Doerr Et Al 2013 Advances in The Visual Analysis of Social Movements PDF

ADVANCES IN THE VISUAL
ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS
RESEARCH IN SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS, CONFLICTS
AND CHANGE
Series Editor: Patrick G. Coy
Recent Volumes:
Volume 23: Political Opportunities, Social Movements and

Democratization – Edited by Patrick G. Coy
Volume 24: Consensus Decision Making, Northern
Ireland and Indigenous Movements –
Edited by Patrick G. Coy
Volume 25: Authority in Contention – Edited by
Daniel J. Myers and Daniel M. Cress
Volume 26: Edited by Patrick G. Coy
Volume 29: Pushing the Boundaries: New Frontiers in
Conflict Resolution and Collaboration –
Edited by Rachel Fleishman, Catherine
Gerard and Rosemary O’Leary
Volume 32: Edited by Anna Christine Snyder and
Stephanie Phetsamay Stobbe
Volume 33: Edited by Jennifer Earl and Deana A. Rohlinger
Volume 34: Edited by Sharon Erickson Nepstad and
Lester R. Kurtz
RESEARCH IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, CONFLICTS
AND CHANGE VOLUME 35
ADVANCES IN THE
VISUAL ANALYSIS OF
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
EDITED BY
NICOLE DOERR
Mount Holyoke College, MA, USA
ALICE MATTONI
European University Institute, Florence, Italy
SIMON TEUNE
Social Science Research Center Berlin, Germany
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CONTENTS
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS vii
FOREWORD ix
TOWARD A VISUAL ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL

MOVEMENTS, CONFLICT, AND POLITICAL
MOBILIZATION
Nicole Doerr, Alice Mattoni and Simon Teune xi
PART I: SPECIAL TOPIC: ADVANCES IN THE VISUAL

ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
‘‘WE ARE ALL KHALED SAID’’: VISUAL

INJUSTICE SYMBOLS IN THE EGYPTIAN
REVOLUTION, 2010–2011
Thomas Olesen 3
BODIES KEYING POLITICS: A VISUAL FRAME

ANALYSIS OF GENDERED LOCAL ACTIVISM IN
FRANCE AND FINLAND
Eeva Luhtakallio 27
IMAGES OF SURVEILLANCE: THE CONTESTED

AND EMBEDDED VISUAL LANGUAGE OF ANTI-
SURVEILLANCE PROTESTS
Priska Daphi, Anja Leˆ and Peter Ullrich 55
THE EMOTIONAL IMPERATIVE OF THE VISUAL:

IMAGES OF THE FETUS IN CONTEMPORARY
AUSTRALIAN PRO-LIFE POLITICS
Kirsty McLaren 81
v
vi CONTENTS
PROTEST MOVEMENTS AND SPECTACLES OF

DEATH: FROM URBAN PLACES TO VIDEO SPACES
Tina Askanius 105
PART II: COMMENTS ON ADVANCES IN THE VISUAL

ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
WHAT WE CAN DO WITH VISUAL ANALYSIS IN

SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES: SOME (SELF)
REFLECTIONS
Donatella della Porta 137
PART III: GENERAL THEME: NARRATIVES AND

REPERTOIRES OF CONTENTION
THE WORK STORIES DO: CHARLES TILLY’S

LEGACY ON THE PROVISION OF REASONS,
STORYTELLING, AND TRUST IN CONTENTIOUS
PERFORMANCES
Marc W. Steinberg and Patricia Ewick 147
REPERTOIRES OF CONTENTION AND TACTICAL

CHOICE IN LATIN AMERICA, 1981–1995
James C. Franklin 175
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 209

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Tina Askanius Department of Communication and Media,

Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Priska Daphi Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences,
Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin,
Germany
Donatella della Porta Department of Political and Social Sciences,
European University Institute, Florence,
Italy
Nicole Doerr Department of International Relations,
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley,
MA, USA
Patricia Ewick Department of Sociology, Clark University,
Worcester, MA, USA
James C. Franklin Department of Politics and Government,
Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH,
USA
Anja Leˆ Freelance Teacher and Researcher, Berlin,
Germany
Eeva Luhtakallio Department of Social Research, University
of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Alice Mattoni Department of Political and Social Sciences,
European University Institute, Center for
Social Movement Studies (COSMOS),
Florence, Italy
Kirsty McLaren School of Politics and International
Relations, Australian National University,
Canberra, Australia
vii
viii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Thomas Olesen Department of Political Science and

Government, Aarhus University, Aarhus,
Denmark
Marc W. Steinberg Department of Sociology, Smith College,
Northampton, MA, USA
Simon Teune Social Science Research Center Berlin,
Berlin, Germany
Peter Ullrich Social Science Research Center Berlin,
Berlin, Germany
FOREWORD
Like any established and mature body of scholarship, social movements

research has changed, evolved, and grown over its decades. Now a robust
and vibrant field in its own right, it has seen interpretive paradigms and
theoretical frameworks come and go, and in some cases come again. A
variety of frameworks and approaches have been used, emphasizing
collective behavior, mobilizing structures, resource mobilization, cultural
politics, social psychology, identities, cognition, framing, discourses, narra-
tives, and emotions.
The 35 volumes that make up the 35-year history of the Research in Social
Movements, Conflicts and Change series reflect some of these changing
emphases, and more. In the last decade alone, for example, special thematic-
focused volumes of the RSMCC series have been published on the following
topics: consensus decision making in social movements; authorities in
contention; new frontiers in conflict resolution; new media and movements;
gender in conflict resolution and social movements; and on nonviolent
action and social movements.
Now with this latest themed volume, the Research in Social Movements,
Conflicts and Change series helps develop another innovative area of
scholarship: the visual analysis of social movements. Volume editors Nicole
Doerr, Alice Mattoni, and Simon Teune whose own research agendas
have done so much to open up this new area of scholarship have compiled
an impressive set of papers. Their volume’s tripartite focus on how social
movements express themselves visually, on how they are represented in
various media, and on the social visibility issues that movements face charts
new pathways for future developments in social movements research.
Patrick G. Coy
Series Editor, Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change
Professor and Director, Center for Applied Conflict Management
Kent State University
ix
TOWARD A VISUAL ANALYSIS OF
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, CONFLICT,
AND POLITICAL MOBILIZATION
INTRODUCTION
The news of recent mobilizations in Arab, European, and North-American

countries quickly spread across the globe. Well before written reports
analyzing the unfolding mobilizations, images of protests circulated widely
through television channels, print newspapers, internet websites, and social
media platforms. Pictures and videos of squares full of people protesting
against their governments became the symbols of a new wave of contention
that quickly spread from Tunisia to many other countries. Pictures and
videos showing the gathering of people in Tahrir square (Egypt), Puerta del
Sol (Spain), and Zuccotti Park (United States) quickly became vivid tools
of ‘‘countervisuality’’ (Mirzoeff, 2011) that opposed the roaring grassroots
political participation of hundreds of thousands people to the silent
decisions taken in government and corporation buildings by small groups
of politicians and managers. The presence, and relevance, of images in
mobilizations of social movements is no novelty. Encounters with social
movements have always been intrinsically tied to the visual sense. Activists
articulate visual messages, their activities are represented in photos and
video sequences, and they are ultimately rendered visible, or invisible, in the
public sphere. Social movements produce and evoke images, either as a
result of a planned, explicit, and strategic effort, or accidentally, in an
unintended or undesired manner. At the same time, social movements are
perceived by external actors and dispersed audiences via images which are
produced both by themselves and others.
Scholars of social movements did not ignore visual aspects. They refer to
images to exemplify and illustrate their arguments. Yet systematic analyses
of the visual or an integration of visual analyses within broader frameworks
xi
xii INTRODUCTION
is still rare (but see Philipps, 2012). Like other fields of social science, social
movement research is almost exclusively focused on texts1: the sources
scholars primarily use are interviews and surveys, documents and mani-
festos, newspaper coverage, laws, and official reports. The neglect of the
visual is not an exclusive problem of social movement research. It reflects
the more general perplexity of social scientists when confronted with images.
It was only in the early 1990s that the ‘‘visual turn’’ in the humanities and
cultural studies inspired a theoretical debate about the ‘‘power of images’’ in
political conflict (Mitchell, 1994), representing the visual realm as a site of
struggle with a life of its own. It is not only a battleground for contentious
politics, but also a universe of culturally shared meaning. Visual theorists
in media studies and art history agree that images are associated with a
complex stock of cultural knowledge and experiences, frames and identi-
fications, and that they are interpreted, framed, and reframed by political
actors. The characteristic openness of visual forms requires a particularly
careful and hence challenging analysis to impart the profound and complex
meanings of images. Dealing with these contents requires methodological
skills that differ from those in the well-worn toolbox of social movement
analysis. The exploration of the visual by sociologists and political scientists
is still nascent. Visual analysis appears in curricula only sporadically.
Methods to understand images in political conflict are far from readily
available. The exploratory status of a visual analysis of social movements is
also reflected in the growing number of studies contributing to the field.
They are tentative excursions into the unfamiliar terrain of visuals in social
movements.
THREE AREAS IN VISUAL RESEARCH ON

