The Occupy Wall Street Movement on September 17, 2011 that involved public protest and the occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York City’s financial district, is an important example of mass public dissent in American history. The conflict that lies at the heart of the protests is between two parties identified in the data as the 99% and the 1%. An abductive, grounded research strategy to explore the language used in interpreting the circumstances and details of the event, is used in conjunction with a theoretical framework provided by C. Wright Mills (1959) and Jock Young (2011), to uncover the motivations behind the 99%’s decision to protest. What is revealed upon completion of the analysis are two broad motivations for public protest by the 99% related to issues of fairness and access, set within an historical context of growing dissent against corrupt economic institutions and the governments that sustain them.

This thesis explores questions of politics and public space through an examination of the experiences of people involved in Occupy protest camps and local officials who were tasked with managing the protests in Eugene, OR and Madison, WI. Using assemblage as an organizing theoretical framework, this work identifies the actors involved in the production of Occupy protest camps and traces the trajectories of two Occupy protests from their beginnings to eviction day. It highlights the role of space in the protests, the ways in which protesters negotiated with local authorities for long-term use of public spaces previously prohibited by law, and some of the factors that contributed to the eviction of the protest camps. Finally, it seeks to reframe the debate on public space and conceptualizes public space as an assemblage that is continually made, unmade, and remade through the interactions of diverse, heterogeneous actors. / 10000-01-01

On September 17, 2011, protestors set up camp in Zuccotti Park in New York's financial district, initiating a 59-day social and political movement known as Occupy Wall Street. Writing about the protest, James C. McKinley Jr. of the New York Times declared that the movement "lacks a melody" compared with protest movements of the previous century. Despite the common perception that little music accompanied the movement, organizers released Occupy This Album: 99 Songs for the 99%, a collection of songs connected with, written for, or written about the Occupy Wall Street movement. This thesis investigates the place of Occupy Wall Street in society through its musicking and through Occupy This Album: 99 Songs or the 99%. Building upon the sociomusicological work of R. Serge Denisoff and the work of Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, I propose a framework for a categorization of songs through their lyrical content and apply it to the music found on Occupy This Album. Then, using this framework, I determine the potential "progressiveness" of Occupy Wall Street through the modernization theory of Talcott Parsons. I contend that Occupy this Album: 99 Songs for the 99% shows Occupy Wall Street to be a modernizing movement as indicated through its large output of propaganda songs, showing a commitment to communication of diverse knowledge and ideologies and a generalization of value sets. This analysis and its conclusion situate Occupy Wall Street in society through its musical output rather than through its cultural and political effects

I dagens värld har länder ett tätt sammanlänkat ekonomiskt samarbete. Detta innebär att ifall ett land drabbas av en finanskris, kommer även andra länder att falla likt dominobrickor, in i en väntande finanskris. Just detta skedde år 2008 och 2011, då ett flertal av världens länder drabbades av en stor finansiell kris. I skuggan av dessa kriser växte en social rörelse fram vars syfte var att uppmärksamma människor om vad som, enligt rörelsen, egentligen hade hänt. Rörelsen som växte fram är känd som Occupy-rörelsen. Denna studie har som mål att undersöka hur två grupper inom rörelsen skapar legitimitet för ett alternativt perspektiv på finansiella kriser men även hur de vill lösa pågående och framtida ekonomiska kriser. För att detta ska bli möjligt användes Snow & Benfords inramningsteorier. Enligt Snow & Benford ska en inramning ses som en strukturell bas av en persons perspektiv och värderingar inom ett policyområde. Genom att använda sig av olika inramningar kommer personer att skapa olika lösningar samt strategier för att lösa ett problem. Snow & Benford anser att detta perspektiv även går att använda på sociala rörelser. För att kunna göra denna studie studerade jag Occupy Wall Street samt Occupy Stockholms Internetsidor. Min studie visar ett tydligt resultat. Grupperna anser inte att finanskriserna är ett problem i sig, utan ett symptom. Finanskriserna är ett symptom av ett underskott. Ett demokratiskt underskott.

