When Facebook Is (Not) Enough : Hybridity in the Media and Political Strategies of Leftist Youth Organisations
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| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | The key term of our chapter is ‘hybridity,’ referring to the blurring lines between media and political spheres, and between different media and their logics. We draw on two ethnographic studies of two youth-led leftist organisations aiming to impact institutional politics: the Czech Idealists and British Labour Party campaign group Momentum. This chapter focuses on intertwined media and political strategies employed by both organisations in changing political and media environments. We specifically ask: what is the role of media in both the communication practices and political agency of these organizations? Within these two case studies of organisations aiming to influence social-democratic politics, we illustrate the professionalization of the communication repertoires employed by their members, investigating each organisation’s diverse and innovative strategies for using media to influence politics. Importantly, the organisations’ strategies reflexively combine use of new and old media and their logics to reach their political goals through addressing and encouraging the participation of their target audiences. This chapter draws on observational fieldnotes, qualitative interviews with organisational members, analysis of media coverage, observations of media platform usage and other supplementary evidence collected in 2017. |
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