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
This volume seeks to contribute to the growing body of knowledge on

the topic by considering the intertwining of diverse visual materials with
the mobilization, framing, diffusion, and resonance of protest and social
movements. In particular, we address three neglected areas of research in the
visual analysis of social movements: the visual expressions of social
movements through images and other visual artifacts; the visual representa-
tion of social movements by actors external to social movements; and the
more general aspect of social movements’ visibility in larger societal
contexts.
Introduction xiii
Visual Expressions of Social Movements
The first area of research focuses on the visual expression of social move-
ments. From the mobilization poster to the posed gesture of rebellion
made to satisfy press photographers – activists’ visual appearances leave
impressions. They send messages which do not require words. In their use
of visual language, social movements tap into the shared visual knowledge
of the society they are rooted in. They use and reinterpret a preexisting
imaginary to voice critique and to form a collective actor. Images can be
used as a powerful means of mobilization. Fetal images have been used by
the pro-life movement to scandalize abortion (Petchesky, 1987; McLaren in
this volume); pictures of tortured animals resulted in moral shocks that
recruited concerned citizens into the animal rights movement (Jasper &
Poulsen, 1995). In some cases the very subversion of visual imageries lies at
the center of protest tactics, as in the case of culture jamming interventions
against advertising billboards in the urban landscape (Meikle, 2007).
In the imagineering of dissent, visual symbols play a central role. Symbols
are important for social movements because they are markers of rich
knowledge and complex frames (Goodnow, 2006). They help protesters to
mark their affiliation with a collective and to identify their position in
political conflicts (Doerr & Teune, 2012). Tradition and continuity in social
movements is not only produced in narratives and in the use of concepts, it
is also imagined in elements of graphic design and the use of colors. For
instance, a red star used on posters and flyers locates the authors in a
communist tradition just as much as the textual frames of ‘‘imperialism’’
or ‘‘class struggle.’’ Visual markers make it easy for fellow activists to
identify the orientation of a group and thus to define them as allies,
competitors, or enemies. In this sense, therefore, visual materials are reposi-
tories of shared – and sometimes contested – activist identities and cultures
that are able to link different generations of protesters and different waves
of contention.
The visual production of social movements does not only address protest
participants and supporters. Actors positioned outside a social movement
also read its visuals from their particular viewpoints and will act with regard
to movement activists according to what they see. For journalists,
bystanders, and police officers who are trying to get a picture of a social
movement, its visual expressions are important points of reference. Policing
routines, for instance, are tied to protesters’ appearance. Those who match
the police’s image of a potential offender are likely to experience different
treatment to those who appear to be harmless.
xiv INTRODUCTION
Fashion and gestures, indeed, have the same dual addressees as symbols
and images. As a means of self-expression and as a carrier of a message to
spectators, the body is the enjeu protesters bring into political conflicts.
Social movement activists use their bodies to expose and embody a deviant
mindset (Hebdidge, 1988; Wilson, 1990). The body is, more emphatically,
the medium through which politics is performed (Pabst, 2010). Drag
performances, for instance, have been analyzed as a way to challenge
hegemonic gender norms (Taylor & Rupp, 2004; Taylor, Rupp, & Gamson,
2004). At street demonstrations, clothing is a way to identify with a
particular social movement strand or a tactic. Black hooded sweaters,
sunglasses, and balaclavas are central accessories of the Black Bloc (Haunss,
forthcoming). Activists wearing such outfits during demonstrations not only
mark their affiliation to an antagonist protest milieu, they also signal their
preference for confrontational tactics (Juris, 2005) to other demonstrators as
well as to the police and journalists.
Visual Representations of Social Movements
The second area of research focuses on representations of social movements

in different media. Mass media, the main mediating element between
movements on one side and their audiences and target groups on the other,
are inclined to report movement events when they produce strong images.
However, protest groups have a limited influence on the images that are
linked to them. A stereotypical visual representation of protest is the rule
rather than the exception. Images of protest in the news are usually limited to
a few archetypes such as the rioter, the picket, or the performer. This selective
portrayal has consequences for the reception of social movements within a
broader audience. Protests are not perceived as what they are on the ground
but what they look like in press photos and television news images.
Despite the distorting lens of mass media, protest groups are not entirely
at the mercy of journalists and media corporations. First, viewers are not
passive audiences. They may decode protest images in news coverage in
many different ways (Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, & Sasson, 1992). They
interpret what they see against the backdrop of their own experience and
knowledge. Readers who feel close to a protest group have been shown to
interpret images of conflict between that group and the police in a spirit of
solidarity, while others side with the police (Arpan et al., 2006). Moreover,
social movement actors frequently use powerful images to make the news
and to mainstream dissident perspectives (Bennett & Lawrence, 1995;
Introduction xv
DeLuca, 1999; Delicath & DeLuca, 2003). Media-savvy image creation is

part of a larger trend toward professionalization in the organization of
protest. The use of catchy imagery does, however, risk the perpetuation of
hegemonic gazes and beliefs. The exhibition of immaculate naked female
bodies, for instance, is a tactic used by both grassroots protesters and
professional organizations (Lunceford, 2012). But it has been subject to
feminist critique insofar as it reproduces the imagery of ideal bodies and an
objectifying gaze (Deckha, 2008).
Finally, commercial and public mass media no longer have a monopoly
over the visual representation of protest. While alternative media have
always been important to imagine dissident movements, online social media
coupled with mobile devices like smart phones form the basis for a
qualitative leap in the representation of mobilizations. Pictures and videos
of demonstrations are uploaded in real time by those who participate in
protests, imparting rich visual narratives of protests. They are spread virally
to audiences far beyond the social movement scene and thus shape the
public image of protests. Activists, but also their sympathetic audiences,
easily become visual producers through practices of the remediation and
remixing of visual materials about protests.
Visuals and Visibility for Social Movements
The third area of research focuses on the analytical question of visibility

and/or invisibility of social movements in societies. Staging protest is a way
to become visible as a conflict party and to create visibility for social
problems (Guidry, 2003). The early protest marches of the labor movement,
for instance, did not comprise the central elements we are familiar with
today. They did not include banners, nor slogans, nor music. Workers
marched in lines, calm and disciplined. These marches were a demonstration
in the literal sense. They displayed the working class as a new political actor
to bystanders and a wider public. Today, protest performances are still ways
to gain visibility both for external viewers and for movement activists
themselves (Casquete, 2006). Particularly in the context of repressive
regimes, the fact that protests are visible in the street sparks participation
and strengthens oppositional groups (Guano, 2002).
However, protesters who try to emit their message do not all have the same
chances of being seen by audiences. They act in a public that is structured by
dominant viewing habits and gazes which reflect and perpetuate hierarchical
power relations (Teune, 2013). While some claims are obvious for large
xvi INTRODUCTION
sections of society, others are filtered out by hegemonic discourse routines.

Protesters who articulate their goals without using imagery that is familiar,
expected, and compatible with the mainstream experience are likely to be
marginalized. Attaining visibility through counter-hegemonic images that
recall, but at the same time subvert, hegemonic discourses is a major
challenge for social movement actors and, in particular, for discriminated
groups who have different experiences to the majority.
The Occupy movement in the United States is a case in point illustrating
the impact of a rich visual articulation of dissent on a larger societal
discourse. Peter Dreier’s Lexis Nexis database analysis shows how the
Occupy movement dramatically changed U.S. mainstream media discourse
within a single month. A year before the emergence of the movement, U.S.
newspaper articles mentioned the word ‘‘inequality’’ in about 407 stories
per month, a number which varied little until October 2011, when ‘‘the
frequency skyrocketed to 1,269 stories’’ per month (Dreier, 2011, p. 1).
Terms such as ‘‘greed’’ and the ‘‘richest one percent’’ circulated by Occupy
activists and supporters rose from near invisibility to over 1,000 percent
the issue became present enough to force Republican leaders to host press
conferences on the topic. True, the Occupy movement’s visibility did not last
very long. And there is still disagreement among social movement scholars
as to what extent the Occupy Wall Street protests were able to actually
‘‘change the conversation’’ in the United States. But the massive production
of images in such a short time – especially spread through websites, blogs,
and social media platforms – supported the diffusion of a complex counter-
narrative on economic and labor issues.
THE CONTRIBUTIONS IN THIS SPECIAL ISSUE:

AN OVERVIEW
All three areas of research – social movement expression, representation,

and visibility help us in understanding the visual as a site of struggle.
Mobilization posters of competing currents within a movement can be
analyzed to identify framing disputes; if newspapers use different images of
a protest event, this can be interpreted as sympathy or antipathy for
activists; and finally, if refugees’ protest performances do not make
national news while virtually no protest held by a well-established
organization skips the editorial desks, this is not only an expression of
competition for attention, but also an avenue to hegemony, visual regimes,
Introduction xvii
and valorization. While the third area of visual analysis raises new
questions for social movement scholars who have largely taken the tableau
of visible actors for granted, the first two are closely linked to the
established canon of social movement analysis. If images and symbols are
an important resource for protest actors to express themselves, it makes
good sense to consider their impact on collective identities and emotions as
well as their role in framing and representing protest and in the
mobilization of resources. If images of protest affect audiences and target
groups, any analyses of political processes or approaches focusing on the
public sphere are well advised to consider the visual aspects of the struggles
under study.
The contributions to the special section in this volume primarily address
the first area of research described above. Exploring the production and
framing of images, the contributions extend the reach of some of the
classical approaches to protest and social movements. In drawing on
interdisciplinary approaches and methods, all the chapters propose ways to
bridge the gap between the research traditions of political contention and
culture in movements.
The opening contribution in the special section focuses on the recent
uprising in Egypt, taking into consideration the power of visual framing in
transnational contexts. In bringing together frame analysis with the
sociology of emotion and memory studies, Thomas Olesen explores how
activists produce, diffuse, and adapt photographs to generate the broad
and universalized emotional resonance of injustice frames. In focusing on
the recent case of Khaled Said, a young Egyptian blogger beaten to death
by Egyptian police in June 2010, he illustrates how images make for moral
shock. The distressing post-mortem photograph of Said became a
powerful resource in the struggle against Mubarak’s regime when activists
juxtaposed it with a portrait of the young blogger. The representation of
Said as a member of the young, urban middle class rendered the pictures
of him as an injustice symbol resonant with existing injustice frames in
Egyptian society. Olesen’s study thus shows how we may integrate classical
text-based approaches and the visual analysis of transnational diffusion:
theorizing and analyzing how distinct local visual injustice symbols are
transformed in the interaction between different regional, national, and
global publics allows movement scholars to understand political change
and transnational diffusion by comparing images and discourse in
interaction.
Addressing theorists of collective identity and strategy, Priska Daphi,
Peter Ullrich, and Anja Lê trace how images used in protests against
xviii INTRODUCTION
surveillance in Germany were contested among liberal and left currents in

