The Tea Party’s influence in the recent 2010 elections suggests that the group is making an impact within American politics. This project seeks to identify the cultural forces at work and ground them within Antonio Gramsci’s framework of hegemony. Taking a cue from Michael Bérubé’s recent book The Left at War, I perform a close analysis of the Tea Party’s project for hegemony. I focus on the media discourses of the Tea Party movement, performing a close reading of two key Tea Party websites and unpacking two important televised moments relating to the Tea Party’s rise as a grassroots movement. I argue that the Tea Party uses the practice of articulation to persuade the American public that Tea Party members are the rightful heirs to the project of “America” that the Founding Fathers began centuries ago by using the theories of Bérubé, Stuart Hall, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as reference points. Finally, I use my analysis of the Tea Party’s articulatory practices to begin exploring a way forward for the American Left, building on the groundbreaking cultural work of Bérubé, Hall, and Laclau and Mouffe. / text

With camera, smart phone, and wireless connection to a worldwide distribution source on a single device that fits in your pocket, now billions of citizens are able to become sousveillant micro-media activist – in real time. This case study investigates purposive texts in detail from over 50 hours of live and archived streaming video webcasts taken from geographically diverse sites. The goal is to explore how this tool is being used by videographers in a complex 21st century social movement. My sample video texts were gathered in late February and early March 2012 as the Occupy Movement stirred to life after a relatively quiet winter (from the corporate media’s point-of-view). In this project, I examine how Occupy’s use of live-streaming video combines “mediated co-presence” (Giddens 1984; Ito 2005) with “networked autonomy” (Castells 2011) to represent the ambivalent face of a complex, postmodern movement for social justice. / text

This paper is concerned with media perceptions and how these manifest as hegemonic practices. Exploring the theme ‘language and politics’, against the backdrop of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) demonstrations in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), this paper sheds light on the discursive constructions of media representations in three ‘Chinese’[1] regions as well as on how such representations constitute vested interests. By addressing mediatised social, political and institutional discourses in the ‘Chinese’ context, this leads to an exploration as to how perceptions are embedded within larger socio-political discourses of sovereignty and legitimacy. The focus of analysis is the English-language press in Hong Kong (HK/HKSAR), China (PRC) and Taiwan (ROC). Critical discourse analysis is carried out on a series of thirteen newspaper articles[2] with the objective of making explicit the invisible ‘work’ that discursive strategies do in influencing interpretations and understanding of a political event in a non-Western context. Guided by Martin & White’s (2005) appraisal theory, the analysis views newspaper discourses not only as value-laden texts but by doing so also reveals readers’ and writers’ stance thus dispelling the myth that ‘news’ is objective. Findings depict varied perspectives on the Occupy Central demonstrations – Mainland and HK newspapers’ treatment were rather critical, while Taiwanese perceptions tended towards the analytical. This difference suggests HK and Mainland media as ideologically aligned – hegemonic – and positions Taiwanese media as potentially counter-hegemonic. Amidst issues of declining press freedoms, considerable variations were also found among the HK newspapers suggesting the presence press plurality. Regardless, media hegemony over public perceptions were found not only to contribute to and uphold certain interests vested in the maintenance of ‘Chinese’ sovereignty over HK under the ‘one country, two systems’ framework. Overall, findings confirmed just how influential a role the media plays as an extension of and in the realm of politics as well as in shaping public opinion. Through the lens ‘language and politics’, this paper explores the notion of ‘language’ and ‘discourse’, its functions and significance within non-English/Western national media systems. Such an examination thus highlights concepts and issues relevant in the field of bi-/multilingualism in society. [1] The term ‘Chinese’ is used in inverted commas throughout this paper and is mainly employed as an umbrella term to refer to the regions of Hong Kong, Taiwan and China for expediency. However, the inverted commas also denote that caution should be exercised when using the term as a referent to either language, culture and/or people as it may index different norms depending on context. This point is further elucidated in the introductory part of this paper as the term ‘Chinese’ is viewed as a social construction. [2] The data is taken from two newspapers per region with two news articles per newspaper, with the exception of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) where 3 news articles were analysed.

