Nearly five years have passed since the political upheaval that swept through many Middle East and North African (MENA) countries began. Syria was caught in the grip of this revolutionary moment, one that drove the country to a civil war with no apparent way out. Analysts advanced a number of explanations for this event, which included the demographic profile of the younger generations and the economic difficulties they experienced, corruption of the government, the use of techniques from successful campaigns and the coordination of dissent through traditional/offline and new/online forms of contention. The employment of the new media by anti and pro-government groups has reached an unthinkable scale, to the point that the media have become instruments not limited to the purpose of informing, planning and coordinating the protest, but “performing” in the conflict, exacerbating the fight, instilling fear in the enemy and intimidating the adversary, while proselytising. By going beyond the dichotomy that frames the media as a deus ex machina of the uprising or, conversely, as a means of its expression, this thesis demonstrates how the new media did not simply play a crucial role at the time of the uprising and subsequent civil war, but an even more decisive role in the years that predated the uprising. The underlining argument of this research is that during the decade leading up to the uprising in Syria a (silent) form of mobilisation got underway as an effect of contextual factors (economic, institutional and social conditions), conditioned by people’s access to the new media. The new media became the mobilising structures of Syria’s pre-uprising social movement, the tools that changed people’s access to information and encouraged civic engagement in a period of structural friction and social ferment. The media are here contemplated as a microcosm, which affects and is affected by other different, hitherto unrelated (f)actors. Ultimately, in light of the growing popular mobilisations that are taking place around the globe and the leading role that the new media technologies are playing within these, the thesis offers perspectives of analysis on the role that the new media technologies are offering citizens to contest political authority as well as opposing social and economic inequalities worldwide.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Delaware, 2007. / Principal faculty advisor: Joel Best, Dept. of Sociology & Criminal Justice. Includes bibliographical references.

The social and environmental impacts of consumer electronics and information communications technologies (CE/ICTs) reflect dynamics of a globalized and interdependent world. During the early 21st century the global consumption of CE/ICTs expanded greatly while the infrastructure behind CE/ICTs, especially the extraction and disassembly phases, became more integrated. This dissertation examines how messages about the social and environmental impacts of CE/ICTs changed during this period and explores the discursive power of actors involved in environmental justice campaigns surrounding the disposal and disassembly of electronic waste (e-waste). The dissertation reports the results of a mixed methods investigation of twelve years of media coverage of e-waste through quantitative content analysis and qualitative document analysis. The analysis examined almost 800 articles from eleven media outlets between 2002 – 2013 and explored differences between legacy media coverage (e.g. The New York Times, USA Today) and coverage from digital news outlets focused on technology (e.g. Ars Technica, CNET, Gizmodo). When the story of e-waste began to gain traction in media outlets, the haze of commodity fetishism cleared for a brief moment and the social relations of exploitation behind the wonders of technology were included in media narratives. While the media coverage about e-waste initially examined environmental justice issues of pollution and labor exploitation, the coverage evolved into focusing on the technical and business solutions to managing the environmental problems and the growth of a private sector profiting from mineral reclamation through electronics recycling.

Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-90). Also available via Humboldt Digital Scholar.

This thesis discusses the Indignados movement, which arose in Spain in 2011, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. It makes the observation that the Indignados, and many other movements similar to it (like Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, or the Global Justice Movement), gather large amounts of people, but are still struggling to be recognised as political subjects, as influential forces in the political environment. Many times, they are criticised for being too dispersed or too emotional, and lacking the cohesiveness to formulate concrete political aims. The Indignados can therefore be seen as challenging democracy and how political subjectivity is accorded, both in theory and practice. This leads this thesis to inquire into some of the theoretical underpinnings of democracy, and in particular political subjectivity. Its main research question is therefore: Can the Indignados spur a new reading of democracy?To further understand how we can conceive of the political subjectivity of an emotional and dispersed protest movement, this thesis turns to two approaches, social movement theory as well as deliberative democratic theory. After having examined extant literature on the matter, the thesis concludes that both of these approaches employ a distinct separation between emotion and reason, where political subjectivity is almost always hinged upon the latter. In addition, affect is seen as disjointed from signification, and therefore from political articulation. In order to circumvent this theoretical stalemate, this thesis turns to theories of radical democracy, and more specifically to the works of Ernesto Laclau. It argues that Laclau’s juxtaposition of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Derridian deconstruction opens up possibilities for a form of political subjectivity based on affect instead of reason alone. As such, Laclau’s theory of hegemony can shed light on those instances where affect and emotions play a central part in the creation of political subjectivity. In analysing Laclau’s theory, I respond to different analytical challenges that question the viability of explaining movements such as the Indignados through a theory of hegemony. Current observations point to that contemporary movements are not hegemonic (which place too much emphasis on verticality), but rather horizontal and networked. In order to address this critique, this thesis constructs a framework of the hegemonic project. This framework emphasises two commonly overlooked features of Laclau’s theory: the affective and transient nature of hegemony, which stresses the connection between affect and signification. Through two sets of empirical data – ethnographic fieldwork material and social media analysis – the thesis shows how the Indignados exhibit clear instances of verticality, albeit of an affective nature. This hegemonic, affective verticality speaks of two ways in which the movement can construct political subjectivity: viscerally (through unity in affective practices) and virtually (through social media).