Britain 2016 will be forever marked as the year of Brexit, the year a democratic process of sorts, a referendum, gave agency to the invisible power (Gaventa 2006) of British people who no longer had any faith in the European Union. POP-ACADEMIC ANALYSIS: Kim Voss (1996a) argues that the late nineteenth century Knights of Labor were …

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a free trade agreement being negotiated between the United States Department of Commerce and the European Commission. The movement against it (NoTTIP) gained momentum in 2014 in many European countries including the UK and is still alive today although it has widened its remit to include various …

Stekelenburg (2011) echoes the sentiments of  Gamson and Wolfsfeld  (1993) when she writes that  “we should conceive of media as active actors covering, framing and interpreting issues and protest”. Wolsfeld (2011) says “There is no such thing as objective journalism (nor can there be). The real question is not, then whether or not the media is …

Although the UK has traditionally been viewed as a beacon of democracy, one could argue that it was such a beacon in a time gone by when democracy was in its infancy and when the people were not in general, as educated as they now are. Gaventa (2006) is one academic who has offered us …

Last week, Occupy London (OL) celebrated the fifth anniversary of its inception on the grounds of St. Paul’s. In an attempt to detect and challenge the ‘master codes (Melucci, 1996), that dictate political norms (amongst other societal practices) OL exercised pre figurative politics. They utilized the consensus model. The proponents of the consensus model believe …

Hilder (2007) reminds us that Charles Tilly (2004) says that “numbers – the scale of …support”  is an important aspect of campaigning. Large numbers influence decison makers, attract supporters and confirm the credibility of issue at hand, particularly when they are peaceful marches, assemblies and-or public space occupations rather than ‘media stunts’. Baringhorst 2009 tells …

This blog is a series of two blogs dealing with the issue of Campaigning Space. Shrinking Campaign Space On-Line Hilder assessed “the evolving social, legal and political environment today” (Paul Hilder, 2007, p. 42) in relation to campaigning. He evaluated the role/relations of the celebrity and the media; government and corporate co-opting of issues; coalitions …

Campaigning is an activity that people have various ways of defining. I will endeavor to analyse two such definitions. Definition #1 Campaigning is a “series of communicative activities undertaken to achieve predefined goals and objectives regarding a defined target audience in a set time period (Baringhorst et al 2009:24) Defintion #2 “Campaigning is an activity …