This paper adopts a critical discourse analysis approach in order to identify and contrast the representation of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the New York Post and the New York Times. Occupy Wall Street was a protest movement against greed and financial and social inequality that started in Zuccotti Park in New York City in 2011. News media and its institutional media discourse have a power to influence people in terms of what they talk about and how they talk about it. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to make it transparent on a linguistic level that newspapers have an ability to create different discursive realities of the Occupy Wall Street movement through their language use. This is done by analysing news articles written on the same dates about the Occupy Wall Street protest in the New York Times and the New York Post using the tools global coherence, transitivity, and lexical categorisation. Results showed that in the articles in the New York Post the city represents the in-group, ‘us’, while the protesters represent the out-group, ‘them’. The repression of ‘them’, the protesters, is desired by the city that represents ‘us’. In the articles in the New York Times, on the other hand, the group of protesters is the in-group that is polarised with the police. Both the New York Times and the New York Post produce discourses where the protesters are incapable of achieving any real political or social change.

Barack Obama's administration inherited one of the most severe economic crises in the history of the United States, which severely undermined the American public's confidence in the country's political and economic future. Declining trust in the federal government and its handling of the economic recession gave rise to two influential movements, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, which were thoroughly critical of the country's leadership. Both movements made use of a strong populist rhetoric and mobilized masses by denouncing the political and financial elites, calling for returning control over the country's fate into the hands of ordinary citizens. My master's thesis is an analysis of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street that focuses on the ideology and goals that drove these popular movements, as well as highlights the most crucial commonalities and differences between them. I argue in favor of interpreting the ideologies behind the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street as two distinct types of populism, in addition to which I emphasize the different degree of outside support the two movements enjoyed during their rise to prominence. To determine how influential the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street became during Barack Obama's presidency, I also study their relationship with the political...

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[pt] A presente tese aborda os atos que tomaram as ruas do Brasil a partir de junho de 2013, sob perspectiva ao mesmo tempo estética e política. Seguindo a própria estética múltipla dos atos, o texto, escrito na forma de diários, lança mão de um vasto universo de referências culturais. Escrito na primeira pessoa e trazendo as questões para o momento atual, o trabalho evidencia a dimensão da presença na experiência estética (assim como na política pela via da ação direta). Em um processo antropofágico, a escrita transita por postagens no Facebook, fotografias, poesia, performance, teatro, cinema, grafite, desenhos animados, filosofia, história e carnaval. A tese não se propõe a explicar os atos ou fixá-los na História, mas, ao contar histórias, usa os acontecimentos como fonte de inspiração para uma nova criação, com uma escrita reflexiva sobre o mundo, a cultura, a arte, a política, a vida urbana e o próprio momento presente. O foco está em um corpo singular que atravessou as ruas do Rio de Janeiro em certos momentos de intensidade (de 2013 a 2016), deixando também seus rastros na cidade. Ao afirmar que 2013 não acabou, o que a autora pretende não é revelar o que seriam as suas consequências no Brasil de hoje, mas sim chamar a atenção para a sua abertura inexorável, que não permite conclusões fáceis. Por isso, a própria tese permanece inconclusa. É um ensaio poético, que busca captar aquilo que de 2013 a autora considera a sua poesia inesgotável. 2013 era um grande movimento de ocupação das cidades ressignificando espaços e vidas. E como aqueles manifestantes que sempre retornavam após os ataques da polícia cantando Olha eu aqui de novo!, há algo que sempre volta, que não se rende à dispersão imposta e ainda faz questão de tirar sarro dançando. A tese é essa dança. / [en] This thesis approaches the acts that took the streets of Brazil from June 2013, from both na aesthetic and political perspective. Following the very multiple aesthetics of the acts, the text, written in the form of diaries, makes use of a broad universe of cultural references. Written in the first person and bringing the issues to the current moment, the work evidences the dimension of the presence in the aesthetic experience (as well as in politics through direct actions). In an anthropophagic process, the writing transits through Facebook posts, photographs, poetry, performance, theater, cinema, graffiti, cartoons, philosophy, history and carnival. The thesis does not propose to explain the acts or to set them in the History, but in telling stories, uses the events as a source of inspiration for a new creation, with a reflective writing about the world, culture, art, politics, urban life and the very current moment. The focus is on a singular body that has passed through the streets of Rio de Janeiro in certain moments of intensity (from 2013 to 2016), leaving also its traces in the city. In saying that 2013 is not over, what the author intends is not to reveal what would be its consequences in Brazil today, but to draw attention to its inexorable opening, which does not allow easy conclusions. Therefore, the thesis itself remains unfinished. It is a poetic essay, which seeks to capture what of 2013 the author considers its inexhaustible poetry. 2013 was a great movement of occupation of cities, resignifying spaces and lives. And like those demonstrators who always have returned after the police attacks, singing Look at me here again!, there is something that always comes back, that does not surrender to the imposed dispersion and even makes a point of making fun dancing. The thesis is this dance.