movements. In studying the political process of visual strategizing,
expression, and reception, Daphi et al. demonstrate how images used by
different activist groups not only illustrate distinct, competing political ideas
but also shape the very ideas of politics which social movements propose:
Daphi and her colleagues confirm the significance of both national context
and issue-related contexts. The imagery of anti-surveillance protests was
marked by a clash of liberal left movement groups framing governmental
policies as a ‘‘loss’’ of (Western liberal) democracy and radical left groups,
who represented surveillance in general ‘‘as an expression of the capitalist
(though formally democratic) state.’’ In a more general context, anti-
surveillance protesters tap into the collectively memorized experiences and
emotions connected to past political events, and, in turn, shape a collective
memory of resistance influenced by previous visual and symbolic represen-
tations (Romano & Raiford, 2006). With their interdisciplinary approach
combining art history and semiotics, visual analysts such as Daphi et al.
demonstrate how movement scholars get at those condensed political and
symbolic networks of meanings that are not linguistically expressed by
activists in interviews and cannot be easily analyzed through leaflets and
other textual material.
In a cross-national comparative perspective, visual analysis brings forth
new questions for research regarding debates about convergence, the
relevance of national contexts, and transnational mobilization in distinct
regional contexts. In her contribution to this volume, Eeva Luhtakallio
focuses on the distinct contexts of European protest cultures to understand
different yet at times converging frames of local protest in varying con-
sensual or conflicting civic repertoires in Finland and France. Luhtakallio
applies Goffman’s concept of visual keying to study the reproduction and
change of (dominant) gender framings created by activists in the photo
documentation of their protest events. She compares gender representations
in the local contexts of progressive protest and global justice activism in
Lyon and Helsinki. Combining participant observation of activist events,
interviews, and visual analysis, Luhtakallio uncovers a tension between
who is actually present at meetings and the visual representation of public
events, which feature a gendered role division. By combining visual analysis
with ethnographic observation, Luhtakallio is in fact able to trace the
predominance of masculine leadership in the Lyonnais events. Counter-
intuitively, she finds that in Helsinki too, a place where gender main-
streaming has long been part of the official national political culture,
traditional gender roles survive in the visual keying of Finnish local
Introduction xix
protesters through ‘‘sweet’’ and ‘‘childlike’’ representations of femininity.

At the same time, confrontational action is not limited to male activists as
in Lyon. By combining visual analysis with ethnographic observation,
Luhtakallio is able to demonstrate how internal tensions about gender and
feminist struggles are reflected in different public images produced by
activists about themselves.
Visual analysis also offers a set of new questions to discourse analysts
and students of deliberation inside and outside social movements (Doerr,
2012). Social movement theorists identify narratives and symbols as an
important resource for activists. They help create visibility for the
perspectives and experiences of marginalized groups in mainstream arenas
of political deliberation (Polletta, 2006). Recently, media scholars have
shown how the selection and framing of images within newspapers
influences the emotional resonance of political issues through systematic
quantitative methods (Corrigall Brown, 2012, p. 133). For example,
Rohlinger and Klein show the dramatization of news coverage of the
abortion debate in the United States through front page articles via
distinct visuals (Rohlinger & Klein, 2012). Keith demonstrates how visual
pictures of authoritarian leaders reduce the memory of complex historic
events such as the liberation of Paris to extremely narrow symbols that
enter official memory (Keith, 2012). Systematic quantitative studies
confirm that visual images become a powerful resource to delegitimate
dominant political actors (Lamont, Welburn, & Fleming, 2012). At the
same time, activists also risk being stigmatized when portrayed within
mainstream media (Wetzel, 2012). For example, Milman (2012) and
Wetzel (2012) find that reporters may refer to ethnic, gendered, and
cultural stereotypes to delegitimate resistance by already stigmatized
populations. The empirical studies presented in this section speak to this
discussion. They combine visual and discursive methods to show how
images implicitly diffuse political arguments outside a context of cognitive
linguistic discourse, often with unnoticed and powerful emotional
consequences.
Kirsty McLaren’s chapter considers the value of visual analysis for
studying pro-life activism and refers to the fetus in the Australian
abortion debate. She extends discourse analysis to ‘‘visual discourses’’ in
order to show how pro-life movements mobilize emotion through both
images and texts. The interrelation of images and text make powerful
arguments in a different style to speech acts. Drawing on a wide-ranging
survey of current campaign materials, pro-life websites and publications as
well as newspaper articles and archival materials, McLaren finds three
xx INTRODUCTION
major themes represented in pro-life images: the wonder of life, the

human frailty of the foetus, and the barbarity of modern society. In
drawing on feminist critiques, McLaren demonstrates why pro-life
activists fail to win their strategic goals in political arenas, but still shape
popular myths through powerful images that mobilize empathy and fuel
controversy. In pictures mobilizing the emotion of care and in grisly
images mobilizing empathy, pro-life campaigners display their under-
standing of the fetus as a person. The images described in the text are
meant to evoke shock and horror at the violence of abortion. Because of
their powerful combination of scientific authority and emotional force,
pro-life images mobilize attention. While affirming an immediate and
unmediated sight of images, McLaren’s interdisciplinary analysis reveals
the implicit emotional language and powerful double meanings influencing
viewers of these images.
The closing contribution of the special section explores visuals in the
online environment. Movement scholars have addressed the need to explore
the dominant visual dimensions of online spaces through combining
multiple qualitative and quantitative methods (Corrigall Brown, 2012). In
this vein, Tina Askanius’ chapter makes an innovative exploratory attempt
to use semiotic tools to develop an interpretation of YouTube videos.
Filling an empirical gap on video analysis, she provides a unique
audiovisual investigation of YouTube clips that commemorate three people
who died during recent protests. Askanius traces the struggle between
dominant media frames of protester violence versus police violence to show
how commemoration videos become a political resource. Activist videos
challenge media representations of protest movements by highlighting street
level accounts of police brutality. Where YouTube becomes ‘‘a shrine to
remember, to revisit,’’ Askanius reveals that online sites have become key
arenas for the production, distribution, and mobilization of images to
support activists’ causes. The three deaths in Genoa, 2001, Athens, 2008,
and London, 2009, are interwoven into narratives of martyrdom, turning
them into beacons for future mobilizations. By exploring the continuum
between offline and online rituals of commemoration and political
struggles, Askanius finds that videos interweave the individual death and
martyrdom of three local protesters into the collective struggle of an anti-
capitalist movement. Yet her analysis shows that the construction of a
global visual narrative of resistance is composed of images of local protest
events which become de-territorialized symbols, connecting facts and
fiction.
Introduction xxi
CONCLUDING REMARKS: ADVANCING SOCIAL

MOVEMENT KNOWLEDGE THROUGH VISUALS
Overall, the five chapters in the special section underline that focusing on
visuals makes it possible to intersect cultural and political analysis in a
unique and interdisciplinary way. Social movement scholars learn how
visual representations, framings, and strategies constitute political
resources, how symbols get shaped in political struggles, how they shape
outcomes of political processes and political identities as well as memories
and emotions associated to movements. The wide array of case studies
covering regions as diverse as North Africa, Europe, Australia, and North
America, uncover the relevance of visual analysis in studying emerging new
forms of movement communication as well as the historical importance of
images for social movement studies. More particularly, the five contribu-
tions provide important insights on how visuals can function as resources
for social movements; how visuals intertwine with processes of diffusion in
mobilizations; and, finally, on the methodological challenges and opportu-
nities that social movement scholars face when approaching the visual realm
in protest settings.
First, visual analysis allows an understanding of how images provide
activists with a symbolic resource to attain resonance in the context of a
national political discourse. For example, Daphi et al. show how anti-
surveillance protesters invoked the memory of the German authoritarian
past to scandalize government plans for data preservation. One poster
portrayed the German minister of the interior in the iconography of the
Oscar nominated movie Der Untergang (The Downfall), which depicted the
last days of Hitler’s life. Activists also combined a portrait of the minister
with the caption ‘‘Stasi 2.0,’’ referring to the secret police of the German
Democratic Republic. By connecting current events to the imagery of the
past, anti-surveillance visuals appealed not only to potential protesters but
also to a much broader audience. By delving into the stock of collective
memories, images appeal to a collective identity that may help activists to
create political opportunities where institutional roads seem blocked
(Mattoni, 2008).
Yet beyond the intended meanings that inspired activists’ posters,
audiences may have widely varying reactions depending on the discursive
context in which such images are diffused. For example, the allusion to
Nazi Germany, Daphi et al. note, may be interpreted as a statement about
structural similarities between present-day and Nazi Germany or, instead,
xxii INTRODUCTION
as a relativization of Nazi atrocities. Images calling upon powerful

memories, such as Nazi symbols or portraits of dictators, are a resource
exploited for very different purposes by different movements. In a
comparative design especially, a focus on the diffusion careers of such
contested images informs scholars about the cultural embeddedness of
political process. Moreover, by studying which images make it into the
mainstream of public education and national identification, we learn how
dominant cultures marginalize some movements while others become
hegemonic. An unsolved question in this vein regards the cognitive and
emotional resonance of older iconographic traditions and popular images
used by protesters. Moreover, we need to understand how images of protest
are in turn imitated, altered, or destroyed by counter-movements, mass
media, corporations, and other actors.
Second, another field of inquiry addressed by visual analysis includes
framing processes and the dynamics of political diffusion inside and outside
movements and in increasingly globalized yet culturally diverse societies.
Regarding the popularization of new media, it is surprising that few
movement scholars have explored visual images as triggers for transna-
tional protest events. While much work has focused on the reception of
global icons of protest in mass media, we know little about the place-
specific production and strategic mobilization of images by resource
poor, local activist groups (Mattoni, 2008) nor about the reframing of
protest images by mass media and the police (Teune, 2012) as well as state
actors. Through internet-based diffusion, images are represented globally in
real time. Could visual framing strategies be more effective in diffusing new
ideas under these circumstances, and empower transnational movements
for social change? By combining framing approaches with visual analysis
we should be in a better position to understand the pathways of diffusion of
slogans, images, and visual objects that spread ongoing revolutionary and
pro-democracy movements, as Olesen demonstrates in his contribution.
Indeed, while crossing the boundaries of political and cultural traditions in
social movement studies, visual analysis also provides innovative ways for
studying how widely and when visual symbols diffuse and constrain the
outcomes of movements by constructing future memories. For example, in
his framing study of the transformation of the photograph of Khaled Said,
Olesen proposes to study to what extent distinct universalized victim
photographs such as those of Egyptian protesters become integrated in
Egyptian political culture as a core injustice symbol or perhaps even an
injustice memory. Like Daphi et al., Olesen finds that the extent to which
an event becomes ingrained in political culture is influenced by its
Introduction xxiii
(emotional and visual) resonance with similar events, interpreted widely as

