The International Journal of Communication is delighted to announce the publication of a new Special Section on “Nuit Debout” on April 30, 2018
The International Journal of Communication is delighted to announce the publication of a new Special Section on “Nuit Debout” on April 30, 2018
This Special Section “The French Nuit Debout Movement: Communication Struggles and Tactics” brings together four research articles, an interview with a celebrity journalist-activist filmmaker, and the guest editor’s essay conjuncturally contextualizing the movement as a critique of everyday (-night) life.
The Nuit Debout social movement that launched in 2016 is perhaps the most remarkable Left French movement since the May 1968 revolts and bears important similarities to and contrasts with recent movements such as Occupy and Les Indignados. Triggered by widespread indignation at a labor reform law, this “movement of the square” quickly became much more: a prefigurative participatory democracy as well as social politics—a performative critique of the status quo. It met nightly for two months in Paris’s Place de la République, spreading to hundreds of French cities and abroad.
The contributions in this Special Section explore the question of Nuit Debout’s distinctiveness but also its communication features that share a transnational repertoire of contention. They contribute revealing and challenging case studies. They provide conceptual and broad theoretical developments, implicitly and explicitly questioning the growing body of research on social movements (especially of the squares and especially with regard to uses and challenges of new communication tools, strategies and tactics). These papers help us understand new especially digital tools in repertoires of contention and repression.
More specifically, contributors traverse a broad terrain of communication practices and theory: hackers and makers of apps; out-of-the-cloud communication for internal organization and prefigurative group political communication, as well as outward broadcasting; a theory of a renewed activist journalism; the role or influence of celebrities; theoretical reflection on the emotional dimensions of storytelling in alternative journalism and in the cohesion-building of sustained collective action; the perceived and hidden (i.e., mediated) temporality and chronology of movements’ moves and rejuvenations, their composition, decomposition and re-composition; the historical and cultural reach of participants’ knowledges, tools and aspirations; police and counter-protesters’ strategies; and the movement’s specific critique of representative democracy and everyday (through a counter-production of everynight) life.
To access these papers, please Ctrl+Click on the article titles below for direct linking or go to ijoc.org. We look forward to your feedback.
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The Nuit Debout Movement: Communication, Politics, and the Counter-Production of “Everynight Life” — Introduction
Jayson Harsin
Strange Speech: Structures of Listening in Nuit Debout, Occupy, and 15M
Jessica Feldman
Nuit Debout, Media Technologies, and Prototyping Change (Feature)
Adrienne Russell
Toward a Creative Activism with a Sense of Humor: An Interview with François Ruffin
Serge Chaumier
Activist Reflexivity and Mediated Violence: Putting the Policing of Nuit Debout in Context
Anna Feigenbaum, Patrick McCurdy
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Larry Gross
Editor
Arlene Luck
Managing Editor
Jayson Harsin
Guest Editor
USC ANNENBERG PRESS 