The diploma thesis is focused on Location Based Services technology and its use in the field of citizen activism. The aim of thesis is to define field of citizen activism and its old and new form, moreover to describe how LBS work. In the practical part is presented multi-case study which analyses 5 examples of use LBS as a medium for new forms of civic activism (project Let's Do It 2008, project Uchaguzi, project ESRI Australian Flood Map, application Appapa and Occupy Wall Street movement). Thesis also contained conceptual draft of application, which uses LBS for fulfilment of activist goals. The possible ways of progress of LBS are described in the last part.

Cette thèse aspire à contribuer à la réflexion sur certaines formes transnationales de mobilisation sociale de la deuxième décennie du XXIe siècle. Elle propose pour ce faire trois articles qui étudient différents phénomènes à l’aide d’une approche ethnographique : Occupons Montréal, Global Square et le Forum social mondial. Ce travail doctoral s’inspire des réflexions sur l’importance de la spatialité apportées par la géographie critique (Auyero, 2005; Massey, 1984; Therborn, 2006). Il explore également l’ « espace ouvert », tel que présenté au sein de la littérature sur les Forums sociaux mondiaux (Keraghel et Sen, 2004; Sen, 2008; Wallerstein, 2004; Whitaker, 2000). De plus, ma démarche dialogue avec la littérature issue de la sociologie des mouvements sociaux (Fraser, 1990; Negt, 2007; Tilly, 2004), et lui apporte un complément d’analyse en reconnaissant autant les ambitions d’unité au sein des objets abordés, que leur nature complexe et dynamique. Le premier article offre ainsi une lecture d’Occupons Montréal, installé en automne 2011 au sein du Square Victoria. Observant deux lieux précis de l’occupation, il questionne ce que l’observation de la spatialité d’une mobilisation sociale dite transnationale peut nous apprendre sur les dynamiques qui s’y développent. Le deuxième article de cette thèse présente une analyse de deux mobilisations qui ont coexisté en 2013 : le Forum social mondial qui eut lieu à Tunis, et Global Square. Il permet ainsi de faire dialoguer ce phénomène altermondialiste emblématique avec une initiative composée d’activistes de Occupy, Indignados et du Printemps tunisien, entre autres, qui s’organisaient en ligne pour participer au FSM 2013. Cet article creuse l’argument selon lequel les espaces transnationaux de mobilisation sont mus par certaines tensions qui leur sont inhérentes. Le troisième article – co-écrit avec Nikolas Schall – mobilise la théorie de l’ « assemblage » (DeLanda, 2006, 2016; Nail, 2017; Rabinow, 2011) pour avancer dans la compréhension des espaces transnationaux, et particulièrement du Forum social mondial 2016 à Montréal. La théorie de l’assemblage (assemblage thinking) renouvelle les possibilités d’analyse de l’hétérogénéité constitutive de ces objets transnationaux complexes : ceux-ci apparaissent comme le fruit de l’interaction de multiples composantes autonomes (pouvant elles-mêmes être des « assemblages d’assemblages »), faisant émerger un « tout fragmentaire » (fragmentary whole) toujours en construction (DeLanda, 2006). La conclusion de cette recherche doctorale soumet une synthèse de ses apports. Elle démontre tout d’abord comment les dimensions théoriques présentées en introduction (illustrant les tensions transnationalité/ancrage, hétérogénéité/unité, et horizontalité/relations de pouvoir) transparaissent à travers chaque article. Puis, voulant apporter une réponse à la question générale de la thèse – comment rendre compte des objets transnationaux complexes ? – je propose une