Studiens syfte är att se hur sociala rörelser och stater interagerar, samt hur dialogen ser ut inom respektive part. Frågeställningarna som syftar till att fånga det är således; Hur ser relationen mellan sociala rörelser och stater ut, och hur påverkar var sidas val av strategier motpartens handlingsmönster? Samt; Vilka interna strategier inom kampanj respektive stat är mest framträdande? För att undersöka det har två kampanjer valts ut, Fees Must Fall i Sydafrika och Fund Our Future i Storbritannien. Vidare har nyhetsartiklar valts från sammanlagt nio av ländernas mest lästa nyhetstidningar. Fyra teoretiska ingångar fått vägleda analysarbetet; radical flank effect, symbolic damage, protest policing och eventful protest. Dessa är alla analytiska verktyg som hjälper oss förstå de mångfacetterade dimensionerna som existerar parallellt inom sociala rörelser och statens arbete. Den samlade tidigare forskningen har utforskat specifika delar av de nämnda begreppen, men däremot har aspekternas samverkande förmåga inte tidigare studerats. Studiens resultat visar att våldsamma aktioner ofta leds av radikala demonstranter. Dessa leder ofta inte enbart till stor medial uppmärksamhet, utan kan beroende på kontext förändra sociala rörelser och statens interna strategiska struktur. Det innebär även att fredliga aktioner ofta hamnar i skymundan, vilket bidrar till att befästa uppfattningen om att våld krävs för att sociala rörelsers syfte ska synas. Även stater kan uppleva sig nödgade att använda våldsamma strategier i mötet med demonstranter. Vidare visar resultaten på att det finns en interaktiv dynamik mellan kampanjer och stater, som även visar på aktörskap inom respektive part.

Since 2002, the Canadian state has mandatorily tested applicants for permanent residence for HIV (Human immune deficiency virus). The policy and practices associated with this screening have never been critically scrutinized. Authoritative claims about what happens in the conduct of the immigration medical examination are at odds with the experience of immigrant applicants living with HIV. This is the analytic entry point into this inquiry that is organized within the theoretical and methodological frame offered by institutional ethnography and political activist ethnography. Analysis is connected to broader research literatures and the historical record. The goal of this study is to produce detailed, contextualized understandings of the social and ruling relations that organize the lives of immigrants to Canada living with HIV. These are generated from the material conditions of their lives. An assumption about how organization happens is the social and reflexive production of knowledge in people’s day-to-day lives through which connections between local and extra-local settings are empirically investigable. I investigate the organization of the Canadian immigration process. How is this institutional complex ordered and governed? How is immigration mandatory HIV testing organized, and with what consequences to HIV-positive applicants to Canada? This is a text-mediated organization where all the sites are connected by people’s work and the texts they circulate. The positive result of an immigration HIV test catalyzes the state’s collection of medical data about an applicant. These are entered into state decision-making about the person’s in/admissibility to Canada. I focus on a key component of the immigration process, which is medical examination and HIV testing with this, along with the HIV test counselling practices that happen (or not) there. The reported absence of the latter form of care causes problems and contradictions for people. This investigation adopts the standpoint of these persons to investigate their problems associated with HIV testing. The main empirically supported argument I make is that the Canadian state’s ideological work related to the HIV policy and mandatory screening ushers in a set of institutional practices that are highly problematic for immigrants with HIV. This argument relies on data collected in interviews, focus groups, observations, and analysis of texts organized under Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (S.C., 2001, c. 27) and textually mediated, discursively organized concepts that shape people’s practice. Canadian immigration medical policy makers should make use of these findings, as should civil society activists acting on behalf of immigrants to Canada living with HIV. I make nine specific recommendations for future action on HIV and immigration in Canada.

