos sociais, em particular as Conferências Mundiais da ONU e os Encontros Feministas Latino-americanos, que permitiram o desenvolvimento da ação política coletiva aqui analisada. A hipótese do trabalho é que as conexões entre as ativistas negras latino-americanas produziram, a partir de repertórios discursivos disponíveis, um novo enquadramento interpretativo crucial para produzir a mobilização, o Feminismo Negro Latino-americano. Procura-se demonstrar que este processo culminou na formação de um movimento transnacional de mulheres negras, ou seja, de um movimento que transcendas fronteiras nacionais. / The doctoral thesis entitled Black Women in Movement analyzes the process of formation of transnational black women activism in Latin America between the years 1980 and 1995. The methodological approach used comes from Political Confrontation Theory, Relational Sociology and studies on Transnational Activism. The objective of this work is to analyze the process of formation of the Network of Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean and Diaspora Women - RMAAD, based on the trajectory of eight Latin American activists and on international spaces of political action for social movements as the UN World Conferences and the Latin American Feminist Meetings that allowed the development of political action. The hypothesis of the work indicates that the connections between Latin American black activists produced, during this period, an interpretative framework, Latin American Black Feminism, based on discursive repertoires, that mobilized this population of women culminating in the formation of a transnational movement, that is, a movement that transcends national boundaries.

[pt] Esta é uma pesquisa no campo da internet e política nos subcampos da esfera pública e do ativismo transnacional. O objetivo deste trabalho é identificar a constituição de públicos transnacionais, que se expressam por meio do ativismo, utilizando as mídias digitais. A partir de uma revisão de literatura, serão analisados dois casos emblemáticos do ativismo transnacional: os protestos coordenados de 15 fevereiro de 2003, realizados simultaneamente em diversos lugares do mundo contra a iminente Guerra do Iraque, e os protestos de 2011 no Egito até a renúncia do então presidente Hosni Mubarak, localizados no contexto da Primavera Árabe, que incluiu eventos parecidos em outros países da região e forte uso das mídias sociais. Serão trabalhadas as seguintes questões nos casos estudados: 1) quais as características desses públicos?; 2) de que forma as mídias sociais são utilizadas?; 3) o que torna esses movimentos transnacionais? Nossa tentativa é a de contribuir para as pesquisas sobre o ativismo - e sobre a esfera pública - transnacional, utilizando como fonte estudos já realizados na área. / [en] This is a research in the field of Internet and Politics in the subfield of the public sphere and transnational activism. The aim of this work is to identify the constitution of transnational publics, which are expressed through activism, using digital media. Based on a literature review, two emblematic cases of transnational activism will be analyzed: the coordinated protests of 15 February 2003, held simultaneously in many countries against the imminent Iraq War, and the 2011 protests in Egypt that took place until the resignation of the president Hosni Mubarak, and were located in the context of the Arab Spring, which included similar events in other Arab countries and strong use of social media. Both cases will be studied in light of the following questions: 1) which are the characteristics of these publics that may be formed around certain issues?; 2) how was social media used?; 3) what makes these publics transnational? By doing so, we hope to contribute to the research on transnational activism and public sphere.

[pt] Em sua expressão contemporânea, os processos de ativismo tornaram-se transnacionais, com suas causas, ações e organização realizados além dos limites das fronteiras nacionais, estabelecendo uma dinâmica com a lógica de horizontalidade da comunicação digital. Através da internet, os ativistas teriam mais possibilidades de estabelecer redes entre si, divulgar suas causas e ações, promover seu ponto de vista sobre os acontecimentos e gerar mais engajamento no debate público e na participação dos processos pelos cidadãos globais. Por isso, o objetivo deste trabalho é promover uma reflexão de como os artigos acadêmicos analisam casos específicos de ativismo transnacional e seus contextos sociopolíticos para que seja produzido um entendimento da forma e extensão dos potenciais de horizontalidade da internet que estão sendo concretizados. Essa reflexão foi baseada em duas perguntas de pesquisa: quem são os ativistas envolvidos no debate público de mudanças climáticas nas mídias sociais; e como a formação de redes de relacionamento entre ativistas no debate público promovido pelas mídias sociais é analisada pelos acadêmicos. Como conclusão, é possível encontrar indícios de quebra de agenda-setting, divulgação de novos enquadramentos de discurso, estabelecimento de redes epistêmicas complementares e organização transnacional e colaborativa de causas e ações de ativismo pela internet, apesar da análise de big data das mídias sociais ainda estar pouco aprofundada nesta área. / [en] In its contemporary form, the processes of activism became transnational, since its actions, causes and organization is done beyond the limit of national borders, establishing a dynamical relationship with the logics of digital communications. Using the internet, activists would have more possibilities of establishing networks of collaboration, publicize its causes and actions, promote specific points of view and generate more engagement in the public debate and more people to participate in activism. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to promote a brief review of how the academic literature is analyzing specific cases of transnational activism and its sociopolitical context to generate a better understanding of which and how the potentials of horizontalization from the internet are manifested. Two research questions are addressed: how are the actors of climate change activism analyzed in the social media data analysis of the literature, and how are the social networks of activists being explored. The conclusion is that it is possible to find evidences of activists breaking the agendasetting of traditional media, as well as promoting new framing of the discourse surrounding its actions and causes, new networks of collaboration and transnational and collaborative forms of organizing and creating actions through social media. However, big data analysis of activism processes in social media is still beginning and new research with more depth in the information analysis would benefit immensely in the comprehension of its dynamics