This entry engages with activism as a form of citizen-led intervention in public space with the aim of improving society through political, economic, environmental or social change. Until recently, media played a minor role in studies concerning activism. This has changed dramatically over the past 10 years, as numerous studies have been conducted on how activists have used the Internet and, later, social media platforms to mobilize support and organize themselves and their campaigns. Media are appropriated by activists but also possess their own material characteristics, which shape how people engage, protest, resist and struggle. This interaction between control and emancipation has fostered critical investigation into protest and digital media.
The entry empirically and conceptually understands activism as a mediated form of resistance – including media technologies as well as material and immaterial artefacts and devices endowed with expressive power to communicate information, emotions, values and narratives. The tension between activist agency and media materialities opens up new trajectories for research, permitting a critical assessment of how activism can bring to the fore calls for social change.