Visibility Strategy of youth's social movements in the mediatized society

Author(s)

Alana Nogueira Volpato

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Artes. 2022-10-31.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Arquitetura. Artes. Comunicação e Design. Bauru
• Defense date: 2022-09-02
• Advisor: Caroline Kraus Luvizotto

Abstract

Faced with the task of understanding the mediatization of politics, that significantly changes the ways of seeing and being seen, we must look at the heterogeneous set of actors that participate in these processes. Among them are the social movements, which need to negotiate with access criteria and the media logics that constrain the actions of actors who intend to conquer a place in the public debate. The injunction of visibility, whitin mediatization processes, both tensions social movements to negotiate with media logics, and enables social experiments that can lead to transgressions of these norms, with varied results. Based on this context, we question: how do contemporary social movements formulate their visibility strategy? This research aims to understand how visibility strategies of contemporary social movements manifests mediatization processes. We chose as research objects youth social movements that are guided by divergent logics: the Levante Popular da Juventude and the Movimento Brasil Livre. We drow on the institucional and socioconstructivist theoretical perspectives of mediatization to make compatible the approach of social movements theory that balances structure and agency. We understand that visibility constitutes a dynamic field of disputes configured by mediatized interactions. We are based on an interactional approach of strategy, which considers means and ends of players who seek to influence themselves in certain arenas. In the empirical research, we explored the player’s perspective, describing processes of formulation, execution and evaluation of visibility strategy through a questionnaire and in-depth interviews with actors of social movements; and strategies in arenas that present logics for interactions, through the analysis of insertions of movements in news media and Facebook posts, identifying patterns of action. We defend the thesis that the injunction of mediatized forms of visibility forces social movements to trigger media logics through the incentives and constraints offered by the media opportunity structure, which shape the uses of collective action repertoires, moving socially shared knowledge about possible ways to claim. The sets of incentives and constraints offered in sub-arenas that constitures the sphere of public visibility may be more or less compatible with the general strategic orientation of social movements that engage in strategic interactions with other players, presenting advantages for the actors with which they have an affinity, contributing to an uneven distribution of visibility. The tension to trigger media logics, as well as the incompatibilities between player and arena logics, are balanced in agency, in which social movement actors weigh gains and losses and choose to assimilate, negotiate or transgress the rules placed when formulating their visibility strategy. We conclude that reconciling the logics of social movements and the logics of the arena is an essential strategic challenge posed to these actors with the mediatization processes. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 19/00781-9 - Visibility strategies of youth social movements in mediatized society
• Grantee: Alana Nogueira Volpato
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate