Human Rights and the Media/Protest Assemblage

Abstract

Protest and activism embody a critical communicative dimension. From alternative broadcasting and print media to community radio and television, from internet activism to the contemporary protesting on social media, the history and trajectory of social movements worldwide are both deeply interwoven with communication and media technology. With the transition to the digital, in particular, human rights like freedom of opinion, expression and association as well as privacy have taken on a new meaning. This chapter adopts the human rights perspective to explore protest activism as it meets communicative action and media technology. It straddles the disciplines of media studies and social movement studies, and builds on extensive fieldwork on community media, internet activism, cloud protesting (or the use of social media for political mobilization), and communication and digital rights. First, it takes the use of media and technology for protest and activism as a human right, pertaining in particular to the sphere of freedom of expression and freedom of association, but also to “newer” notions like the right to communicate and the right to protest. Second, it looks at how social movements put media and technology at the service of human rights and other related struggles. Here the use of media for protest and activism is articulated in relation to the manifold ways in which technology shapes how the human rights discourse is articulated across a variety of platforms.

Keywords: protest, protest activism, human rights, right to protest, right to communicate, social movements, media studies, social movements studies, cloud protesting, digital rights