Ciberativism and the communicative dimension of social movements: repertoires, organization and dissemination

Abstract

Important updates of Social Movements Theories from the communicative aspects of collective action have been held around the discussions relating to cyberactivism – reducing the gap between studies in communication and social movements. However, much of the work can be characterized by an excessive focus on the technologies and in an instrumentalization of the concept of communication. This article rethinks the theories of collective action and social movements from the communication’s perspective, performing two efforts: firstly through an historical analysis, which seeks to demonstrate the centrality of communicative dimensions in the practices of social movements before the growth of internet, building a non-instrumental perspective of the communication; second, it proposes an interpretation of theoretical bias that enables a look in an integrated manner to three analytical axes of theories of collective action and social movements: the repertoires of collective action, organization processes and the diffusion’s dynamics.