injustices or not.
Third, all of the exploratory studies open new discussions in social
movement methodology by focusing on images, icons, and methods of
visual analysis of protest and public discourse. In highlighting the strength
of audiovisual analyses of social movements, Askanius interrogates
how protest artifacts such as graffiti, street jamming, and vernacular street
memorials are (re-)mediated in online videos calling for future mobiliza-
tions. Her comparative methods of semiotics and narrative analysis and the
comparison of urban geographies of resistance in three countries shows how
visual analysis complements the comparative narrative analysis of online
sites as solidarity publics uniting different groups and contexts. In an
innovative contribution to frame analysis and gender studies, Luhtakallio’s
chapter points out the importance of visual analysis in the study of framing
and group styles in social movements. By triangulating different data sets
and analytical tools such as interviews, close observation, and visual
analysis she shows how representations of women become idols for gender
performance contrasting the ongoing exclusion of women from internal
positions of leadership within groups. From a quantitative perspective, such
qualitative interdisciplinary studies can be developed further in a systematic
sampling strategy using quantitative measures as well.
Through their engagement with visual empirical materials in the context
of social movement theories, these contributions also pave the way to
important innovations in the field. An important aspect of methods
addressed by visual analysis is the study of political discourse, media,
and framing. Social movement scholars have had a hard time seeking to
understand audiences’ reception of activists’ public claims. However, by
combining discursive and visual methods, including art history, semiotics,
and iconography, visual analysts such as Daphi et al. are able to predict
audiences’ reactions, while McLaren highlights the continuing emotional
and popular impact of pro-life activism over long time periods despite
little policy impact. Through their visual analysis drawing on theories of
semiotics and art history, Daphi et al. show the polysemiotic or multi-
layered communicative potential of images that spread activists’ messages
differently than texts. Likewise, discourse analysts learn how implicit
images influence whether the arguments made by activists will make sense,
to which audiences, and in which contexts. In this perspective, Olesen’s
piece explores why some distinct photographs and not others may be
successful in symbolically diffusing local/national injustice frames that
trigger political regime change. The five chapters presented in the special
xxiv INTRODUCTION
section explore the mechanisms of contentious political processes, showing

how to combine visual methods with classical methods of movement
analysis. Beyond the empirical and methodological, we believe that each of
these studies also provides examples on how to see social movements from
a new perspective, and thus, break new theoretical ground for future
research.
NOTE
1. This is not to say that images and texts are independent or mutually exclusive.
They refer to each other, as in metaphors or captions.
Nicole Doerr
Alice Mattoni
Simon Teune
Editors
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PART I
SPECIAL TOPIC: ADVANCES
IN THE VISUAL ANALYSIS OF
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
‘‘WE ARE ALL KHALED SAID’’:
VISUAL INJUSTICE SYMBOLS IN
THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION,
2010–2011
Thomas Olesen
ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a symbolic perspective on the Egyptian Revolution. It

does so by analyzing the transformation of Khaled Said, a 28-year-old
Egyptian man beaten to death by police on June 6, 2010, into a key visual
injustice symbol. Activists were motivated by a horrifying cell phone
photograph of Said taken by his family at the morgue and uploaded on the
web. Although the postmortem photograph had a powerful emotional
impact in itself, the transformation of Said from local/particular incident
to injustice symbol with society-wide repercussions cannot be explained by
its mere availability in the public sphere. The transformation required
intervention and appropriation by activists who creatively and strategi-
cally universalized the case, linking it with existing injustice frames in
Egypt. This chapter analyzes this interplay between photographs,
activism, and society in two steps. The first provides an analysis of the
genesis of the Said symbol and identifies three levels of agency in its
formation. The second step analyzes the process through which Said was
Advances in the Visual Analysis of Social Movements

Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Volume 35, 3–25
Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X(2013)0000035005
3
4 THOMAS OLESEN
infused with injustice meanings by activists. Providing the first systematic

analysis of Said from a social movement perspective, the chapter draws on
several data sources that are subjected to interpretive analysis: visual
material available on the internet, Facebook pages, and interviews with
and accounts by key activists. And it calls for more attention to
photographs and symbols in the analysis of activism and points to several
historical and present cases with relevance for such an approach.
Keywords: Symbols; visuality; photography; activism; Egypt;

Khaled Said
INTRODUCTION
Photographs, film, and images have received relatively limited systematic

attention within the mainstream of social movement studies. This is
surprising considering how historically they have often played key roles in
various forms of political activism (e.g., Alexander, 2006, 2011a, 2011b;
Biggs, 2005; Butler, 2010; DeLuca, 1999; Doerr & Teune, 2011; Goldberg,
1991; Halfmann & Young, 2010; Hariman & Lucaites, 2007; Martin, 2005;
Schlegel, 1995; Sontag, 2003, 1979; Szasz, 1994). The issue of visuality in
political activism can be approached from various angles. In this chapter I
analyze how photographs may attain the status of visual injustice symbols.1
Photographs transformed into visual injustice symbols often involve death
and suffering caught on camera. I emphasize the verb ‘‘caught’’ because the
photographs I have in mind are not staged. Rather, they are snapshots of a
reality more or less accidentally witnessed by the photographer. A symbolic
perspective highlights how an activist-driven politicization of this class of
photographs involves an emotionally charged process of universalization. A
photograph of someone’s death or suffering is in the first instance private and
particular. For such a moment to become a visual injustice symbol it must be
infused with meanings that point beyond this particularity. When this occurs
the photograph is moved from the private to the public realm and, from a
scientific point of view, enters the orbit of political sociology. ‘‘With their
enormous capacity to contain, compress, and symbolize events or
ideologies,’’ says Goldberg (1991, p. 135), ‘‘photographs become the signs
and signposts of modern society.’’
As should be clear from the above remarks, the chapter balances political
and cultural approaches in its understanding of activism and photography.
Visual Injustice Symbols in the Egyptian Revolution, 2010–2011 5
The relationship is dialectical. Visual injustice symbols are typically

‘‘constructed’’ by activists to help them achieve political objectives (Schlegel,
1995, p. 56). This decidedly political activity, however, has significant
cultural dimensions and implications. First, in the process of infusing a
photograph with injustice meaning, activists draw on injustice frames located
in the political–cultural structure of society; second, once created, visual
injustice symbols themselves enter the political culture and memory structure
of society to become potential resources in subsequent activism. Visual
injustice symbols thus both reflect and shape the society in which they
emerge. These points draw on various theoretical sources in and outside the
mainstream of social movement studies. At the most general level they
combine Alexander’s (2006, 2011a) work on activism with Barthes’ (1977)
analysis of photography. In short, Alexander argues that activists are both
culture ‘‘users’’ and ‘‘producers’’; that their activities involve a dialogue, as it
were, with society. This approach is compatible with Barthes’ view that
photographs are always infused with meaning through socially anchored
interpretive frames. From within social movement studies the article borrows
from framing theory (e.g., Gamson, 1995; Gamson & Modigliani, 1989;
Snow & Benford, 1988, 1992) and from what might be called the emotional
turn in social movement studies (e.g., Flam & King, 2005; Goodwin,
Jasper, & Polletta, 2001; Jasper, 1997). Framing theory, and especially the
concept of injustice frames (Gamson, Fireman, & Rytina, 1982), offers a
useful theoretical vocabulary for formulating and specifying the interactional
dynamics between photographs, society, and political activism. Work on
emotions, in particular Jasper and Poulsen’s (1995) concept of moral shocks,
illuminates how the power of visual injustice symbols in political activism is
inextricably linked with the capacity of photography to generate emotional
resonance or knowledge in an audience.
The theoretical framework is applied to the recent case of Khaled Said, a
28-year-old Egyptian man beaten to death by Egyptian police in June 2010
(Alexander, 2011b; Howard & Hussain, 2011; Khamis & Vaughn, 2011;
Lim, 2012; Wright, 2011).2 The horrifying cell phone photograph taken by
Said’s family at the morgue and uploaded on the web became a key visual
injustice symbol in the protests that toppled the Mubarak regime in early
2011. The moral and emotional power of the postmortem photograph
was amplified in important ways by often appearing juxtaposed with a
photograph of Khaled Said before his death, in which he appears as a
handsome, sympathetic embodiment of Egypt’s young urban middle class.
Although the photographs had a powerful emotional impact in and by
themselves, the transformation of Said from local/particular incident to
6 THOMAS OLESEN
injustice symbol with universalized meanings cannot be explained only by

reference to the arguably shocking character of the postmortem photo-
graph. The transformation required intervention and appropriation by
individuals and activists who creatively and strategically universalized the
case and linked it with existing injustice frames in Egyptian society.
This chapter analyzes this interplay between photographs, activism, and
society in two steps: the first provides a descriptive account of the genesis of
the Khaled Said symbol and the agency behind its formation; the second
analyzes the process through which Khaled Said and the juxtaposed
photographs were infused with injustice meanings. These analytical insights
are preceded by a conceptualization and theorization of the concept of
visual injustice symbols. I consider the concept to be relevant well beyond
the Khaled Said case. These wider implications are discussed in the chapter’s
concluding section.
VISUAL INJUSTICE SYMBOLS
The present section theorizes the concept of visual injustice symbols. The
discussion has three parts: the first argues that visual injustice symbols are
the social products of an activist-driven interaction between photographs
and society; the second establishes a theoretical link between photographs
and existing injustice frames; the third argues how the power of photo-
graphy lies in its ability to contribute to emotional knowledge.
Photography and Society
Photographs, according to Barthes (1977, pp. 17–20), are paradoxical. The

