The Structural Crises of Meaning and the New Technologies: Reframing

the News Media due to the Expansion of Voices through Social Networks

Ana Serrano Telleria, Labcom. IFP

Heitor Costa Lima da Rocha, Federal University of Pernambuco. UFPE

João Carlos Correia, University of Beira Interior, Labcom.IFP

One issue that is repeatedly discussed in Journalism Studies refers to the

way how journalism and journalists establish a meaningful order on a social

universe in continuous flux. The question that arises is how the journalistic field

and its professionals inscribe the multiplicity of events of this constantly

changing process in an ordered universe of meaning? How journalists shall

introduce order and meaning in a universe in constant change, in which the

emergence of what is new, contingent and random, is a ubiquitous possibility?

The question refers ultimately to a key issue: how does journalism shapes social

reality? This paper is divided in the following parts: a) In the first one states the

existence of a structural crisis of meaning-centered in the possibility of new

actors challenge mainstream media hegemony; b) Int he second part, one tries to

explain how the journalistic professionalism is articulated with ideologies

through professional routines and frames; c) In the third part, one introduces the

normative concept of publicity and its role work in the definition of journalism

epistemology; d) Finally, we interpellate the challenges introduced by new media

and social networks in the context of political and social changes, using as

example the movements of indignados that are crossing Europe against the

austerity measures impede by IMF, European Commission and Central European

Bank.

The crisis of meaning

Currently, there is a structural crisis of meaning (Berger & Luckmann,

2004) visible in the protests that are emerging around the world, particularly

thanks to the contribution of new media. These protests are most of the time

expressed in a general claim for increasing legitimacy in the established

institutional order. Most of them are trying to replace the almost exclusively

vertical flow of media messages from the elites to the rest of society by a more

open and dynamic public sphere. Those protests emerged from the periphery of

the power structure to the center. Many of the protagonists of those protest

claims that digital media are the most suitable weapons they dispose of to fight

against the hegemonic supremacy of dominant groups, invested in the role of

primary definers.

In this context, an adequate perception on the institutional role of

traditional journalism and the changing perspectives on framing and reframing

the definition of social reality must start from the fact that the news media do not

mirror reality as is so often claimed for the naive positivist theories on

objectivity. Rather are an output from a complex process that begins with the

systematic selection of events and subjects according to socially constructed

categories. (Hall et al. 1999)

Beyond the media bureaucratic organization specialized in news

production, there is the moment of his own construction when the journalist

assumes his audience accordingly a general stock of shared knowledge that often

goes unnoticed and unquestioned. In this way, journalism field prevents the

world of being represented as cluttered and chaotic, identifying and relating the

news with other public events.

Social identification, classification and contextualization of news events

in terms of these background frames of reference is the fundamental process by

which the media make the world intelligible to readers and viewers. "Making a

meaningful event" is a social process, which comprises crucial assumptions

about what is the society and how it works. (Hall et Ali, 1999, p. 225-226)

The usual suitability of media ideologies and practices to the dominant

ideas should not be understood simply as a result of its controlling interest by

capitalists, which, in fact, happens frequently: it is necessary to bear in mind

the relative autonomy of the day-to-day professional practices and routines in

relation to the direct economic control. Thus, the media have to line up with the

settings of the power structure, without being in a simplistic sense, at its service.

Hegemony and everyday newsroom practices

Applying those concepts to the role of mass media, one finds that the

critical problem of mediated communication is how the symbolic supremacy (in

Gramscian terms, hegemony) it's articulated with professional knowledge. In

everyday professional practice, news organizations develop a set of procedures to

assure the report of well–defined subjects. Using phenomenological concepts,

Tuchman (1978) assures that the construction of informative reality is defined as

the outcome of professional routines and discursive practices that function as

typifications of reality. Those typifications are established standards of behavior,

procedures which assure that journalists, under the pressure of time, can quickly

turn the event into a news story. Therefore, typifications allow journalists to act

“as always” in the face of identical circumstances.

Conceptually related with typifications, news frames are standard

guidelines for submission, selection and emphases used in journalistic discourse.

They call attention to certain topics and exclude others, emphasizing the data

provided by certain sources over others. The inclusion or exclusion of certain

details of events, and the evaluation of what is relevant or not in the description

of an event depends on its classification or categorization. Journalism works with

the previous knowledge about rule and deviance inside a community. This kind

of knowledge presupposes shared horizons of meaning and a reciprocity of

expectations that allows for the intelligibility of discourse. Journalism is

profoundly related to everyday life-world, and professionals try to achieve the

maximum of synchronization with cultural assumptions of social agents. The

language of the journalistic field contains a special relation with the everyday

life-world, reconstituting it in a way that emphasizes some of its features.

