Media Strategies and Political Projects: A Comparative Study of Social Movements

This paper analyses the relationship between social movements and the media strategies that they invoke to pursue their respective goals. Three social movement organizations (SMOs) active in Vancouver, British Columbia, are taken to exemplify three distinguishable types of social movement politics: recognition (Gay-Lesbian Centre), redistribution (End Legislated Poverty), and salvation (Greenpeace). We employ a qualitative comparative case analysis, based on interviews with activists and on archival documents from each SMO. In tracing the media strategies of these groups, we recount their histories, focusing on the way in which each has framed its project and on the organizational and strategic dimensions of its practice. The varying attempts of these SMOs to cope with the asymmetrical and dependent power relations between movements and mainstream mass media are interpreted with reference to Antonio Gramsci's theoretical perspective on counter-hegemony and Nancy Fraser's conceptual distinction between affirmative and transformative politics. In exploring how SMOs respond to potential media blockage, distortion, or facilitation of their ideas and actions, we clarify some of the dilemmas that confront critical social movements in a mediatized age.