paradox rests on ‘‘y the co-existence of two messages, the one without a
code (the photographic analogue), the other with a code y’’ (p. 19). Thus,
contrary to artistic creations, photographs claim an analogical relationship
with reality; they are considered to represent reality ‘‘as it is’’ (Barthes, 1977,
pp. 43–44; Messaris & Abraham, 2003, p. 217; Sontag, 1979, p. 6).3 In this
sense the photograph in itself is devoid of meaning (Taylor, 1998, p. 55): it
denotes rather than connotes. Yet this apparent lack of meaning of the
photograph is immediately ‘‘filled out’’ when it is made public and subjected
to an audience. The photograph, says Barthes (1977, p. 19), ‘‘y is not only
perceived, received, it is read, connected more or less consciously by the
public that consumes it to a traditional stock of signs.’’ This is a decidedly
sociological process involving a dialogue, as it were, between the photograph

and society (Brothers, 1997, p. 23). The meaning of a photograph is always
contextual and historical and, thus, dependent ‘‘y on the reader’s knowl-
edge’’ (Barthes, 1977, pp. 27–28).4 It is in this process that a photograph is
potentially transformed from an ‘‘object’’ with no associated meaning to a
symbol with universalized meanings.
This interactional dynamic between photography and audience/society is
at the core of the transformation from photograph to injustice symbol. It
might of course be said that all photographs intended for public (as opposed
to, e.g., family photographs) consumption are interpreted through exist-
ing collective frames. The decisive ingredient in the transformation from
publicly available photograph to visual injustice symbol is political agency.
It is at this point that activists enter our theoretical picture. Activists are
central to political sociological analysis because they are centrally engaged
in the self-reflective character of modern society: activists at the same time
invoke and create social and political values and knowledge (Alexander,
2006, 2011a). Or, in slightly different terms, activists not only reflect society,
they also produce it by, for example, contributing to its stock of shared
symbols. In the context of photography and activism these points indicate
that activists are key agents in the formation of visual injustice symbols.
It is political activism that ‘‘fills’’ a photograph with injustice ‘‘content’’
by linking it with existing injustice frames.5 In doing so, they create new
political–cultural symbols that become elements of society’s memory
structure and, hence, political–cultural resources to be potentially employed
by subsequent political activists.
Injustice Frames
As noted by Elder and Cobb (1983, pp. 28–29), a symbol is ‘‘any object used
by human beings to index meanings that are not inherent in, nor discernible
from, the object itself.’’ In other words, symbols always point beyond
themselves. To stay with the metaphor, a photograph that is unconnected
with values and ideas external to it points mainly to itself (but see the section
on emotional knowledge below for some qualification of this argument).
The photograph-cum-injustice symbol thus condenses existing and known
situations of injustice. The concept of the injustice frame offers a useful way
of theorizing this argument and for extending the above points regarding the
relationship between photography, activism, and society. An injustice
frame, according to Gamson and colleagues (Gamson et al., 1982, p. 123),
8 THOMAS OLESEN
is: ‘‘[ y ] an interpretation of what is happening that supports the

conclusion that an authority system is violating the shared moral principles
of the participants.’’ When a photograph is linked with an existing injustice
frame, the photograph or ‘‘object’’ is potentially universalized: the
photograph comes to symbolize a wider situation of injustice.
In Gamson’s (1995) theoretical terminology, such an interaction between
photography and existing injustice frames is an exercise in ‘‘cultural
resonance’’ (see also Barthes, 1977, p. 27). Cultural resonance occurs when
public utterances tap into and/or invoke norms, values, and experiences
located in the political–cultural structure of society. In relation to
photography it may even be suggested that a photograph only becomes a
public utterance at the moment it is actively connected with sets of meaning
outside it, as it were. The relationship between injustice frames and
photographs is dialectical. As argued above photographs turned injustice
symbols derive their political energy from existing injustice frames. In the
reverse, photographs may also strengthen existing injustice frames by
enhancing their social and political diffusion potential. Photographs, it must
be underlined, are not frames in themselves, but may become important
carriers and amplifiers for them. Sontag (1979, p. 17) makes a related point:
Photographs, she says, ‘‘cannot create a moral position, but they can
reinforce one – and can help build a nascent one.’’ Their condensed and
condensing nature, easy reproduction, and central place in the media’s
production process ensure that photographs spread widely across the social
landscape.
Emotional Knowledge
Generally, visual injustice symbols are based on documentary photographs

involving some element of unjust bodily suffering. The suffering body,
Hauser thus argues (2000, p. 135), has an ‘‘y impressive rhetorical
potential’’ (see also Sontag, 2003; Taylor, 1998) that imbues this type of
photograph with a particularly powerful symbolic potential (this does not
imply that suffering bodies always have such an effect; in fact, a strong
tradition in photography theory claims that viewing suffering may also
generate numbness. I touch on this argument in the conclusion of the
chapter). The documentary dimension suggests that this class of photograph
involves an unfiltered representation of reality (i.e., they are not staged or
otherwise manipulated).6 In fact, the ability of a photograph to be
transformed into an injustice symbol is almost entirely dependent on its
documentary status. If questions are raised regarding its authenticity it

immediately loses its power to generate political responses (Sontag, 2003,
p. 29; see also footnote 4). This is because photographs of bodily suffering
are often expose´s that claim to make public an event or situation that
authorities seek to hide or that may negatively affect them if made public.
There is a certain paradox here, however. Documentary photographs
often ‘‘reveal’’ what is already known. Nick Ut’s photographs at Trang Bang
(1972), for example, did not suddenly expose an entirely unknown reality
(Hariman & Lucaites, 2007, pp. 180–181). When his photographs came out
the war had been going on for a number of years and, thanks to the media
and the anti-war movement, the public was highly aware that civilians were
repeatedly among the war’s casualties (consider, e.g., Haeberle’s photo-
graphs from My Lai which had already been published in 1969; Schlegel,
1995). To understand this apparent paradox we can usefully distinguish
between two forms of knowledge or communication: abstract and emotional.
Abstract communication consists of information and analysis in the form
of numbers and causal assumptions and is typically conveyed in writing or
speech (as noted by Halfmann & Young, 2010, p. 5 this aspect of activist
communication is dominant in social movement framing research). Emo-
tional communication, in contrast, bypasses the in-built rationality of
language to directly impact the viewer’s moral senses. Photographs of bodily
suffering are central in this regard and may help generate what Jasper and
Poulsen (1995; see also Jasper, 1997) call ‘‘moral shocks’’ in an audience. It
is one thing to hear or read about atrocity and another to be visually exposed
to its consequences on specific human bodies. Viewing bodily suffering is so
powerful because ‘‘[t]he body is our primary truth, our inescapable fate’’
(Linfield, 2010, p. 39). Bodily vulnerability, Linfield goes on, ‘‘is something
that every human being shares; the cruelty is something that shatters our very
sense of what it means to be human’’ (ibid.).
‘‘WE ARE ALL KHALED SAID’’
The following main section analyses core elements in Khaled Said’s

transformation into a visual injustice symbol during Egypt’s revolution in
2010–2011. The discussion consists of two main parts: the first provides a
background to the case and details three levels of agency in the formation of
the visual injustice symbol; the second analyzes the meaning infusion
involved in that process. Before turning to these themes I offer a note on
methodology.
10 THOMAS OLESEN
A Note on Methodology
This chapter employs a mix of sources. The primary source, however, is the
internet. It is so in a double sense. On the one hand, the internet has been a
central tool in locating and collecting relevant material such as reports and
newspaper articles. Also, the visual material presented in the chapter was
mainly found on the internet. On the other hand, a significant part of the
process through which Khaled Said was transformed into an injustice
symbol took place on the internet, thus making it an object of study in its
own right. This is perhaps most evident in the case of the ‘‘We Are All
Khaled Said’’ Facebook page. Since this page was central in the symbolic
process, I accessed and read the entire page wall dating back to June 2010.
The wall provides invaluable information about Khaled Said-related activi-
ties as they evolved from June 2010 to January/February 2011. Similarly,
YouTube contains numerous commemorative videos that testify to the
symbolic nature of Khaled Said. Since this material has a permanent digital
presence we may consider the internet as a social–political memory structure
(I return to this theme below). Additionally, I have relied on two secondary
sources. The first is a radio documentary, The Facebook Martyr (Facebook
martyren) made by journalists at Danmarks Radio (DR).7 This exemplary
documentary contains several interviews with core individuals in the
symbolic process. This information was primarily used in the background
section. On the documentary’s website there is a collection of interviews that
did not make it to the final version of the documentary, as well as links to
numerous relevant documents. The second source is Wael Ghonim’s
personal account of the Egyptian Revolution, published in early 2012. As
I detail below Ghonim was the main force behind the Facebook page ‘‘We
Are All Khaled Said,’’ which became instrumental in the symbolic process
(see below).
Three Levels of Agency
On June 6, 2010, Khaled Said, aged 28, was killed by two plainclothes police
officers in the city of Alexandria.8 Said was at a cybercafé when he was
approached by police. According to eyewitnesses he was dragged out of the
café and into the doorway of a building next to the café, where he was
beaten to death. At first Said’s body was taken away in a police vehicle.
Moments later the body was returned and dumped at the scene before being
finally removed in an ambulance. Supposedly, the attack was motivated by
Said’s web publication of footage showing a shadowy deal between police