This particular approach leads some epistemological and ethical

problems. How to maintain the mind open in face of what appears as new,

strange and not coincident with the frames shared by primary definers? Making

an attempt of theoretical bridge between frame analysis and ideological critique,

Reese (2001: 9) suggests that media studies should accentuate the ideological

character of news frames, considering the dimension of their relations with

society.

There are thus two basic components in the system by which the press

identifies and interprets the events.

A) Firstly, there is an operative framework that allows the classification

of events in stories such as politics, human interest and so on;

B) Secondly, there is a conceptual an evaluative framework that shapes

the meaning of the event, making it understandable to the ideological system and

setting it implicitly in a number of ways: as legitimate or illegitimate, as moral or

immoral, as right or wrong, as patriotic or no patriotic, as adjusted or not to the

community interests and so on.

This does not mean an absence of autonomy from the news workers, as

some theories such as the propaganda model (or the mirror model), suggests:

the codes for the use of ideology are provided by the imperatives of professional

journalism. However, the ideological meaning is defined a priori and it can

coexist with professional codes. Primary definers stand the frameworks that limit

the public communication. This happened when the American media accepted

the definition of El Salvador as a case of "national security" or during the Gulf

War, when the Bush Administration was able to restrict the political debate in the

media to the discussion of the appropriate option to punish Iraq for its aggression

against Kuwait or, when the American media accepted the expression "abuse"

instead of the word "torture" to define the events inside the prison of Abu-

Ghraib. The study of media during the cold war will clarify the importance of

frames and ideological frameworks in a communicative process that does not

want to be seen as mere propaganda. More recently, the European crisis shows

how the sacrifices imposed to southern countries were presented as a moral

obligation of paying the debt, exemplifying how the populism and demagogy are

also used by elites as resourceful primary definers, seeking for hegemony.

Often the need for legitimation next to publics leads media to confront the

hegemonic groups. Media also have institutional and rational reasons that differ

from systemic media such as state and the market. In addition to the competitive

drive to be first to break the news, which may not be of immediate interest or

advantageous for the systemic orders, the media often also try to find out what

the primary defining intend to keep secret. The constant conflict between

politicians and businessmen and the media show that the interests of the media

and the primary definers not always coincide. However, it is undeniable that the

dominant trend in the media is toward the reproduction of hegemonic definitions.

There is, therefore,

"an exaggerated systematically structured access to the media by those

who hold institutionalized privileged positions. Thus, the media symbolically

reproduce the existing power structure in the institutional order of society,

establishing a credible hierarchy - the likelihood of the powerful have their

accepted definitions for being considered to have access to more accurate

information or specialized. The result of this structured preference to the

opinions powerful is that these 'spokesmen' turn when it calls the primary

defining topics." (Hall et Ali, 1999, p. 229)

This privileged relationship of institutional primary definers enables them

to establish the definition or interpretation of primary topic at hand and, starting

from there, to coordinate the activities of all subsequent information processing

by imposing the terms of reference that will guide the construction of

frameworks to future coverage and debate. In a closed frame, the positions

contrary to a primary interpretation are required to argue with this dominant

structure, which sets the framework of the issue presenting the criteria from

which all subsequent contributions are labeled as relevant or irrelevant to the

debate.

Thus, in this critical perspective, media does not play, generally, the role

of primary definers of news events. They are often reduced to a secondary

position, reproducing the ideas of those who enjoy privileged access, that are

presented as credible sources. As a result of sophisticated engineering to hide this

through theoretical concepts, the discussion about the institutional role of the

media was been systematically neglected. The so-called "dominant paradigm" in

communication studies, kept as hegemonic for more than half a century in

scientific circles, relegated to a profound marginalization reflections from

pragmatism and symbolic interactionism of the Chicago School, and social

phenomenology of Alfred Schutz, for being unable to support the poor

epistemology of American Mass Communication Research. That one was

usually based on the myths of objectivity, and value neutrality, denying any

value to the knowledge and expertise in the everyday life-world, and avoiding

the existence of political, economic and even cultural constraints and domination

process inside newsrooms and surrounding environments. Against this dominant

paradigm also argued Richard Hoggart (1957, The Uses of Literacy: Changing

Patterns in English Mass Culture); EP Thompson (1963, The Making of the

Working Class Inglês); Stuart Hall & Paddy Whannel (1964, The Popular Arts);

Raymond Williams (1989, The Politics of Modernism) and other authors of the

British cultural studies.

The result of this ideological machinery is to induce the audience to have

a naturalized view of the media role. Audiences were put in position that it does

not allow "to produce its definition of social reality and the place of "ordinary

people" in it. Media field builds a particular image of society that is specific class

interests as the interests of all members of society" (Hall et Ali, 1999, p. 231).

