"I Can Haz Toy Protezt": In Searchof a Theory of Social Movement mediatisation

Abstract

The article analyses the phenomenon of "nano-demonstrations" occurring in the city of Barnaul, West Siberia. This city entered the repertoire of Russian protest movement in winter 2011–2012. These flash mobs involved toys, which gathered considerable media attention, are examined as manifestations of the mediatisation of civil protests. Which theories can be used to make sense of such mediatised, spectacular forms of protest? And what does each approach contribute to our understanding and explanation of these phenomena? The article shows how nano-demonstrations can be interpreted as a "media-event", a "cultural performance", and a "network", as well as examining the interplay between these approaches. In particular, "toy riots" are conceptualised as imitation media-events; social performances, repeatedly reproduced both in the real urban space and the virtual space of media communications. Nano-demonstrations were able to go viral thanks to global media-networks, especially the Russian online service VKontakte, which was used by "Barnaul civic movement" activists to announce and coordinate protest actions. The toy protest, as well as the movement "For fair elections" on the whole, was a networked event not only in this technological sense, but in terms of its lack of centralisation: protest networks are rhizomatic, just like the virtual space of the Internet. Besides, the toys, which symbolically represented the "dissenters", played the role of Latour’s "actants", facilitating the opportunity to register protest and provoking a media response. Being "non-human", they became central to the performance named "nano-demonstration" and initiated actions among many other actants, including the global media. This article pays special attention to interdisciplinary theories that have developed at the intersection of media studies and social movement studies. These approaches analyse civic protests in terms of the communication repertoires employed by the protesters. Contemporary social movement activists have to be "advanced" users of media technology, since the success of their protest actions is connected to how visible they become, both for the authorities and other members of the society. In this case, media is not just a means to construct social issues and include them into the public agenda; it is also about the production of citizenship, communities and collective actions and broadening opportunities for participation in the political process for various social actors. This, the author concludes, is a manifestation of the fundamental process of society mediatisation.