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HU Credits:
2
Degree/Cycle:
2nd degree (Master)
Responsible Department:
Communication & Journalism
Semester:
1st Semester
Teaching Languages:
English
Campus:
Mt. Scopus
Course/Module Coordinator:
Prof. Christian Baden
Coordinator Office Hours:
Wednesday 12-14
Teaching Staff:
Prof Christian Baden
Course/Module description:
Democracy doesn't come for free, it needs to be won and - at times - defended: Not only in authoritarian systems, but also in democracies, powerful interests may capture, or try to capture the political institutions, eroding, limiting or excluding democratic participation. In this class, we focus on protests that rock societies that find themselves "at the edge of democracy": Those critical junctures when authoritarian plots meet with public resistance, raising mass protests in the struggle for a democratic future. Both protests facing authoritarian rulers or countering democratic backsliding confront a range of characteristic challenges - notably, the need to reach out to and mobilize large parts of society, to sustain and institutionalize protests, to resist both counterpressure and fatigue, and to project power in a way that can effectively threaten incumbent rulers. Drawing upon a wide range of pro-democracy protests around the world, this class undertakes to understand the key challenges for protest communication at the edge of democracy, and investigate how different movements have addressed these, with or without success. It then turns to the case of the 2023 Israeli protests against the government's efforts at weakening the institutional system of checks and balances by enabling governing majorities to overrule the judiciary. In several groups, we will develop strategies for studying the communication strategies and practices of the various groups and movements involved in the movement, and go into the field to empirically gather new knowledge from the Israeli cae. Bringing together the new insights and connecting them to existing scholarship on other protests, we discuss the prospects of the Israeli pro-democracy protests, and review the implications for the viability of effective political protest in the face of authoritarian pressure.
Course/Module aims:
To study the enactment of protest and activist communication in different cultural, political and media contexts around the globe; to understand the challenges that protest communication must meet, the different strategies for rendering protest publicly and politically effective, as well as the influence of the socio-cultural setting upon available avenues for protest - with a specific emphasis on the context of pro-democracy protests at the edge of democracy; to discuss the specific successes and failures of protest communication strategies and critically evaluate them against the underlying goals .
Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
- Define and productively engage the role of protest as a key concept in political communication
- Understand the mechanisms underlying protest communication in the context of pro-democracy protests at the edge of democracy
- Understand the conditions and contextual factors facilitating or obstructing its success in different socio-cultural and political settings around the globe
- Critically evaluate activist and protest communication strategies regarding their ability to meet key challenges and initiate public and political debates
- Apply the analytic perspectives discussed in the class to cases of protest communication
- Provide a political and ethical appraisal of concrete protest communication strategies and understand their roles within a pluralist political debate
- Design small-scale research projects based on the class content
Attendance requirements(%):
85
Teaching arrangement and method of instruction:
lecture, assignments, class discussion
Course/Module Content:
BLOCK I: FOUNDATIONS
16.10.23 Protest Communication at the Edge of Democracy: Getting to Terms
23.10.23 The Visibility Challenge: Pro-Democracy Protest Communication under Authoritarian Rule
30.10.23 The Priority Challenge: Protest Communication against Democratic Backsliding
06.11.23 The Community Challenge: Mobilization strategies in Protest Communication
13.11.23 The Policy Challenge: The Power(less) of Protest Communication
20.11.23 The Israeli Anti-Judicial Overhaul Protests
BLOCK II: RESEARCH PROJECTS
27.12.23 Key Questions: What can we learn from the Israeli Protests?
04.12.23 Research Strategies: How can we study the Israeli Protests?
11.12.23 (no class: Hanukkah)
18.12.23 Studying Protest Communication in the Israeli Anti-Judicial Overhaul Protests
25.12.23 (no class: Christmas)
01.01.24 (no class: group consultations)
08.01.24 (no class: group consultations)
15.01.24 Presentation & discussion of results
22.01.24 Presentation & discussion of results, Conclusions
Required Reading:
Lipsky, M. (1968). Protest as political resource. American Political Science Review, 62, 1144-1158.
Snow, D. A., & Benford, R. D. (1992). Master frames and cycles of protest. In A. Morris & C. Mueller (eds.), Frontiers in social movement theory (pp. 133-155). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Taylor, V., & van Dyke, N. (2004). "Get up, stand up": Tactical repertoires of social movements. In D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule & H. Kriesi (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to social movements. Malden, MA: Blackwell. doi: 10.1002/9780470999103.ch12
Delicath, J.W. & DeLuca, K.M. (2003). Image events, the public sphere, and argumentative practice: The case of radical environmental groups. Argumentation, 17, 315-333.
Bruner, L. (2005). Carnivalesque protest and the humorless state. Text and Performance Quarterly, 25, 136-155. doi: 10.1080/10462930500122773
Straughn, J. B. (2005). "Taking the state at its word": The arts of consentful contention in the German Democratic Republic. American Journal of Sociology, 110(6), 1598-1650.
Gerhards, J., & Rucht, D. (1992). Mesomobilization: Organizing framing in two protest campaigns in West Germany. The American Journal of Sociology, 98(3), 555-595.
Fisher, D. R., & Boekkooi, M. E. (2010). Mobilizing friends and strangers. Information, Communication & Society, 13(2), 193-208.
Sreberny, A. & Mohammadi, A. (1994). Small media and revolutionary change: A new model. In A. Sreberny & A. Mohammadi (eds.), Small media, big revolution: Communication, culture, and the Iranian revolution (pp. 19-42). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Tenenboim-Weinblatt, K. (2014). Producing protest news: An inquiry into journalists' narratives. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 19(4), 410. doi:10.1177/1940161214540941
Bennett, W. L. & Segerberg, A. (2012). The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 739-768. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661
Garrett, R. K. (2006). Protest in an information society: A review of literature on social movements and new ICTs. Information, Communication & Society, 9(2), 202-224.
Gerring, J. (2004). What is a case study and what is it good for? American Political Science Review, 98(2), 341-354.
Snow, D. A., & Trom, D. (2002). The case study and the study of social movements. In B. Klandermans & S. Staggenborg (Eds.), Methods of social movement research (pp. 146-172). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
van Gorp, B. (2010). Strategies to take subjectivity out of framing atnalysis. In P. D'Angelo & J. A. Kuypers (Eds.), Doing news framing analysis: Empirical and theoretical perspectives (pp. 84-109). New York: Routledge.
Johnston, H. (2002). Verification and proof in frame and discourse analysis. In B. Klandermans & S. Staggenborg (Eds.), Methods of social movement research (pp. 62-91). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Additional Reading Material:
Will be specified in a more detailed syllabus handed out to class registrants.
Grading Scheme :
Essay / Project / Final Assignment / Home Exam / Referat 40 %
Active Participation / Team Assignment 15 %
Presentation / Poster Presentation / Lecture 35 %
Attendance / Participation in Field Excursion 10 %
Additional information:
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