The significant aspect of media work to transform an event into a finished

news, encoded in a particular form of language, makes every newspaper has a

specific organizational framework, expressing differently, according to their

audience specific recipient, events, sources and inferential structures.

In this sense, media are responsible to translate the statements of the

primary definers in a public language, and make them more accessible to the

public in general, giving them them popular strength, naturalizing them within

the scope of being understood by the majority of society.

External public reference ensures validity to powerful objectified frames

as a public issue, giving it a much greater interest than if they were expressed in

reports by technical experts.

This more "creative" media role is obviously not completely autonomous.

It depends on the potential of translating the "story" (its newsworthiness) into

topics of interest. This process is not totally free and without constraints. It

cannot be understood in a simple, straightforward play. It is a transformation, and

such change requires an active part of the media work. Its overall effect is

reflecting the unfamiliar world into a familiar world. (Hall et Ali, 1999 p. 232)

Hegemony and Public Sphere

In societies where the majority of the population has no direct access to

the central decisions that affect their lives, the media has an active institutional

role in the shaping of public opinions, helping to the diffusion of perspectives

held by the powerful social strata . "The media not only have a near monopoly of

social event, as a primary source of information of what happens - also addressed

the passage between those who are 'in the know' and structured ignorance of the

general public." (Hall et Ali, 1999, p. 234-235)

The chance of contrafactual positions and counter-hegemonic

perspectives achieving visibility in the media agenda depend on the existence of

organized and interconnected sources in order to generate an alternative point of

views. Ideologies and counter-ideologies need to have a the support of

communicative infrastructure in communities and social groups. In the case of

contrafactual positions, this depends to some extent in the ability to representing

an organized and substantial minority, able to deliver alternative points of view.

Groups that do no guaranteed this limited access are systematically

stigmatized, as 'extreme', and "populists". Their actions are systematically

stigmatized as "irrational. It's quite easy to achieve symbolic supremacy against

groups that are fragmented, relatively disunited or unable to support their goals in

terms of reasonable requirements in a practical agenda for reform or to adopt

extreme forms of opposition struggle to support their their interests. Any of these

features makes them an easy target for privileged groups labeling them freely,

refusing to take their counter-definitions into account (Hall et Ali, 1999 p. 235).

The current state of affairs in all Europe gave us lots of examples from this

process of stereotypization or stigmatization.

Technologies and political participation: the alert from Chicago School.

Almost a century ago (1927), Dewey makes an observation that still fits

well to new technologies, alerting to the need of tools table to build the audiences

as the protagonists of their own definitions of reality. Those tools will allow

audiences to become publics overcoming the condition of a manipulated mass

due to reification, atomization and passivity that characterizes this form of

sociability. The American Studies of Chicago School to whom Dewey was as a

major inspiration deserves a close look. Chicago scholars carried with them

different theoretical backgrounds such as pragmatism, phenomenology and

Marxism, around a theoretical nucleus usually identified with Symbolic

Interactionism. In spite of the strong diversity and the complex evolution of their

thought, it is still possible to find a strong core of collective concerns, combining

social theory with participant research and ethnographic fieldwork. First, one

finds a common emphasis on the symbolic nature of social life. Accordingly,

with this approach, the formation of social worlds implies symbolic interaction.

Language is the environment that shapes the communicative exchange.

Supported in distinctive philosophical style based in American Pragmatism with

a particular influence from John Dewey ( cf. Subtil e Garcia, 2010: 219-224),

thinkers such as Mead (1969) or Blumer (1969), in different moments of the

intellectual evolution of Chicago school, believed that the interactions were a

dynamic process. This dynamism implied to avoid an essentialist view on

identities and taking into account the presence of several variables in the

meaning generation. Additionally there is a common concern with the new

technologies of communication, expressed in the role of journalism in the

constitution of modern urban publics and new public sphere.

This approach to social interaction brings also with it a very specific

concept of communication, as product of the intellectual reflection of Dewey

In order for acts or behaviors not to be mere physical occurrences of an

organic symbiosis, individuals must understand and communicate each other’s

meanings and, through this, combined action, modify and adjust their conduct

accordingly (….) What defines communication is that is a shared experience.

Hence, it is an experience which, congenitally, according to Dewey, has a unique

moral character”. (Subtil e Garcia, 2010, 221).

This common theoretical approach will give a particular tune to Symbolic

interactionism, visible in the commitment with a specific conception of

democracy. Communication wasn´t just something concerned with

transmissions and dissemination of signs. It would be also a ritual of sharing,

participation and possession of common beliefs (cf. Subtil e Garcia, 2010: 222).