grille analytique qui permet d’illustrer leur émergence à l’intersection des différentes dimensions analysées. Les limites de la thèse sont également présentées. Finalement, je suggère la pertinence d’un élargissement de la notion de société civile, afin que celle-ci puisse inclure la pluralité des perspectives présentes au sein des espaces transnationaux de mobilisation. / This dissertation aims to contribute to the thinking on certain transnational forms of social mobilization in the second decade of the 21st Century. To do so, it proposes three articles that examine different phenomena using an ethnographic approach: Occupy Montreal, Global Square, and the World Social Forum. The inspiration for this doctoral dissertation are the insights offered by critical geography on the importance of spatiality (Auyero, 2005; Massey, 1984; Therborn, 2006). It also explores “open space,” as presented in the literature on the World Social Forums (Keraghel and Sen, 2004; Sen, 2008; Teivainen, 2004; Wallerstein, 2004; Whitaker, 2000). Furthermore, my approach engages with the sociology literature on social movements (Fraser, 1990; Negt, 2007; Tilly, 2004) and contributes a complementary analysis – recognizing the desire for unity within the initiatives discussed as well as their complex and dynamic natures. The first article offers an interpretation of Occupy Montreal, which occupied Victoria Square in the fall of 2011. Observing two specific locations in the occupation, it questions whether observation of the spatiality of a so-called transnational social mobilization can teach us about the dynamics developed there. The second article of this thesis presents an analysis of two mobilizations that occurred in 2013 – the World Social Forum, held in Tunis, and Global Square. It therefor facilitates a dialogue between this emblematic alter-globalist phenomenon and an initiative comprised of activists from movements such as Occupy, Indignados, and the Jasmine Revolution – which organized on-line to participate in WSF 2013. This article explores the argument that transnational mobilization spaces are propelled by certain inherent tensions. The third article, co-authored with Nikolas Schall – uses the prism of “assemblage thinking” (DeLanda, 2006, 2016; Nail, 2017; Rabinow, 2011) to advance the understanding of transnational spaces, particularly the 2016 World Social Forum in Montreal. Assemblage thinking renews the possibilities for analyzing the constitutive heterogeneity of these complex transnational phenomena, which appear as the fruit of the interaction of multiple autonomous components (they themselves potentially being “assemblages of assemblages”), leading to the emergence of an ever-evolving “fragmentary whole” (DeLanda, 2006). The conclusion of this doctoral research offers a synthesis of these contributions. In the first instance it is shown how the theoretical dimensions presented in the introduction (illustrating the tensions between transnationality/anchorage, heterogeneity/unity, and horizontality/power relationships) are visible in each article. Then in the second instance, wishing to provide a response to the general question posed by this dissertation – how to account for complex transnational phenomena – I propose an analytical matrix for illustrating their emergence at the intersection of the various dimensions analyzed. The limitations of this dissertation are likewise presented. Finally, I suggest the relevance of expanding the concept of civil society to include the plurality of perspectives present in transnational spaces of mobilization.

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