Contesting the infrastructures of attention: Climate activism and asymmetric visibility in France

Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork with Extinction Rebellion Paris and allied movements, semi-structured interviews with activists, and analysis of media coverage and investigative reporting on police surveillance technology, this article examines how French climate movements have reoriented their political practice from seeking visibility within an existing media system toward contesting the infrastructures of attention through which public visibility is produced and governed. It argues that this reorientation reflects a shift in the politics of climate communication: from a logic of media access to one of infrastructural contestation, targeting media ownership and security apparatuses. The analysis examines how activists experience narratives of disorder and eco-terrorism as challenges to their political legitimacy, alongside the expansion of biometric surveillance documented by investigative reporting. It develops the concept of asymmetric visibility regimes to capture the resulting double bind, in which activists struggle for recognition in the media sphere while becoming increasingly identifiable in the security sphere. The article contributes to debates on media power, hybrid media systems, and the communicative conditions of democratic dissent.