Abstract

Throughout history, innovations in media have had a profound impact on protest and dissent. But while these recent developments in social media have been the subject of intense scholarly attention, there has been little consideration of the wider historical role of media technologies in protest. Drawing on the work of key theorists such as Walter Benjamin and Raymond Williams, Crisis and Critique provides a historical analysis of media practices within the context of major economic crises.

Through richly detailed case studies of the movements which emerged during three different economic crises – the unemployed workers' movement of the Great Depression, the rent strike movement of the early 1970s and the Occupy Wall Street protests which followed the recession of 2007 – Kaun provides an in-depth analysis of the cultural, economic and social consequences of media technologies, and their role in shaping and facilitating resistance to capitalism. 

‘Anne Kaun’s book proficiently shows the changes of media practices and technologies within protest movements … recommend the book to everybody interested in new perspectives on media and social activism.’
Journal of Media and Communication

‘Finally, a historically nuanced book on the role of media in protest movements. Kaun provides a very timely comparative analysis of media technologies in times of crisis. I recommend this book to all students interested in media and social activism.’
José van Dijck, author of The Culture of Connectivity

‘Kaun gives us important resources for thinking through the challenges we face today as scholars and activists committed to transformative and radical communication. Her historical and analytic clarity help us separate the hype from the reality when it comes to the connections between activism, social media and our rapidly evolving digital era.’
Max Haiven, co-author of The Radical Imagination

‘Kaun draws on a range of rich empirical material, using illuminating historical analysis to reflect on contemporary protest through the critical categories of time, space and speed. Much more than simply another research project, Kaun argues for a democratic media activism and the repoliticisation of technologies. A must-read book for academics and activists alike.’
Natalie Fenton, author of Digital, Political, Radical

‘Do crises contain within them the seeds of effective critique? Anne Kaun's smart and timely book confronts this question, avoiding the naive mediacentrism of most commentary. At last a book that cares about how political critique can be sustained for the long-term, and the importance of comparative history in finding credible answers.'
Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science

‘Kaun offers some much-needed perspective on the current discourses surrounding digital media and activism, as well as a nuanced, valuable and perhaps most importantly measured evaluation of the importance of media to political resistance.’
Joss Hands, Newcastle University

‘Economic crises as the Great Recession of 2008 are not just moments of distress and despair. They are also occasions in which new political alternatives are born and new political media practices emerge as Anne Kaun demonstrates in this thoughtful and engaging book.’
Paolo Gerbaudo, author of Tweets and the Streets: Social media and Contemporary Activism

Anne Kaun is a visiting post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. She also lectures at Södertörn University. Her previous books include Being a Young Citizen in Estonia (2013) and (in German) Experiencing the EU (2012).