In September of 2011 Zuccotti Park, located in the heart of downtown Manhattan, became a site of political contestation when several hundred activists pitched their tents, set up their signs, and began to occupy the park, in what later became known as Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street became part of the larger Occupy moment, in which public parks in most major cities and college towns across the nation were occupied for several months by protestors contesting a range of issues including the growing disparity in wealth, corporate influence on democracy, and deepening social injustices. By the end of 2011 the nationwide eviction of most Occupy encampments resulted in the assumed failure of Occupy to challenge successfully contemporary politics and to organize a clear list of demands. In this thesis, I draw on ethnographic material collected in 2012 to interpret the spatial strategies and spatialities of Occupy and argue that for Occupy, this lack of focus is a strength in that it creates a space for alternative political discussions and practices otherwise less visible or nonexistent in the current political system. I examine the spatialities of Occupy, by which I mean the networks, mobilities, and places of Occupy, and argue that such an analysis offers an entry point in which to consider the ways in which space and politics are co-produced. In order to examine the relations between space and politics, I locate the specific spatial practices and strategies utilized by participants both in the highly visible occupation of public parks and direct actions and less visible organization spaces.

This thesis presents an ethnography of public discourse in postcolonial, decolonial, queer, and multimedia contexts, as part of a critical analysis of imperialism in the digital age. In mixing experiences with theory and social practice, I draw on the work of activists who have already begun to mold these theories into everyday practice, paying particular attention to Occupy Wall Street, the Zapatistas of Mexico, and Southerners on New Ground (SONG)—a regionally focused non-profit organization based in the southern United States. I develop techno-seduction as a term to deconstruct the lure of technological determinism promoting static interpretations of democracy, consensus, and participation, and to describe the impact these interpretations have on intrapersonal and group identity formation.

In the 21st century, this planet has experienced an explosion of social movements and protests. From the Arab Spring to the Occupy Movement, global protests had become such a prominent feature of the first decade of the new millennium that Time Magazine named the protester as its person of the year in 2011. This project examines the relationship between social theory and political practice in an attempt to gain further insight into contemporary social movements. In particular, it examines the theoretical assumptions underlying the Occupy Movement in the United States and compares these assumptions with 19th century individual and collective anarchist theories, as well as with contemporary theories that have taken the postmodern turn.

Vår uppsats kommer beröra Zombies på film och fokusera på filmen Land of the Dead. Många människor upplever zombies som inget mer än monster, en fara för karaktärerna att klara sig undan. Vi vill uppmärksamma att all populärkultur i varierande utsträckning gestaltar verklighet, och analysera hur Zombies används för att gestalta aspekter av vårt samhälle.

This project is important to the research in both the fields of social movement and of social media and their growing relationship.  This report has analyzed the responses of several key role players in one of the biggest social movements in American history, Occupy Wall Street.  Social media was used as a tool for both communication and information gathering amongst all those who were involved in the movement in a variety of capacities.  The relationship and change that is occurring between traditional media and social media as information sources is also examined.  Through qualitative analysis the importance that the role that social media now commands in our society in the context of social movements specifically became clear.  The results will show the significance of this work and its importance in understanding the role that social media will continue to play in future social movements in the digitized public sphere of the 21st century. / Article manuscript 7,5 hp par of degree:<em> ‘Social media is our media’: two individual activists’ perspectives oftheir relationship with the uses of traditional and social media duringOccupy Wall Street</em>

Democracy Now! is an independently syndicated hour long daily audio and video program that is broadcast on 1179 radio, television, and internet stations throughout the world, as well as being freely available on their website under a Creative-Commons License. They are a global news organization based in New York City, with the stated goal of providing “rarely heard” perspectives in their coverage. Democracy Now! was one of the early independent news organizations to provide continuous coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York's Zuccotti park. Their early coverage of the movement is relevant to the extent that it helps to obviate the demographics of the OWS movement as well as highlight the potential for a “radically-democratic agonistic pluralism,” as conceptualized by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Through the dual frames of discourse and intersectionality theories, this qualitiative study examines the coverage of Occupy Wall Street by Democracy Now!, in an attempt to understand the interplay of the movement's demographic heterogeneity and the manner in which its public antagonism is characterized by this independent media outlet. The sociopolitical and historical context provided by Democracy Now! is used to understand where the outlet exists with in the media as well as if this coverage can be part of “radical democratic possibilities.”