This concept of political participation would be a major insight and it will be

present either in the Pragmatist concept of public either in its rejection of

democratic elitism (Silveirinha, 2004: 433). This concept will be present in many

major contemporary philosophical developments through authors such as

Habermas, Rorty, and Apel.

In addition to this common theoretical concern, all the social scientists of

Chicago School shared a focus on the cultural phenomena that appeared with the

urbanization process: deviant groups, racial issues, ethnic minorities, education,

socialization processes, press and mass communication, etc. (cf. Subtil e Garcia,

2010: 216).

Today we have, as we never had before, the needed physical tools of

communication. But the thoughts and aspirations congruent with them do not

communicate and, therefore, are not common. Without this communication, the

audience will follow darkened and unenlightened,

"lost in a spasmodic search of himself, but embracing and upholding its

shadow rather than its substance. While the Great Society does not become a

Great Community, the audience will follow eclipsed. Only communication can

create a great community. Babel is not our language, but of signs and symbols

without which the shared experience is impossible (Dewey, 2004, p. 134).

According to Dewey, any truly significant change to the deepening of

democracy will have to necessarily consider the public interest and make it the

determining authority in deliberations on the state apparatus and on the modus

operandi of large corporations market. In this sense, the cure for the democracy

ills would be more democracy. The main difficulty would be to find the means

by which a mobile and manifold public may recognize yourself to the point to

define and to express their interests. This finding would necessary before any

fundamental change in political mechanisms (Dewey, 2004, p. 137). Following

the pragmatist thinker, the public does not constitute itself as such without full

publicity about all the consequences that affect them because everything that

obstructs and restricts publicity, limits and distorts public opinion, emptying and

deforming the reflection on social issues, which only can be assessed by means

that implies a free and systematic communication. Therefore, one considers

essential that news perform an interpretation of social reality which contemplates

the consequences for the public.

'News' means something that just happened, something new precisely

because it separates from the old and regular. But its meaning depends on its

relationship with its social dimension, with its importance, namely with its social

consequences. This importance can not be determined unless the news is situated

in relation to the former, with what happened and joined the course of events.

Uncoordinated and without a consecutive character, the events are no more than

simple abrupt events(...) (Dewey, 2004, p. 154).

The perverse influence of private interests in promoting censorship,

secret and sensational handling that affects much of what is considered news,

especially those related with crimes, accidents, family disputes, personal

confrontations and conflicts that motivated Dewey's criticism in his time,

unfortunately are not difficult to be recognized as the most common form of

operation of the media today. But for Dewey, we must distinguish the

responsibility of big capital that monopolizes the big media from the aspirations

of journalists. The easiest way to get control of political leadership is to control

public opinion. While pecuniary interests are powerful and as the audience did

not locate and identify who holds those interest there will be compelling reasons

to try to force everyone to follow its direction in everything that affects their

ends.

The authority of public

The influence of powerful private interests is, in mediated societies,

mainly with the proliferation of new digital media, a strong limitation to the

attribution of authority to the public. Since the time that the public sphere began

to extend itself far beyond the context of simple interactions, comes in a

differentiation that distinguishes between the organizers, speakers and listeners,

the arena and the gallery, the stage and the spectator public placeholder.

Social and political actors, which professionalize themselves by an

increasingly use of the media, have different chances of influence. But the

political influence that the actors get on public communication has to be based,

ultimately, on resonance or, more precisely, on the assent of an audience of lay

people who have the same rights. The audience of private individuals have to be

convinced through understandable and interesting contributions on topics they

feel relevant. The public has this authority since it is constitutive for the internal

structure of the public sphere, in which actors can appear (Habermas, 1997, p.

95-96).

The issue of public deliberation is postulated as a fundamental reference

by researchers who wonder themselves on how a public sphere of expanded

discussion can contribute to building a model of democratic system marked by a

closer relationship between the formal bodies decision supported by the political

system and the systems of informal discussion and opinion making. This issue

becomes a key element in a reflection on the theoretical foundations of the role

of journalism in public communication, in that it’s related with the definition of

epistemological and programmatic frameworks for evaluating and rethinking the

material terms of exercising this form of communication. Thus, all the elements

that are present in the empirical conditions governing the performance of

ideological powers diagnosed by critics, linguists and by supporters of cultural

studies are avoided with normative purposes in the deliberative proposal for the

organization of democratic debate:

a) the argument of authority underlying the dependence the credibility of

the hierarchy is replaced by the authority of reasonable arguments;

b) The lack of alternative discourses is faced with the universal

accessibility of the protagonists of the debate and by the diversity of the subjects

under discussion;

c) the lack of knowledge adjusted to refute the hegemonic discourse is

faced with the requirement to submit the issues to a plurality of perspectives and

with the possibility of using multifarious forms of knowledge.

