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Paris Spring Book Talks: “The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives”

Paris Spring Book Talks: “The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives”

Tuesday, May 21, 14h30-15h15, OECD Forum, moderated by Alessandro Bellantoni, Deputy Head of Division and Head of the Open Government Unit, Governance Directorate Friday, April 19, 15h-17h: Le séminaire d’analyse des Structures et des Processus Sociaux, Paris Sorbonne, Maison de la recherche 28 Rue Serpente 75006. Thursday, March 21,17h30-19h30: Le séminaire Etudier les cultures du […]

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The false media focus on violence: If it bleeds it still leads

On Sunday, August 27, in downtown Berkeley, I witnessed thousands of protesters raising their voices against a planned white supremacist “Patriot Prayer” rally. In my decades as a documentary filmmaker of activism and now an academic studying movements and media, it was one of the most positive, diverse and unifying gatherings I ever observed. While […]

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5 reasons why online Big Data is Bad Data for researching social movements

I know, I know, it’s digital blasphemy to say that using Internet data is a terrible way to study social movements. What about all of those Twitter and Facebook revolutions of the Arab Spring? And Occupy Wall Street? #Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter spread like wildfire, for God’s sake. You may think that I’m a luddite who […]

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Bringing the Organization Back In: Social Media and Social Movements

In the digital era of so-called Facebook revolutions or hashtag activism, many claim that participation in social movements is individualized and personalized, but building and sustaining a political movement, even an online movement, still requires organization. I make this argument in my recent blog post at the Berkeley Journal of Sociology.

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