and drug dealers (this explanation, however, is disputed and has been
confirmed neither by Said’s family nor any hard evidence). Said was not
politically active in any way and is described by family, friends, and
neighbors as a quiet man primarily interested in music and computers. The
incident has been confirmed by witnesses, including the owner of the
cybercafé, Hassan Mosbah, who reported how the police officers banged
Said’s head against a marble table in the café before taking him out into the
street.9 Said’s family was allowed to see him at the morgue some hours after
the incident. Here his brother took the cell-phone photograph that triggered
Said’s transformation into an injustice symbol.
The police initially claimed that Said had suffocated after swallowing a
bag of marijuana in an alleged attempt to conceal it from police, and that he
had sustained his injuries as he collapsed. The police claims were partly
confirmed in two autopsy reports in June 2010, which both stated that the
cause of death was asphyxiation from swallowing a plastic bag.10 While the
first report corroborated the police account by indicating that the physical
injuries could have been sustained from a fall, the second report did not rule
out the possibility that they might have resulted from beating. Still, the
report maintained that asphyxiation and not physical violence was the cause
of death. Later, in July 2010, both reports were subjected to heavy profes-
sional criticism from international forensic experts.11 In a further attempt
at character assassination police claimed that Said was a rapist, a military
deserter, and that he had resisted arrest. This information was made public
in a press statement from the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior on behalf of
the Alexandria police four days after Khaled Said’s death. In the meantime
Said’s family had uploaded the postmortem photographs on the internet
alongside a ‘‘normal’’ pre-death photograph of Khaled Said (this photo-
graph is apparently Khaled Said’s passport photograph).
The juxtaposed photographs were seen by a friend of Said, Bahaa
Eltawel, a journalist at the Egyptian newspaper Youm7, a few days after
June 6. Shortly after receiving the press statement mentioned above, he
became suspicious. Eltawel wrote a critical piece claiming that Said had been
murdered, but fearing repercussions from the authorities his editor uploaded
the piece late at night so as to decrease its visibility. Eltawel, however, also
placed the piece on his private Facebook page from where it was widely
circulated and read. As a follow-up he produced evidence countering the
claims in the Ministry of the Interior press statement, including proof of
military service and Said’s clean criminal record (this account is based on an
interview with Eltawel carried out for the Danmarks Radio documentary
12 THOMAS OLESEN
referred to in the preceding section).12 One of those who encountered the

photographs of Khaled Said, as well as Bahaa Eltawel’s piece, was Google
executive Wael Ghonim. Emotionally and politically inspired by the Said
photographs, which he recalls seeing first on June 8 (Ghonim, 2012, p. 58),
Ghonim anonymously set up the Facebook page ‘‘We Are All Khaled
Said.’’13 The page soon attracted followers in the hundreds of thousands
and helped turn the case of Said into a core symbol of the brutality and
impunity of Egyptian authorities under the now ousted President Hosni
Mubarak. The page became a hub for various activist groups already
engaged in anti-Hosni Mubarak activities. One of these was the April 6
Movement that emerged in 2008 in support of striking industrial workers in
the city of El-Mahalla El-Kubra (Lim, 2012, p. 239). Along with the Kefaya
movement, April 6 was one of the first organizations in Egypt to employ
social media (ibid.). In the DR radio documentary referred above, Ahmed
Maher, a founding and leading activist of April 6 thus describes how they
strategically sought to use the case of Khaled Said to rally the Egyptian
population against the regime (I discuss the reasons behind this choice
below).
Protest and concern with the Khaled Said case may have originated on
the internet, but it soon acquired a physical dimension. For example, the
‘‘We Are All Khaled Said’’ page was instrumental in organizing a string of
so-called ‘‘silent stands’’ during June and July (including outside Egypt)
(Ghonim, 2012, pp. 70–81). Silent stand protest involves chains of people
standing together without actively protesting. The strategy was devised to
get around Egypt’s emergency law (see below), which bans public order-
threatening assemblies of more than five people (participants were thus
asked to stand with some space between them so as not to constitute an
assembly).14 During the summer and fall of 2010 and early 2011 Khaled
Said also became the symbolic center for more vociferous and increasingly
widespread protests. Countless press and activist photographs thus show the
two Said photographs on banners and posters held by anti-government
protestors.15
In sum, then, we can identify three levels of agency in the initial formation
of the Khaled Said injustice symbol: first, the decision by Said’s family to
document his injuries by taking a cell phone photograph at the morgue and
uploading it on the web; second, Bahaa Eltawel’s decision to write a critical
piece about Said; and third, Wael Ghonim and Mohamed Ibrahim’s
creation of the Facebook page ‘‘We Are All Khaled Said.’’ The three steps
express different and increasing levels of publicity and interpretation. The
morgue cell-phone photograph and its subsequent distribution on the web
lifted the case from the private to the public sphere, but contained little
active contextualization and interpretation. Eltawel’s engagement was
decidedly public, as his intervention was made available on the web. His
efforts were primarily aimed at uncovering the circumstances behind Said’s
death and countering the claims made by authorities in that regard. They
were, in other words, rather closely linked to the specific case. The ‘‘We Are
All Khaled Said’’ Facebook page in turn had a wider publicizing ambition,
as it actively sought to contextualize and universalize the case of Said by
linking it to already existing injustice frames in Egyptian society.
Meaning Infusion and the Symbolic Process
The preceding section describes how the formation of the Khaled Said
injustice symbol resulted from a sequence of individual/activist interventions.
In the following section I wish to move to a more analytical–interpretive
plane. Of primary interest for a political sociological analysis of injustice
symbols is the way an ‘‘object’’ or ‘‘objects’’ (in this case the two photographs
of Khaled Said) are infused with meaning. This part of the symbolic process is
complex and I cannot address all relevant aspects here. I have thus chosen to
apply the framework to four selected areas: the simultaneous availability of a
pre-death and postmortem photograph (juxtaposition); the character and
identity of Said before the murder (identification); the nonuniqueness of his
fate (universalization); and the circumstances surrounding the murder
(innocence and moral/legal corruption).
Juxtaposition
It has already been noted and shown how the postmortem photograph
of Khaled Said was often accompanied in its public career by a ‘‘normal’’
pre-death photograph. A significant part of the visual and emotional power
of Khaled Said was derived from this systematic juxtaposition. While
the postmortem photograph is evidently the most shocking and sensational
of the two, these ‘‘qualities’’ were amplified by and in the dual viewing
situation. The ‘‘normality’’ and ‘‘innocence’’ of the pre-death photograph
underlined and contextualized the extreme and morally shocking nature of
the postmortem photograph. The ‘‘distance’’ and violent transformation
between the two photographs becomes emotionally unbearable (this
distance is widened by the mutilated and disfigured state of Said’s face
and, despite bordering on the counterfactual, it is likely that a postmortem
photograph with fewer extreme and visible injuries would have had a more
14 THOMAS OLESEN
tempered emotional impact). Often, however, the pre-death photograph of

Khaled Said appeared ‘‘alone’’ on banners and artwork. Yet even when
appearing alone the pre-death photograph was interpreted, so to speak, via
the postmortem photograph, widely known by the Egyptian public, and
thus largely derived its moral–political significance from this. The two
photographs, in other words, dialectically infused each other with meaning.
The emotional impact of the juxtaposed photographs required limited or no
interpretation. Of course, the viewing audience needed to know that the
injuries visible in the postmortem photograph were not the result of, for
example, an accident or ‘‘private’’ violence. But once the context, the fact
that the violent ‘‘transformation’’ of Said’s face and body was caused by
members of the widely feared and hated Egyptian police, was in place, the
photographs spoke for themselves to a significant extent, partly because, as
noted above, they also spoke forcefully to each other. The more or less
immediate emotional knowledge and power inherent in the juxtaposed
photographs provided highly useful and fertile material to be further shaped
and developed by activists. It is to these activities that I now turn.
Identification
This aspect of identification concerns the identity and personal character-
istics of Khaled Said before he died on June 6, 2010. In the DR radio
documentary referred earlier, Ahmed Maher of the April 6 Movement (see
above) thus remarks: ‘‘It was our task to direct people and win their
sympathy through Khaled Said, because he was a young guy like us, he wore
the same clothes as we do, and he talked the way we do y’’16 The quote
indicates that Said’s identity as a young urban person with some education
and an interest in music and computers had a strong identification potential
in those young, middle-class sections of the Egyptian population that would
later become pacesetters in the events leading up to the fall of Hosni
Mubarak in February 2011 (Howard et al., 2011, p. 16; see also Ghonim,
2012, p. 62). Similarly, Mohamed Ibrahim and Wael Ghonim of the ‘‘We
Are All Khaled Said’’ Facebook page are both young, well-educated
professionals primarily catering to a corresponding audience. While the
page and its symbolically charged name was in principle open to everyone
discontented with the Egyptian political system, it seems plausible that its
main audience was young, urban, middle-class Egyptians (e.g., it is
noteworthy how human rights and not religious frames were dominant on
the page). As noted in the preceding section, a significant portion of
protestors during the Egyptian Revolution were mobilized via Facebook
and other social media.17 Of the close to 9 million Facebook users in Egypt,
75% are in the 15–30 age group (Arab Social Media Report, 2011, p. 13).
The computer literacy and resources required for using social media for
political purposes are primarily found in the urban middle-classes (see
Howard, 2011 for an overview of digital media use in the Arab world). The
correspondence between Said’s personal characteristics and those of
politically engaged and/or motivated Egyptian Facebook users made his
unjust death particularly potent as a symbol for a Facebook-initiated
political campaign.18 Visually, this potential was strongly supported by
Said’s appearance on the pre-death photograph, which, as noted, often
accompanied the postmortem one. Here we see a well-groomed, handsome,
informally dressed, kind and intelligent looking young man: an embodiment
of Egypt’s urban, educated, middle-class youth.19
Universalization
The identification dynamic did not only concern who Khaled Said was
before his death on June 6, 2010; it was also evident in the nonuniqueness of
his murder. This interpretation is evident, for example, in the DR radio
documentary interview with Ahmed Maher: ‘‘y we tried to expose the
injustice of the atrocity committed against him, because what happened to
Khaled Said happens to a lot of people.’’ This universalizing use of Said is
perhaps most powerfully conveyed in the name of the Facebook page set up
in reaction to his death, ‘‘We Are All Khaled Said,’’ and is spelled out in
the background text of the page, which begins in the following way:
‘‘Khaled y a story of many Egyptians.’’ The text goes on: ‘‘Khaled has
become the symbol for many Egyptians who dream to see their country free
of brutality, torture and ill treatment. Many young Egyptians are now fed
up with the inhuman treatment they face on a daily basis in streets, police
stations and everywhere’’ (see also Ghonim, 2012, p. 59). The examples
demonstrate the proactive attempt to connect the case of Khaled Said with
existing injustice frames in Egyptian society. Systematic police violence and
impunity had thus been a core concern for activists long before Said’s
murder. As reported by the El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims
of Violence, police torture is widespread in Egypt (e.g., Aziz, 2007). Critique
of the Egyptian police and legal system has been widely associated with the
emergency law in effect since the murder of President Anwar Sadat in 1981.
The emergency law grants the police and legal authorities extensive powers
that clash with basic civil and political rights (FIDH, 2011). The resonance
of Khaled Said’s murder in Egyptian society did not thus derive from its
aberration in comparison to existing expectations and experiences, but, in
contrast, from the way his brutal and unjustified murder confirmed prior
16 THOMAS OLESEN
social and political knowledge. The emphasis on the nonuniqueness of