Since Greta Thunberg started her environmental school strike in August 2018 she has become a world famous activist and has been portrayed in news media everywhere. The aim of this bachelor study has been to examine how Greta Thunberg has been portrayed in the Swedish news media through examining two daily press newspapers and two evening press newspapers. This resulted in analyzing articles in Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. By using a qualitative and a quantitative content analysis we investigated three different events connected to Greta Thunberg through published articles. During 2018 the event that started her journey, which is the school strike, was selected as one of these happenings. During 2019 we chose her UN- speech in New York, and for the last event her speech at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos was chosen. By choosing these specific events we could build a perception of what the media's portrayal of Greta Thunberg has been like during these three years. Therefore this study also aimed to answer the following research questions: - How has Greta Thunberg been portrayed in the daily press and the evening press? - Has the portrayal of Greta Thunberg changed over time? In this study we used the Framing Theory and also the protest paradigms as guidelines and we also applied von Zabern & Tulloch (2020) and Bergmann & Ossewaardes (2020) different frames. This study then led to an identification of a new framing of Greta Thunberg which we named “Speaking without speaking”, mostly consisting of what politicians and celebrities are saying about Greta Thunberg in the press. We also found that by examining these specific events that Greta Thunberg has been portrayed in different ways. Therefore we could also conclude that the framings and portrayals of Greta Thunberg changed throughout time. This means that she went from being portrayed as a young girl skipping school for the climate, to a world famous environmental activist and finally becoming a trustworthy leader. Therefore our study shows that Greta Thunberg was being undermined due to her young age in the ibeginning, but as her status grew the media changed their portrayal of her into the role model that she has become today.

As social media has emerged to become a key site for contemporary communications and cultural production, the internet meme has penetrated every level of social networking online. Albeit being a global phenomenon with pervasive discursive power in a number of fields ranging from humour to international politics and cyber warfare, comparatively little research has been made into how internet memes work on the discursive level of identity formation and their influence on the formation of internet-based social movements. Using Reddit stock market anarchists r/WallStreetBets as case study, this thesis will use Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze how internet memes work on the level of socio-political formations and how their function can be understood in relation to entropic social environments online. This thesis investigates how internet memes are used as a tool for creation of motifs for action, identity markers, connective action, and social narrativization within an ambivalent social movement online. Introducing the novel term ”memetic discourse” as a way to understand memes as transferable units of memetically programmed content, this study shows the potential of memes to act as effective yet unstable modes of communication within networked environments.

In der vorliegenden Forschungsarbeit nehme ich einen Aspekt der aktivistischen Bildung unter die Lupe, nämlich die Frage nach der Diversität und Inklusivität im Bildungsbereich der linken sozialen Bewegungen in Deutschland. Trotz der scheinbaren Selbstverständlichkeit, dass die linke Bildung weit zugänglich und egalitär sein sollte, scheinen die Ausschluss- und Hierarchisierungsmechanismen der öffentlichen und privaten Bildungssysteme sich im aktivistischen Bildungsbereich zu wiederholen und zu reproduzieren. Wegen der illusorischen Gleichheit und Einheit in den linken Einsichten und im Lebensstil bleiben diese internen Logiken der linken sozialen Bewegungen meistens unsichtbar und unreflektiert. Mit diesem thematischen Schwerpunkt oszilliert meine Forschungsarbeit an der Schnittstelle zwischen Bewegungsforschung, emanzipatorischer Pädagogikforschung und einer Untersuchung zu sozialen Diskriminierungen und zur Inklusion. Den theoretischen Kontext meiner Recherche bildet der Bereich der politischen Bildung und des informellen Lernens. Ich nehme dabei sowohl die Debatten zu den Beteiligungsstrukturen und sozialer Ungleichheit im Bildungsbereich in den Blick, als auch die Forschung zu sozialen Bewegungen in Bezug auf interne Machtverhältnisse und bewegungsinterne Debatten zu Hierarchien sowie der Umverteilung von Wissen und Ressourcen innerhalb von aktivistischen Kreisen. / In this dissertation, I take a closer look at one aspect of activist education, namely the question of diversity and inclusivity in the educational work of left social movements in Germany. Despite the apparent truism that left education should be widely accessible and egalitarian, the mechanisms of exclusion and hierarchization proper to the public and private education systems seem to be replicated and reproduced in the activist education sector. Because of the illusions of equality and unity associated with leftist insights and lifestyles, the internal logics of left social movements remain mostly invisible and unreflected. With this thematic focus, my research oscillates at the interface of movement research, emancipatory pedagogical research and an investigation of social discrimination and inclusion. The theoretical context of my research is the field of political education and informal learning. I focus on debates about participation structures and social inequality in education, as well as on research into social movements, their internal power relations and movement-internal debates on hierarchies and the redistribution of knowledge and resources within activist circles.