For Habermas (1997), the ideology functions using as symbolic

resources pseudo communicative elements which, by its merely strategic nature,

hinder the achievement of a public debate, free of any coercion, as regulatory

element that guides normatively the social, communicative and political

practices.

Despite the power of major interest groups, well organized and anchored

in functional systems, these privileged sectors can not clearly use it in the public

sphere, since public opinions that are released through the use of undeclared

money or organizational power lose their credibility as soon as such sources of

social power becomes public. Public opinion can be manipulated, but not

publicly purchased, or obtained by force, without losing its normative strength.

This circumstance can be clarified by the fact that no public sphere can not be

produced as the arbitrary will from dominant powers. (Habermas, 1997, p. 96-97)

This concrete trend of public authority in the social reality allows the

possibility of reframing of media directions, especially through a greater

pluralism and diversity in public debate, able to build less threatened society with

the gradual overcoming of the structural crisis of meaning. Will the new

technologies able to perform this role? Will the new technologies be able to to

turn audiences into public? In a wrong perspective, the supporters of the

democratic role of ICTs (information and communication technologies)

emphasize that the digital interactivity turns the communication from one-to-

many in communication from many to many. We stand that the number of

producers and receivers is sociologically and politically relevant, but it's not

enough to assess a more relevant issue: the quality of social interactions that lay

behind political moves.

New technologies and the return of publics.

The studies on journalism and public communication must not be limited

to the instrumental communicative strategies from institutions and political

parties. It can and should it must observe the changes and mutations induced by

the appearance of new communicative environments and their impact on political

activity. The academic debate on the political impact of digital technologies

raises a theoretical division between ‘cyber euphoria’ and ‘digital dystopia’.

The ‘dystopic’ or “realistic” approach refers a lot of disadvantages and

obstacles that deny Internet’s political role. The 'dystopian' claim that one cannot

neglect the social and political components of power over the media system,

including the Internet. In fact, this perspective is accompanied by an idealized

vision of the political and economic power structures that cross social networks.

The societal, economic, and political constraints involved in the communicative

process remain hidden, and, therefore, unacknowledged.

Secondly, the participation of audiences does not necessarily means the

increasing of citizenship quality and their change into an active form of

sociability called groups. A tendency toward conformity, visible in the fact that

people prefer to form groups with whom they agree, was found, generating

polarizing effects that increased the possibilities for people to dismiss alternative

points of view (Sunstein, 2001: 49). More recently, social networks, with their

causes and thematic groups, are being responsible for a fragmented environment,

with negative impacts on the rational and democratic dialogue (Fenton, 2009: 8–

9), working as such as an obstacle to the achievement of a truly public

communication.

Finally, some authors establish a direct link between Internet and the

cultural dynamics of ‘neoliberal globalization’ as ‘an ideological force that is

changing the role and nature of the media in modern societies’ (Hassan , 2001).

On the other hand, the so-called optimist approach believed that the

internet and social networks would provide social movements with the

opportunities to become active agents in the political process, enhancing their

participatory collective action. Social networks could be a suitable and viable

public sphere to communicate issues and alternative points of view.

The idea of the democratic rule of social networks draws on several

premises: First, digital social media would have the ideal structure to form

political communities through the discussion of public issues on websites.

Interactivity is a key concept employed to sustain the democratic role of the

internet and to strengthen the appearance of alternative and more inclusive

frames and to introduce new protagonists in agenda setting process.

Secondly, every utopian narrative follows a kind of script in which the

negative assessment precedes the promise of a new hope. Many of the supporters

of the democratic role of social networks built up this narrative in an implicit

negative evaluation of traditional mass media roles. In mainstream media, the

social and political voices with higher influence institute a narrative web that

seems destined to restrict social and political meanings. On the contrary, in new

media excluded and resources-poor groups and movements could achieve

visibility to its agenda or to introduce new perspectives on issues present in news

agenda. Environmental issues and gender violence are strong examples in

Portugal.

Finally, as an agent for social control, mainstream news coverage of

social movements tends to rely on the degree to which a given movement

challenges the status quo. Resource-rich groups with large amounts of both

financial and human resources (e.g., staff, members, and volunteers) may get

frequent media attention while resource-poor groups can be marginalized due to

their relative scarcity of means, political power and influence. However, even

resource-rich groups cannot ensure positive and sustainable news coverage

because journalists depend on political and economic elites as news sources,

including governmental officials, policy makers, politicians, and the military

(…)’ (Nah 2009: 1295). Primary definers, still go on in command. However,

there are significant changes in the nature and essence of power.

This kind of coverage presupposes a certain logical conformism in what

is related to the media representation of social and political movements.

