#Education/resistance : activist media in struggles for public education

Abstract

Whether print, oral, visual or, digital, information and communication technologies have always been a part of social mobilizations (Downing, 2010). Historically, activist media practices have played a role in a range of internal and external communications functions. The more visible external functions include public protest, popular education, fundraising and monitoring the public obligations of the state and other actors. Internal communications are needed to build and sustain collective identity and shared vision as well as for decisionmaking, coordination and networking. However, activist education media remains an under-researched area in both education and social movement studies (Thapliyal, 2018). A more extensive academic literature can be found on the significant influence of corporate media on education politics and policymaking (see e.g. Baroutsis, Riddle, Thomson, 2018). While most of this scholarship is situated in wealthy Anglophone countries such as the USA, UK and Australia, emerging scholarship documents similar trends in other countries such as China (Suspitsyna, 2014), India (Sarangapani & Vidya, 2011), Japan (Takayama, 2008), Portugal (Viseu & Carvalho, 2018) and Sweden (Reimers, 2014).