This book is open access under a CC BY license. New media divide opinion; many are fascinated while others are disgusted. This book is about those who dislike, protest, and try to abstain from media, both new and old. It explains why media resistance persists and answers two questions: What is at stake for resisters and how does media resistance inspire organized action? Despite the interest in media scepticism and dislike, there seems to be no book on the market discussing media resistance as a phenomenon in its own right. This book explores resistance across media, historical periods and national borders, from early mass media to current digital media. Drawing on cases and examples from the US, Britain, Scandinavia and other countries, media resistance is discussed as a diverse phenomenon encompassing political, professional, networked and individual arguments and actions.

Scholars of journalism and media studies have illustrated the production of alternative media as a means for activists to generate dissent, while communication scholars have examined activists' performances and image events as challenges to dominant power structures. The approaches of both fields have contributed to academic understanding of social movements in modern society, but until now, their findings have emerged separate from one another. This book brings together both lines of research, and demonstrates the role of alternative media in the performance of resistance against power structures by contemporary activists. Specifically, the book explores the role of alternative media in the establishment of activist networks in local communities; the role of alternative media in the construction of strategies of resistance by networked activists; and the role of interactivity between local and global networks in production of alternative media content. The book is suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses concerning social movements within the fields of communication, media, and journalism.

“Autonomous Media is a bold and terrific contribution to media activists’ thinking and practice. Langlois and Dubois have captured a number of the most intense communication developments and debates within the current global social justice/altermondialiste move-ments. Like the most promising projects at the present time, they constantly combine local and global issues: low power radio, open publishing, blogging, culture-jamming and more. They provide solid fuel for the fire that continues to burn in Québec, in Canada, and across the planet.” — John Downing, author of Radical Media "Autonomous media activists deploy their weapons of choice - video cameras, spray cans, blogs, laptops - to liberate “meaning-making” from PR specialists and corporate board rooms. As they engage, connect, and project the voices of people around the world who are demanding freedom and justice, they crack open spaces in which social movements can grow and genuine democracy can flourish." — Naomi Klein, author of No Logo “An exciting collection of essays examining the efforts of communities and social move-ments to appropriate media technologies. Autonomous Media: Activating Resistance and Dissent explores vital issues such as re-creating communication and information technologies, re-inventing democracy, and re-designing local and global net-works. Written by media activists, this book is living proof that the construction of knowledge is not restricted to academia; the editors and contributors of Autonomous Media are genuine organic intellectuals producing creative, solid, and significant knowledge from the heart of social change communication initiatives.” — Clemencia Rodriguez author of Fissures in the Mediascape Includes essays from Scott Uzelman, Tom Liacas, Andrea Schmidt, David Widginton, Dawn Paley, the editors, and more. With an afterword by Dorothy Kidd.

Documentary Resistance: Social Change and Participatory Media offers a new approach to understanding the networked capacity of documentary media to create public commons areas, crafting connections between unlikely interlocutors. In this process communities invest in the exchange of documentary moving image discourse around politics and social change. This book advances a new argument suggesting that documentary's capacity for social change is found in its ability to establish forms of collective identification and political agency capable of producing and sustaining activist media cultures. It advances the creation of a conceptual, theoretical, and historical space in which documentary and social change can be examined, drawing upon research in cinema, media, and communication studies as well as cultural theory to explore how political ideas move into participatory action. This book takes a distinctive approach, understanding how struggles for social justice are located, reflected, and represented on the documentary screen, but also in pre- and post-production processes. To address this living history, this project includes over sixty unpublished field interviews with documentary filmmakers, critics, funders, activists, and distributors.

This book examines social movements, the mainstream news media and public policy to expose the realities of trillion-dollar valued conglomerates, the pandemic and the presidency of Donald Trump.The author places his analysis within an international context which further develops a critical paradigm, called the Media Dependence Model.

The volume deals with the normative challenges and the ethical questions imposed by, and through, the developments and changes in everyday life, culture and society in the context of media change. It is thus concerned with the questions of whether and how the central concept of (enlightened) ethics must evolve under these premises – or in other words: what form do ethics take in mediatized societies? In order to address this question and to stimulate and initiate a debate, the authors focus on two concepts: responsibility and resistance. Their contributions try to shed light not only on the empirical shreds of evidence of change in mediatized societies, but also on the normative challenges and ethical possibilities of these developments.