‘Numerous historical events demonstrate how mainstream news media portrayed

and represented social movements in distorted and negative ways’ (Nah 2009:

1295). For example, during the 1960s and 1970s, mainstream news typified

women’s liberation movement by focusing on their provocative actions rather

than on major goals or messages of the movements. Additionally, media,

including the internet, have become increasingly commercial under the systemic

imperatives of the global economy. The news is more about entertainment than

information, and while minor issues are hysterically covered, much more serious

issues in our society go largely out of any critical perspective.

One must admit that in libertarian theory and in some fringes of post-

modern thought one finds a kind of artificial gap between the real world

conceived as an iron cage restricted to a severe political domination, and the

virtual word portrayed as potentially liberated from social constraints. While

society was understood as a universe of domination, Internet was presented as

providing people the opportunity to abandon the confines of a limiting self.

Internet nature or essence would be independent of their social uses, disregarding

any hermeneutical approach to understanding its social appropriation.

Consequently, the central mistake seems to be the belief that the existence of

digital interactions necessarily means emancipation from social and political

constraints. But, technologies reflect political options but those political options

also reflect their projected human use in social contexts. Assuming that many of

those narratives were simply metaphorical, this specific glance, however, should

no be hidden from criticism and academic inquiry.

As Facebook and mobile devices are naturalizing virtual presence, the

discussion on its political role shifts from euphoric statements on the future of

citizenship to the analysis of ordinary group demands, technologically supported

by mobile communications (cells and tablets). Research alerts us to the presence

of domination processes in the “virtual” world.

In spite of those intellectual reserves, worthy of bearing in mind, one

may admit that, at least sometimes, Internet, allowing interactivity with publics

and generating a more dynamics public discussion, would overcome the

dependence of economic and political systems, opening its agenda to issues that

would never find their way in traditional media. Unconventional media, being

more attempt to alternative sources and, subsequently, to new approaches,

facilitating public dialogue among citizens and avoiding the excessive use of

typifications and routines from traditional newsrooms, would contribute for

breaking the usual frames of mainstream media. The blurring of traditional

boundaries between producers and users opened new modes of interaction while

the inclusion of multimedia content generates more innovative inclusive forms of

storytelling, challenging bureaucratic routines and closed frames.

Supporters of this point of view argue (with some reason) that web 2.0

and social media allow social movements to build support through their own

websites, without constraints, empowering social movement groups to produce

their own ideas, news, agendas, discursive practices, strategies, tactics, – indeed,

their identity – and generating a phenomenon of cyber-activism with real

influence in news agenda. ‘Through their own websites, social movements can

report and deliver news and information regarding their missions/goals and

activities so that they can frame the issues themselves without depending on

news media and communicate directly with the general public’ (Nah 2009:1296).

The keystone would be the expanding of alternative sources and the chance of

diffusing alternative versions supported by counter-hegemonic groups.

The change of publics

Accordingly, the appearance of communicative counter-public spheres

that challenge systemic domination over life-world can facilitate criticism of the

institutional order, as well as providing and facilitating routes to alternative

public spheres. Many uses of new media are based on a principle of flexible

response, allowing different and spontaneous coalitions and being able to move

between the different entities of the media landscape without betraying the

original motivations.

The online environment, with its cheap do-it-yourself logic compared

with broadcast and print media, provides a more flexible and multi-directional

communication, imposing effects on the shaping of public opinion. In spite of

the primary definers still are determinant, the multiplication of power centers

with competitive strategies would lead to a more complex media landscape

where the definition is more liquid, fluid and less consistent being, more actively

confronted with counter-definitions that achieve high levels of visibility. Not

being the end of domination processes inside communicative processes and

media processing (or even multiplying the manners by wich this domination is

exercised) , the relations between social movements, public spheres and excluded

groups either with traditional media becomes more complex.

Agenda-setting function became less centralized in primary definers (or

at least in a rigid manner) and framing became less dependent from usual

sources. This is especially true in what is referred to those groups such as the

OccupyWall Street movement, MoveOn.org, March 12th Movement, anti-

globalization political movement groups, which have been successfully using

digital communication technologies, especially websites and social networks, to

frame their activities on their own and mobilize the public who can support their

goals and missions.With their easy access and increasing package of tools for

self-expression and communication, sites such as "Fuck the Troika" from

Portuguese Indignados sites have become one of the many ways for youth and

others to engage each other in social and political interaction and to define

political agenda (Nah, 2009: 1296). Finally the recent electoral successes of

political parties based in this social movements (Podemos, Spain; Syrisa, Greece,

new left movements on Turkey) and the threats to political bipartisanship in

many European countries alert us to a new concept of communication strategies,

where frames and typifications are challenged, demanding a greater inclusiveness

of the public communication devices.

