Social Movements and Media

Jennifer S. Earl, Deana A. Rohlinger, Jennifer S. Earl, Deana A. Rohlinger

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781787430983
• eBook ISBN: 9781787431751
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), this volume focuses on media and social movements. Contributing authors draw on cases as diverse as the Harry Potter Alliance to youth oriented, non-profit educational organizations, in order to assess systematically how media environments, systems, and usage affect collective action in the 21st century. The volume demonstrates that the study of media and social movements has developed into a vibrant sub-field stretched across Communication Studies, Political Science, and Sociology, and illustrates the need for serious interdisciplinary research. 

Chapters in the volume reinforce the need to examine many kinds of media (such as fiction) for social movements, particularly in terms of recruitment and framing. They show the critical importance of connecting classic and contemporary social movement research when trying to understand topics such as recruitment, identity, and discourse, even when these are playing out in the digital world. Chapters explore the difficulties that organizations face in organizing whether or not they are primarily offline or online; the ways that digital media usage affects various organizational functions and effectiveness; and the importance of examining the role of youth in social movements across all of these topics.

PART I

MEDIA AND RECRU ITMENT INTO ACTIVISM

TURNING FANS INTO HEROES: HOW THE HARRY POTTER ALLIANCE USES THE POWER OF STORY TO FACILITATE FAN ACTIVISM AND BLOC RECRUITMENT

Jackson Bird and Thomas V. Maher

ABSTRACT

How do you get people – particularly young people – to engage with social and political issues? Activists and academics alike have been plagued by this question for some time, and answers to it have ranged from greater organizational involvement to framing. Another possibility is meeting youth where they are at; that is, connecting youth’s existing interests in popular culture with broader social problems and issues. A group that is doing just that is the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), a story-fueled nonprofit organization that turns fans into heroes. In this chapter, we trace the development of the Harry Potter fan community, the stories’ resonance with fans, and how the HPA has drawn on the community and the story for mobilization. We argue that the HPA leverages culture in two ways that are relevant for social movements and political communication scholars. The HPA is able to tap into the fan community for bloc recruitment using its ties and connections to media – in this case, the fictional story – as a point of mobilization. Additionally, the HPA is able to bloc recruit from mass society – a process they refer to as “cultural acupuncture” – by strategically connecting the story with social justice issues when cultural attention is at its peak. We conclude with a discussion of the HPA’s impact on its members and how bloc recruitment and cultural acupuncture may be relevant for other fan communities.

Keywords: Fan activism; Harry Potter; social movements

In the fifth book of the Harry Potter series, we are introduced to the Order of the Phoenix, an underground group of adult witches and wizards who are leading the battle against the evil wizard, Lord Voldemort. They are older revolutionaries who have been fighting the villainous wizard for decades; often using their government jobs to act as moles or gain clandestine information. After spending summer vacation at the order’s headquarters, Harry Potter and his friends, Ron and Hermione, form their own youth version of the Order of the Phoenix with their classmates at Hogwarts in order to prepare themselves for the dangers of the war in ways their school curriculum had been failing to do. Naming themselves Dumbledore’s Army, after the leader of the Order of the Phoenix, the youth group relied on their ingenuity to prepare for the oncoming war against Lord Voldemort and his followers. They taught themselves practical defense skills; held their meetings in a little-known room that Harry discovered in the Hogwarts castle; and alerted each other of upcoming meetings through enchanted coins they carried, a creation of Harry’s friend, Hermione. Much like many youth activist groups in our world, Harry and his friends saw a problem in society, believed they had the power to do something about it, mobilized together, learned new skills, and used technology in innovative ways to work toward solving the problem.

Although they are rarely recognized as such, fictional stories like Harry Potter are a form of media that people react to and use in much the same way that they do the Internet or television. Indeed, Harry Potter may be an unlikely place to start looking for the relationship between media and movements, but media, like fictional stories, that are created for entertainment can motivate activists and organizations for social change (see Kligler-Vilenchik, 2016). One such youth activist group is the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), an organization that often calls itself a Dumbledore’s Army for our world. The HPA is a story-fueled nonprofit organization that turns fans into heroes. Founded in 2005, the organization, which believes in the power of story as a tool for social change, functions primarily online – even lacking a physical office for its six full-time employees. However, in that time, it has managed to spawn over 200 organized chapters, which exist physically on school campuses, in libraries, and in local communities across 6 continents and 35 nations. The majority of its members are primarily Harry Potter fans, many of whom would not have identified themselves as activists prior to participating with the HPA.

In this chapter, we outline how the HPA operates and how it is able to get groups of youth – who in many other contexts would not participate in politics – to become activists. We show how the stories, skills, and values of fan communities (i.e., their culture, collective identity, and resources, Jenkins, 1983; Polletta & Jasper, 2001; Taylor & Whittier, 1995) make them amenable to mobilization around social justice issues (Jenkins, 2012b; Scardaville, 2005). We then highlight how the HPA, a fan-community affiliated advocacy organization, draws on the pre-existing fan’s enthusiasm and the power of the Harry Potter story to tap into the fan communities in two ways: by treating fan communities as a source of bloc recruitment or by connecting to the broader cultural zeitgeist’s interest in a pop culture phenomenon at strategically chosen times in order to generate awareness and social change. By connecting the story to fan activism, groups like the Harry Potter Alliance are able to “reframe” broader social issues and civic engagement into more relatable and more accessible forms (Benford & Snow, 2000), and bring hundreds of thousands of young members together to work toward social change on issues ranging from literacy to human rights and from economic equality to mental health. We conclude by discussing some of the broader political and biographical effects of the HPA’s efforts.