Khaled Said’s murder obviously does not provide an explanation for his
transformation into an injustice symbol with society-wide repercussions.
Hence, if Said was not unique, why did he and not someone else attain
such resonance and symbolic import? The nonuniqueness factor only
acquires explanatory significance in combination with the unique character
of the postmortem photograph and the creative and strategic use of
this photograph and its pre-death ‘‘twin’’ by political activists. Or put
differently, the symbolic power of Khaled Said derived from the way the
postmortem photograph added emotional knowledge to existing social and
political knowledge and, importantly, from the way activists exploited this
tension and dialectical potential.
Innocence and Moral–Legal Corruption

For an individual to become an injustice symbol after his or her death, just
how that person has been made the victim of unjust violence by an authority
system needs to be demonstrated. People may also be unjustly killed in
ordinary crimes: it is only when an injustice is committed by an authority
system that murder attains symbolic potential. The victim of authority
violence has symbolic and universalizing potential because the violence in a
concentrated form exposes, or can be claimed to expose, the moral–legal
corruption of that system. The higher the degree of victim’s innocence, the
more morally corrupted the violator appears (Martin, 2005, p. 315). As
details of Said’s life and murder appeared it became increasingly evident
that he had been the victim of random and unjustified police violence.
Friends and relatives testified to the fact that Said was not politically active
in any kind of way (this comes out clearly in interviews made for the DR
radio documentary referred to earlier). Furthermore, the charges made
against Said after his murder (see Section ‘‘Three levels of agency’’) were
quickly challenged. For example, it emerged that police, judicial, and
political authorities had collaborated to cover up the incident (e.g., the
forensic reports mentioned in the preceding section) and sought to tarnish
his reputation (e.g., the press statements issued by the Ministry of the
Interior) (as described by Martin, 2005 in his analysis of the Rodney King
beating, target devaluation is a preferred strategy of authorities attempting
to avoid any moral and political backfire to violence). As the allegations
grew in credibility and significance, partly as a result of the interventions of
individuals and activists (see the background section), Said’s innocence was
amplified. Put differently, Khaled Said’s moral purity developed in a reverse
proportional and dialectical relationship with the moral–legal corruption of
authorities.20 The gradual disintegration and general lack of credibility of

authorities’ explanations created a powerful contrast to the postmortem
photograph, the extreme treatment appearing totally out of proportion
considering Said’s background and the circumstances of the violence. The
increasing evidence of moral–legal corruption on the part of Egyptian
authorities facilitated and energized the flow of injustice meanings to the
postmortem photograph of Khaled Said. Khaled Said’s innocence was,
moreover, strongly supported by the pre-death photograph. The man in the
photograph does not conform to stereotypes of hardcore political activists
or common criminals. While it is common knowledge that a person’s
innocence cannot be extracted from his or her appearance it is quite
plausible that ‘‘positive’’ photographs, such as that of Khaled Said, can help
strengthen the public’s sense of a victim’s innocence, at least when it appears
alongside more factual information supporting such a position.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In the concluding section I wish to briefly address three wider issues and
points for future debate and analysis that spring from the preceding
analysis. The first concerns the place and relevance of photography in social
movement research. The second considers the extent to which the findings in
the Khaled Said case may be generalizable to other cases and settings. The
third is a discussion of the transnational aspects of the Said case.
In one of the most influential books on photography, Sontag (1979) is
generally skeptical about the transformative power of photographs. She
fears that rather than activating and mobilizing people against injustice,
photographs of suffering may have a numbing and demobilizing effect or,
even worse, become the objects of voyeurism and perverse entertainment.
And it is certainly true, as noted by Linfield (2010, p. 33), that ‘‘seeing does
not necessarily translate into believing, caring, or acting.’’ Indeed, if the
sheer presence of photographs of suffering and injustice were sufficient to
mobilize people, protesters would be packing the streets constantly. Yet, as
Linfield (2010) is also keen to point out, photographs do sometimes make a
political difference. Khaled Said is a case in point. In the absence of the
postmortem photograph would his unjust death have caused any waves in
Egypt? Even if this is counterfactual speculation I think it safe to say that it
would not. In trying to understand how and why certain photographs
acquire mobilizing potential I find it absolutely crucial to consider the role
of political activists. In relation to Khaled Said I argue that the postmortem
18 THOMAS OLESEN
photograph in itself contained morally shocking potential, but that its

transformation from horrible photograph to injustice symbol with society-
wide implications required the active intervention of political activists.
Within social movement studies, however, we still know surprisingly little
about these dynamics. This chapter has offered one line of explanation. Yet
for more systematic knowledge and theorization to emerge we need to
include more cases and theoretical perspectives and establish a focused
scholarly exchange. The present volume of Research in Social Movements,
Conflicts, and Change is an important step in that direction.
Moving on from these observations, I believe that there are several such
cases worthy of attention from social movement scholars. I will mention just
a couple to which the concept might be extended and applied: Since May
2011, footage of a 13-year-old boy, Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb, returned to his
family from police custody with his body bearing clear signs of torture, has
been a central visual injustice symbol in uprisings against the Syrian regime.
A Facebook page clearly modeled on the Said case, ‘‘We Are All Hamza
Alkhateeb,’’ serves as the main tool for developing and maintaining the
symbol. Two years earlier the live images of a dying protestor, Neda Agha-
Soltan, shot by security forces during post-election protests in Iran in 2009
achieved, and continue to have, iconic status in protests against the Iranian
regime. And going even further back in time, Nick Ut’s 1972 photograph of
a group of naked children fleeing from a napalm bomb attack at the village
of Trang Bang in Vietnam galvanized anti-war protest and remains a key
symbol in collective memories of the Vietnam War (Hariman & Lucaites,
2007; Sontag, 1979, p. 18). While the examples mentioned above share
certain traits, they are also highly different with regard to their sources of
public distribution, political contexts, and the characters of the photographs
and footage. The challenge for future research, as stated above, is to develop
theories and typologies able to address and analyze this diversity.
The above examples demonstrate how visual injustice symbols often
transcend the national–global dichotomy. This is true for the Khaled Said
symbol, but is also a characteristic of all three examples mentioned above.21
Sontag (2003, p. 23) has argued that photographs, in contrast to speech and
writing, speak only one ‘‘language.’’ This universal character, which stems
largely from their emotional power discussed above, gives photographs of
bodily suffering significant cross-national diffusion potential. Although not
speaking directly of photographs, Waters’ (2001, pp. 19–20) remarks
capture the overall point: ‘‘Symbolic exchanges release social arrangements
from spatial referents. Symbols can be proliferated rapidly and in any
locality y [and] are easily transportable and communicable.’’ Even if we
accept the basic thrust of the argument we must be cautious not to overstate
this globalizing dynamic. It should be borne in mind that a photograph
of suffering is always local, private, and particular; suffering, in other
words, always happens somewhere and to someone. What is profoundly
modern about photography, however, is that it allows such local experiences
to be radically disembedded (Giddens, 1991; see also Sontag, 2003, p. 21).
It is thus a key characteristic of global modernity that local/national
injustices are increasingly globalized through moral–political solidarity
action (Alexander, 2007; Olesen, 2005). In relation to photography and
visual injustice symbols these remarks suggest that photographs may be
successful in symbolically diffusing local/national injustice frames transna-
tionally. Yet in that process the local/national injustice frame invariably
changes meaning in at least two ways: first, the diffused version will lack the
‘‘thickness’’ of the local/national version; second, it will be interpreted
through the political–cultural filters of the receiving audience. Theorizing
and analyzing the way visual injustice symbols are transformed in inter-
action between the local/national and global levels is a particularly fruitful
area for future research within political sociology.
A final note for consideration in future research: in line with the political–
cultural approach adopted here it is important to consider injustice symbols
not only as instigators and motivators of political activism, but as outcomes
as well. This opens up to a temporal perspective interested in the extent to
which Khaled Said has become integrated into Egyptian political culture as
a core injustice symbol or perhaps even an injustice memory (see also
footnote 22). This development can be probed on at least two levels. First,
commemoration activities are among the most vital signs that an event or
individual has become part of a country’s political culture or collective
memory (Booth, 2006; Cubitt, 2007; Olick, 2007). Such activities can be
both formal and informal. Formal activities are typically related to state
sanctioned days and sites of remembrance. In the case of Khaled Said no
official sanctioning has yet occurred. However, informal and popular
activities commemorating the one-year anniversary of Said’s death were
widespread in Egypt on June 6, 2011, especially in Cairo and Said’s
hometown of Alexandria. Many of these employed the silent stand format
discussed in the background section. Commemoration activities at the one-
year anniversary often took a decidedly political character, as Egyptians
generally consider many of the ills of the Mubarak regime to remain
unresolved (see also the section on analogical bridging). The most vivid and
politically charged act of commemoration occurred on June 6, 2011, when
protestors outside the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior in Cairo sprayed the
20 THOMAS OLESEN
face of Khaled Said on the ministry walls as part of a wider protest against
the ruling military council and the lack of democratic progress.22 Second, in
his analysis of the Holocaust as a cultural trauma and memory, Jeffrey
Alexander (2004, p. 247) argues that the extent to which an event has
become ingrained in political culture is evidenced by its employment in
analogical bridging. Analogical bridging occurs when a current event is
‘‘compared’’ with a past event (whose injustice is undisputed) in order to
emphasize the injustice of the current event and to strengthen the legitimacy
of claims related to that event. A similar pattern of analogical bridging has
been evident in the case of Egypt and Khaled Said. Issam Atallah
(Safieddine, 2011), Elsayed Belal (We Are All Khaled Said, 2011), and
Essam Ali Atta (Rodrı́guez, 2011) are only a few examples of victims of
police brutality and/or torture in Egypt who have been termed as a ‘‘new’’
or ‘‘another’’ Khaled Said. The case of Essam Ali Atta is of particular
interest. In late October 2011 his fate became a rallying point for post-
Revolution protests against the military council that has ruled Egypt since
the fall of Mubarak. For protestors gathering in the Tahrir Square, Atta’s
death testified that even if Mubarak had gone, violent police practices
persist under the military council. From a symbolic point of view it was
particularly interesting to note how Atta’s and Said’s fates were connected
through the presence of Said’s mother, Leila Marzouk, during the protests
in the Tahrir Square (Abdellatif, 2011).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This chapter is a revised version of a paper presented at the Danish