These new movements happen in the world where the nature and

functions of power are changing, according to the diagnosis of the former chairs

of the World Bank, Moises Naim:

“Power is undergoing a far more fundamental mutation that has not been

sufficiently recognized and understood. Even as rival states, companies, political

parties, social movements, and institutions or individual leaders fight for power

as they have done throughout the ages, power itself—what they are fighting so

desperately to get and keep—is slipping away. Power is decaying. To put it

simply, power no longer buys as much as it did in the past. In the twenty-first

century, power is easier to get, harder to use—and easier to lose. From

boardrooms and combat zones to cyberspace, battles for power are as intense as

ever, but they are yielding diminishing returns. Their fierceness masks the

increasingly evanescent nature of power itself. Understanding how power is

losing its value—and facing up to the hard challenges this poses —is the key to

making sense of one of the most important trends reshaping the world in the

twenty-first century.” (Naim, 2013: 14)

So, one must consider that new social movements are answering to a

political world marked by the crisis of regulatory institutions and the

fragmentation of world-views. In the face of those phenomena, it may be

productive to consider following, with some reserves, Brian McNair’s proposal

(2006) of transition from a paradigm of control to a paradigm of chaos in public

communication. The first paradigm (control) included a whole range of critical

approaches to media culture as a monstrous apparatus that exerts a strong

manipulation. The second one is marked by the fragmentation of audiences and

channels and by segmentation of messages and platforms. The paradigm

recognizes the elites desire to control the communicative environment. However,

also suggests that social order is interrupted by unpredictable eruptions and

bifurcations emerging from communication processes. The new conditions of

public dialogue face phenomena such as inter-agenda-setting, volatility of issues,

emergence of critical messages inside mainstream media system, multiplication

of validity claims, expansion of alternative ways of expression, and

diversification and decentralization of media production (McNair 2006: vi, xiv,

4, 37, 124).

The Indignados case

´Indignados’ movement flourishing particularly in Spain and Portugal is

the expression of middle-class strata fighting against austerity measure. The

structural mutation verified in the labor market with the so-called new economy

accelerated the phenomena of a white-collar labor force that was increasingly

growing since the seventies (in Portugal). White collars, the sociological term

coined to identify workers with predominantly intellectual functions, increasingly

prevailed since then on blue collars, that is to say, the workers with

predominantly manual occupations. In the Portuguese case, part of that social

ascension was boosted by cheap credit and by a growing of a Welfare State

supported by Euro Zone, within political horizons of social and regional cohesion

settled by the EU.

The arriving of the crisis and the credit contraction broke this wave of

relative prosperity and well-being, particularly threatening younger white-collars

workers with high academic qualifications. Obviously, the methods that those

fringes used to fight austerity measures bring the features of their culture and

intellectual capital, ineluctably marked by mass media and digital culture.

All over Europe it was already visible the decline of the Welfare State

and of Fordism management technique bringing increasing instability between

white-collar professions. The great recession of 2008 followed by the crisis of

national debts, provoked a new wave of social movements and, in Portugal,

March 12th movement, would be the first real expression.

In 2011, this March 12th movement was trigged by students, trainees and

fellows with few perspectives of obtaining well-paid and sustainable quality jobs.

In spite of the absence of tradition of new social movements, the events brought

to light symptoms of a new perception of reality that has its roots in the

resistance of middle class against the threat of precariousness, impoverishment

and proletarianization. After 2008-2010, the austerity politics hit Europe and

particularly some southern countries with some common traits worthy of

attention, decreasing social mobility, reaching a generation of middle-class youth

distinguished by the use of cultural and technological skills.

The events culminate in Portugal in the demonstrations of March 12th

2011 that preceded the dramatic intervention from EU, ECB and IMF, when the

banking system almost crashed and public debt rates aroused to unsupportable

levels, pushing socialist Government to ask for an international rescue.

The course of events is to be traced to January 2011, when a popular

music group called Deolinda performed, in Lisbon and Oporto, a song called

‘que parva eu sou’ (How dumb I am). The lyrics described the drama of the

‘never ending students’ that never reach stability and well-paid jobs. The song

would become an anthem against the crisis, austerity measures, and employment

insecurity.

Quickly, the song spread everywhere and the issue raised the top of

media agenda, sung particular social media. Four young activists (graduates

living in precarious professional situations) gave a press conference calling for a

national demonstration:

‘We, the unemployed, underpaid, disguised slaves, false self-employed,

intermittent workers, trainees, fellows, students, workers, students, mothers,

fathers and children of Portugal. We, who until now collude with this condition,

we are here today to make our contribution in order to trigger a qualitative

change in the country.’ (The Precarious Generation Manifest)’

The context in which the demonstrations occurred was largely favorable

to the use of social networks, thanks to the attention given to YouTube,

Facebook, and Hi5 during the Arabic Spring events. These events had called new

attention upon the role of the Internet as a social and political actor.

