Citizen Media and Public Spaces Diverse Expressions of Citizenship and Dissent

Citizen Media and Public Spaces presents a pioneering exploration of citizen media as a highly interdisciplinary domain that raises vital political, social and ethical issues relating to conceptions of citizenship and state boundaries, the construction of publics and social imaginaries, processes of co-optation and reverse co-optation, power and resistance, the ethics of witnessing and solidarity, and novel responses to the democratic deficit. Framed by a substantial introduction by the editors, the twelve contributions to the volume interrogate the concept of citizen media theoretically and empirically, and offer detailed case studies that extend from the UK to Russia and Bulgaria and from China to Denmark and the liminal spaces within which a growing number of refugees now live. A rich new domain of scholarship and practice emerges out of the studies presented. Citizen media is shown to embrace both physical and digital interventions in public space, as well as the sets of values and agendas that influence and drive the practices and discourses through which individuals and collectives position themselves within and in relation to society and participate in the creation of diverse publics. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in media and communication studies, particularly those studying citizen media, media and society, journalism and society, and political communication. Cover image: courtesy of Ruben Hamelink

1. Reconceptualizing Citizen Media. A Preliminary Charting of a Complex Domain Mona Baker & Bolette B. Blaagaard Part I Empowering Citizens 2. Understanding Citizen Media as Practice: Agents, Processes, Publics Hilde Stephansen 3. Frontiers of the Political: ‘Closed Sea’ and the Cinema of Discontent Sandra Ponzanesi 4. Citizen Mediations of Connectivity: Narrowing the ‘Culture of Distance’ in Television News Bolette B. Blaagaard & Stuart Allan Part II Questions of Performance and Affect 5. Theatricality and Gesture as Citizen Media: Composure on a Precipice Jenny Hughes & Simon Parry 6. Nanodemonstrations as Media Events: Networked Forms of the Russian Protest Movement Evgenia Nim 7. The Politics of Affect in Activist Amateur Subtitling: A Biopolitical Perspective Luis Pérez-González Part III The Personal and the Political 8. Media Participation and Desiring Subjects Sara Beretta 9. Participatory Urbanism: Making the Stranger Familiar and the Familiar Strange Stine Ejsing-Duun 10. Ironic ‘Resistance’ in Chinese Citizen Media Online Astrid Nordin Part IV Processes of Appropriation: Whose Agenda? 11. The Securitization of Citizen Reporting in Post-Arab Spring Conflicts Lilie Chouliaraki 12. The People Formerly Known as the Oligarchy: The Cooptation of Citizen Journalism Julia Rone 13. Memory, Guardianship and the Witnessing Amateur in the Emergence of Citizen Journalism Karen Cross

Mona Baker is Professor Emerita in Translation Studies at the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, University of Manchester, UK. She is the author of Translation and Conflict (2006) and In Other Words (2011) and editor or co-editor of numerous reference works, including Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2009). Bolette B. Blaagaard is Associate Professor of Communications at Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark. She is the co-editor of Deconstructing Europe: Postcolonial Perspectives (2012) with Sandra Ponzanesi, After Cosmopolitanism (2013) with Patrick Hanafin and Rosi Braidotti, and Cosmopolitanism and the New News Media (2014) with Lilie Chouliaraki.