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The role of the African Canadian pastor transcended the responsibilities of a religious leader of a local church to become the leader of the African Canadian community and its emissary to the larger white community. Through his exemplary Christian faith and practice, William Andrew White Jr. became a central figure in the African Canadian community. His role in African Canadian life was fluid and adaptive to the adversities of slavery, segregation, discrimination, and racism; over the years his role grew from spiritual leader providing care, self-esteem, and protection for his local church to also becoming one of polemicist, activist, and protest leader for the African Canadian community in general. Overall, this dissertation argues that the experiences gained by William Andrew White Jr. during the periods of Reconstruction and Redemption in the United States and the discrimination and racism he incurred in Canada, were foundational in shaping White’s theology. Additionally studying his influences and motivations assists in understanding White’s theology and his praxis for race relations and social justice; it is a theology that sought to foster racial harmony through black economic uplift and black socio-political engagement that laid the groundwork for the Canadian Civil Rights Movement. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that William White was a progenitor of the Canadian Civil Rights Movement and, while his national presence among the white community was not that of Martin Luther King Jr.’s, he did have a prominent presence among the black community in the Maritimes and, had he lived longer, may have become a significant national figure in Canada. Furthermore, the role he played setting the foundation for the Canadian Civil Rights Movement was similar to that of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

In Germany, the Last Generation emerged as a new climate activist group at the end of 2021. The group is considered rather controversial due to their contested protest actions of for instance vandalizing artwork. This study examines the influence of their controversial protest actions on the online climate debate on Twitter, compared to actions of Fridays for Future Germany, which enjoy a less contested reputation. The three chosen activities per group were analyzed with the help of a case study approach using content and sentiment analysis. The analysis was then conducted based on the three following concepts: deliberation, on the one side, which fosters constructive debates, as well as communitarianism and liberal individualism, on the other side, which can foster polarization. The analysis revealed that polarization dominated the online climate debate generated by the posts of the two groups. As such, hostile attitudes, condescending language, as well as monologic statements fostered communitarianism and liberal individualism within the comment sections of the Twitter posts. Yet, also deliberation was visible, but to the greatest extend within the comment section of a non-controversial activity of Fridays for Future Germany. This, among others, led to the conclusion that the protest actions of activist groups do have an influence on the climate debate. As such, the controversial activities of both groups influenced the climate debate in so far as the debate shifted from the climate debate to the activity itself by for instance focusing on child protection instead of climate change/protection. This was supported by the use of negative sentiments expressed explicitly towards the action of the group(s).

No description available.

In an era where civil disobedience is more commonly used as a tactic for climate movements and media coverage is key for the success of the movement, this study explores the interplay between news media portrayal and activists strategies in the context of environmental activism, focusing on civil disobedience actions targeting famous artworks. By analyzing articles from prominent international newspapers and interviewing activists, this study delves into how news media frame these particular actions, and how activists themselves navigate challenges posed by news media portrayal. Drawing on research on the protest paradigm, the public nuisance paradigm and the activist dilemma, this study reveals that while media coverage often employs negative language to depict their actions and tactics, activists strategically utilize civil disobedience to amplify their message regardless of the risk of backlash. Despite initial challenges, activists remain committed to fostering dialogue and raising awareness of climate change by targeting iconic images, with the belief that people will hate them and their actions, but start talking about the climate.