On February 21st, 2011, four days after the Manifesto, the number of

people committed to the demonstration through the movement page in Facebook

was about 18 700. On March 3rd, the number hits twice its size, reaching 37 000

people. The number of demonstrators that was made public, by most of the

newspapers, pointed about 300 000 participants in Lisbon and Oporto, the two

Portuguese major cities.

Several demonstrations were made after March 12th, 2011, particularly

after the Troika arrival. A first one took place in September 15th 2012, having as

major motive the contestation to a proposal of the new Center Right Government

consisting in a new value to the so-called Unique Social Tax, a contribution to

social welfare supported by workers and employers. According with the

proposal, workers would pay more and entrepreneurs would pay less, in an equal

proportion. The demonstration was the first one of a progressive contestation to

the Government of Center Right, a two parties coalition (Social democratic and

Popular), elected after the fall of the socialist government and the legislative

elections. A second demonstration against austerity measures would be March

2nd, 2013. Both had been organized by the Movement ‘Que se Lixe a Troika:

Queremos as nossas vidas’ (Fuck Troika: we want our lives back), a social

movement founded in June 2012 that would be probably the most notable and the

one that achieved more media coverage, among several anti-austerity

movements. The movement was responsible for several happenings, the most

popular being to sing a revolutionary song in the Parliament, interrupting the

Prime-Minister’s speech.

Those demonstrations present some unusual characteristics that defy

central principles of the collective action paradigm, also in what concerns the use

of media. One finds some common elements such as:

a) Frequent use of new technologies of information and communication.

b) Strategic Communication based on ritualists performances of urban

culture, including design, use of social networks, rap music, street art, and street

deliberative assemblies. The moment of greatest participation in the Facebook

page is also the time when the celebratory component is more intense. Instead,

the curve of skepticism suffers a slight rise when participation decreases and

participants pose the question ‘what do we do next?’ We also find a strong

cathartic element, next to the real meaning of indignation, much more adjusted to

the expression of feelings that to the debate of solutions.

c) Use of alternative mobilization channels (personal contact and online

social networks) rather than broadcast media). The emerging literature on online

social media has so far mostly concluded that these complement rather than

substitute traditional mobilization organizations such as unions, parties or mass

media (Bekkers, Beunders, Edwards, & Moody, 2011, Bekkers,Moody, &

Edwards, 2011, Skoric, Poor, Liao, & Tang, 2011). The analysis of our case

challenges both conclusions: in the massive protest event in 2011, March 12

traditional mobilization agents played no role whatsoever, while intense use of

digital media channels of mobilization came along with significant differences in

the sociopolitical characteristics of the demonstrators.

The rejection of the mainstream political parties seems to go along with

an assumed critique of mainstream media coverage. The frames used by the main

TV channels are challenged and frequently criticized by comments on Facebook

page. Demonstrators don’t dismiss the mass media, but they tried to build its own

identity accusing many coverages performed by TV channels as compromised

with a political class under close suspicion.

Also, mainstream media seems preferred to frame the rising movements

as something emotional, cathartic and euphoric, emphasising its ritualistic

movements focus on music, semi-biographical point of view, dramaturgic

elements, posts with existential testimonies of unemployment and precariousness

and other forms of expressive tactics. This was consciously assumed by some

members of the movement that saw in that search for exotic angles by

mainstream media an opportunity to release and alternative agenda.

Concluding, the new technologies of information and communication are

much more used by voices excluded from public visibility to built his own

identity and to self-portrait his political and cultural agency.

Sometimes those movements use their web pages as news sites, building

a kind of advocacy journalism, committed with the causes from the movement.

Those news sites are the focus on events that are generally excluded from

traditional media such as occupation movements, popular assemblies and

activities from grassroots movements against austerity. However, those sites

promote an inter-agenda – setting effect that goes from the webpage to the

traditional media and vice-versa. The primary definer must bear in mind the

chance of its version of the story be rejected or critically commented by

thousands of persons. Simultaneous, groups of journalists react in contradictory

manners: accepting and reproducing information diffused by the movements in

its own sites and social networks or, sometimes, in a corporative attitude, feeling

themselves threatened by the citizen’s activity.

Frames and tyfications used by primary definers lose some of its ability to

be naturalized as the “good old unique” world vision, acceptable by reasonable

and sensitive diffusor. In spite of the institutional and commercial commitments,

the open architecture of Internet challenged the old routines and frames implied

in the social construction of reality. However, they are far from performing the

miracle of the full deliberative and participate public sphere.

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