Networked Social Movements: Media & Mobilization
This MIT seminar examines how social movements use and are shaped by media, drawing on social movement theory to analyze concepts like resource mobilization, political process, framing, collective identity, tactical media, and protest cycles. Students work through the digital media ecology surrounding contemporary movements, reviewing empirical and theoretical scholarship and testing new data sources and analytical tools for studying activism. Coursework includes short blog posts responding to readings, a book review, co-facilitating a seminar discussion, and a final comparative research project on social movement media practices. The course functions partly as a workshop, with participants building their own research questions alongside the assigned material. Offered through MIT OpenCourseWare under Comparative Media Studies/Writing, the course provides a syllabus and assignment descriptions for self-study, free of charge, with no certificate offered.