Protests, media and “the margins”: a comparative study between greece and turkey

Abstract

Large numbers of social actors around the world seized upon opportunities to organize collectively, occupy public spaces, and protest on the streets the last years. On the one hand, various studies point out the significant role of social media in the mobilization and coordination of a new paradigm of social movements, in terms of registering multifarious reactions against different facets of capitalist globalization. On the other hand, different perspectives evaluate the very context(s) (structural issues and dislocations) of the materialization of contemporary movements, and the role of different media formats in the implementation of oppositional practices, which complicate the picture. From this point of view, the paper focuses on two examples of the current wave of ‘spring protests’ – the one in Greece in 2011 and the other one in Turkey in 2013 – revealing relevant contradictions that have influenced the emergence and the prospects of these protests. By probing into the conventional structures of the two case studies in particular the paper evaluates different parameters and aspects of the resistances conveyed by ‘marginalized’ social actors respectively (‘Aganaktismenoi’ in Greece and ‘Çapulcu’ in Turkey), including: the character of the struggles (social, political, cultural) and their dimension (local, national, international); the role of pre-existing action repertoires and collective imaginations in inspiring the recent practices of contestation; and, the diverse uses (repressive and radical) of different media (mainstream and alternative ones), and their mutual interactions.