FAN ACTIVISM AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY

Social movements and protest behavior – that is, petitions, protests, marches, and cultural symbols – have permeated modern political and social life (Meyer & Tarrow, 1998). Police and protester interactions are increasingly institutionalized, and protests are often heavily scripted events (McCarthy, McPhail, Meyer & Tarrow, 1998). Corporations have adopted social movement tactics to generate interest and support for their products and industries (Walker, 2009; Walker & Rea, 2014). On an individual level, several studies have found that youth are increasingly drawn to nontraditional political behavior like social movements, indicating that this trend is likely to continue (Dalton, 2011; Zukin, Keeter, Andolina, Jenkins, & Carpini, 2006).

One way that social movements have permeated society has been through fan activism. Fans are a staple of modern society, and, although not often thought of as such, fictional stories, and the fandom¹ that surrounds them, can be a motivation for action. Jenkins first used the term “fan activism” in his book Textual Poachers to describe fans of the television show Beauty and the Beast, who fought the cancellation of the show by organizing mass actions consisting of writing letters to the network, handing out flyers on street corners, calling radio stations, and even leaving fliers in copies of The Beauty and the Beast at libraries (Jenkins, 2012b). Fans adopting social movement tactics in order to keep a show on the air or protest a show producer’s decision are common versions of fan activism. Since Joss Whedon’s television show, Firefly, went off the air in 2002, fans have not stopped fighting for its return, devising new schemes every few years. Fans of the Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood were so aghast when a beloved main character was killed in 2009, that a public memorial to his name exists to this day in Mermaid Quay, Cardiff, where the television show was set.

Fan communities on their own are not social movement communities. To borrow from the 1955 landmark teenage drama, fans are activists without a cause. However, there are many ways in which fans are ready-made activists. Beyond their shared institutional base and collective identity, fans devote significant energy to reimagining their favorite stories in new circumstances or grappling with literary theories to dig deeper into the narrative. They are often the earliest adaptors of new media, used to create, consume, and share content based on the stories. They find and form communities around the stories they love and are capable of activating those communities quickly and broadly thanks to their existing networks or technologies, which they have familiarized themselves with in order to share content and discussion. These abilities to interact critically with text, use technology in innovative ways, and amplify their message all assist fans in achieving their fan goals – whether that is making friends or getting more eyes on their art. Overall, fan engagement with media – be it text, television, or film – is nonpolitical, but the traits and actions learned as a part of fan communities as well as the underlying values and messages of the media they care about can also be used to achieve activist objectives.

Henry Jenkins (2012a) defines fan activism as “forms of civic engagement and political participation that emerge from within fan culture itself, often in response to the shared interests of fans, often conducted through the infrastructure of existing fan practices and relationships, and often framed through metaphors drawn from popular and participatory culture.” Drawing from Jenkins’ work, as well as others (Brough & Shresthova, 2012; Earl & Kimport, 2011; Jenkins, 2006, 2012a), we know that fan activism is community-oriented, relies on the infrastructure of pre-existing fan groups, and draws on the rich stories the books, films, games, and television shows that these groups have championed. Fan activism is particularly appealing for youth because it is often fun. It draws on their shared experiences with the media, the communities, and friendships that emerge from the fan communities, and the desire to help others (Kligler-Vilenchik & Shresthova, 2012).

Although fan campaigns display the communities’ staggering passion, drive, and organizing power, the typical fan community does not have a social cause they are fighting for. Instead, fans form collective identities around their interests in media, arts, and culture (Jenkins, Shresthova, Gamber-Thompson, & Zimmerman, 2016; Scardaville, 2005),² often naming themselves things like Potterheads, Directioners (fans of the band One Direction), or Brogres (fans of the Shrek movie series) to assert their common interest and institutional base. Fan communities are also linked through the many actions they take: fans create media around the stories they love, in the form of fan fiction, fan art, videos, and even music. Indeed, what makes fan communities effective overlaps considerably with elements that make social movement communities effective: a sense of collective identity for participants, powerful cultural symbols and values, and informal skills that facilitate action (Benford & Snow, 2000; Polletta & Jasper, 2001; Taylor & Whittier, 1995).

Protest participants come to social activism largely through a process of being invited to participate, developing social ties, and then becoming full participants (Klandermans, 2004; Munson, 2010; Schussman & Soule, 2005). Fan activism follows a similar path, but takes two different forms (Brough & Shresthova, 2012; Earl & Kimport, 2009). In the first, fan activists – already connected through their fandom – use social movement tactics (i.e., protests and petitions) to support specific cultural products or practices. This includes the fans of Star Trek, soap operas, and Beauty and the Beast who, as discussed earlier, used petitio...

Table of contents

• Title
• The Past, Present, and Future of Media and Social Movement Studies: Introduction to the Special Issue on Media and Social Movements
• Part I Media and Recru Itment Into Activism
• Part 2 Media, Participation, and Identity
• Part 3 Media and Movement Organizations
• About the Contributors
• Index