Sociology Conference, Aarhus, January 19–20, 2012. I am grateful to the
participants in the workshop on social movements for their useful
comments. I also wish to sincerely thank three anonymous reviewers at
Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change for their unusually
useful feedback.
NOTES
1. For other applications of the injustice symbol concept, see Olesen (2011, 2012,
forthcoming).
2. It is difficult to approach the case of Khaled Said without some ethical
hesitation. The horrifying photograph of Khaled Said in the morgue represents a
very private moment. To photograph people, Sontag thus says (1979, p. 14), ‘‘is to
violate them y it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.’’ This
is a quite precise characterization of what happened to the photographs of Khaled
Said in the Egyptian Revolution, but it also describes the way it is used in a article
such as this. What is worth noting in this particular case, however, is how the post-
mortem photograph was not taken by a ‘‘stranger,’’ but by Said’s own family and
with the explicit purpose of publicizing the injustice that had befallen him. The
photograph in this sense does not entail a violation or intrusion in the same way as
photographs taken for purely or mainly professional purposes.
3. This understanding and expectation of photography (especially documentary
photography), is evidenced in the disputes that arise when the authenticity of a
photograph is questioned. Such a dispute arose over one of the most famous
photographs/footage from the Balkan Wars: a group of Muslim prisoners standing
behind a barbed wire fence at the Trnopolje camp in the Prijedor region. The center
of the picture and subsequent attention was the prisoner Fikret Alic who appeared
bare-chested and evidently emaciated. The images immediately drew analogies to the
Holocaust. However, critics later argued that what was portrayed as a concentration
camp was in fact a refugee camp and that the ‘‘prisoners’’ were standing outside the
barbed wire compound (for detailed accounts of the controversy, see Campbell, 2002
and Taylor, 1998, pp. 60–63).
4. This point can be understood at several levels: first, the meaning of the same
photograph may change over time; second, meaning may vary between countries/
regions (see also the concluding section); third, meaning will differ between
individuals.
5. This argument is not uncontroversial. Butler (2010, p. 71), for example, argues
as follows: ‘‘The photograph is not merely a visual image awaiting interpretation; it
is itself actively interpreting, sometimes forcibly so.’’ While Butler’s point is well
taken I wish to maintain that for a photograph to become an injustice symbol with
implications for and resonance in a wider public it must undergo a process of
interpretation and exposure by political actors.
6. Documentary photography is, however, a category with several shades. Sontag
(1979, p. 6), for example, argues how the famous series of American Depression
photographs created by members of the Farm Security Administration were in fact
the results of a concerted and strategic effort to get the ‘‘right’’ picture (the best
known of these is undoubtedly Dorothea Lange’s ‘‘Migrant Mother’’ from 1936).
7. The documentary is available on: http://www.dr.dk/P1/P1Dokumentar/
Udsendelser/2011/05/31092508.htm (accessed October 20, 2011).
8. Khaled Said’s full name is Khaled Mohamed Said Sobhi.
9. For a set of witness accounts in Arabic see http://www.elshaheeed.co.uk/2010/
07/04/khaled-said-murder-witness-accounts-arabic-videos (accessed November 21,
2011).
10. The first forensic report can be accessed at: http://www.dr.dk/NR/
rdonlyres/2B705A52-EB04-4D7F-9FF8-6D91A2DACB7C/2848082/Firstforensicre
port.pdf. The second can be accessed at: http://www.dr.dk/NR/%20rdonlyres/
2B705A52-EB04-4D7F-9FF8-6D91A2DACB7C/2848072/Preliminarytripartite
forensicreport.pdf.
11. The international evaluation report can be accessed at: http://www.alnadeem.
org/en/node/306 (accessed December 6, 2011).
22 THOMAS OLESEN
12. The two police officers responsible for Said’s death were sentenced to seven
years imprisonment in October 2011. Said’s family and activists widely considered
the sentence to be too lenient.
13. The original page started by Ghonim was in Arabic (http://www.facebook.
com/ElShaheeed), but an English language version was soon after set up by
Mohamed Ibrahim (http://www.facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk).
14. See http://www.elshaheeed.co.uk/silent-stands (accessed November 29, 2011).
15. Several videos showing Khaled Said related protests may be found on
YouTube, for example: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-
east/egypt/111029/thousands-rally-alleged-torture-victim-essam-atta (accessed November
17, 2011).
16. The quote has been translated from the Danish narrator’s translation from
Maher’s Arabic.
17. The fact that social media played a key role in mobilization should not
eclipse the effect of personal and physical relations in that regard. As noted by
Tufecki and Wilson (2012, p. 370) many received information about protests by
mouth.
18. I make a distinction between ‘‘politically engaged’’ and ‘‘politically motivated’’
to denote that only about one-third of those who took part in the protests in 2010
and 2011 had previously been engaged in political activism (Tufecki & Wilson, 2012,
p. 369).
19. Egypt has 18 public universities and a high tertiary education enrollment rate
at 32.6% (EACEA, 2011).
20. Said’s innocence and the violator’s moral–legal corruption helped elevate him
to the status of martyr. This status is evident for example in the Arabic name URL of
the ‘‘We Are All Khaled Said’’ page, el shaheed, which translates as ‘‘the martyr.’’
Martyrs play a key role in most major religions, but generally have a stronger
position in Muslim societies where the term refers to individuals who, in dying for a
religious cause, transfer their moral qualities to society. Martyrs in this sense are
closely related to the concept of injustice symbols.
21. In the global context one example deserves special mention. In September
2011 Khaled Said posthumously received the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Human rights
Award (Friedrich ebert Stiftung, 2011). In relation to the event German graffiti artist
Andreas von Chrzanowski (aka Case) painted a portrait of Khaled Said on a piece of
the Berlin Wall. The process and result is documented in a widely distributed video
featuring one of the songs Khaled Said wrote before his death. The painting is to be
placed permanently in Berlin’s Freedom Park. The Berlin portrait is interesting not
only because the portrait and video have been widely circulated, but also because it
contains a double symbolism. The use of a piece of the Berlin Wall as a ‘‘canvas’’ for
Said’s portrait powerfully projects his fate into global history and memory. The
Berlin Wall contains considerable symbolic importance for people all over the world.
The symbolic association with the Berlin Wall thus ‘‘lends’’ some of the wall’s
undisputed and globally recognized status as an injustice symbol to that of Khaled
Said. The photograph can be seen at: http://www.dsg.ae/portals/0/ASMR2.pdf
(accessed December 7, 2011).
22. A recording of the event can be seen on http://www.alnadeem.org/files/
torture_in_egypt_0.pdf (accessed December 20, 2011).
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BODIES KEYING POLITICS:
A VISUAL FRAME ANALYSIS OF
GENDERED LOCAL ACTIVISM
IN FRANCE AND FINLAND
Eeva Luhtakallio
ABSTRACT
The chapter introduces a methodological approach to analyzing visual

material based on Erving Goffman’s frame analysis. Building on the
definition of dominant frames in a set of visual material, and the analysis
of keying within these frames, the approach provides a tangible tool to
analyze contextualized visual material sociologically. To illustrate the
approach, the chapter analyzes visual representations of social movement
contention in two local contexts, the cities of Lyon, France, and Helsinki,
Finland. The material was collected during ethnographic fieldwork and
consists of 505 images from local activist websites. The analysis asks how
femininity, masculinity, and gender/sex ambiguity key visual representa-
tions of different aspects of contentious action, such as mass gatherings,
violence, protest policing, and performativity. Strong converging features
are found in the contents of the frames in the two contexts, yet differences
also abound, in particular in the ways femininity keys different frames
of contention in visual representations. The results show, first, that

ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X(2013)0000035006
27
28 EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
the visual frame analysis approach is a functioning tool for analyzing

large sets of visual material with a qualitative emphasis, and second, that
a comparison of local activism through visual representations calls into
question many general assumptions of political cultures, repertoires of
contention, and cultural gender systems, and highlights the importance for
sociologists of looking closely enough for both differences and similarities.
Keywords: Frame; keying; visual representations; gender;

social movements; comparative research
INTRODUCTION
Visual representations play a crucial role in struggles over discursive power,

the power to set agendas, and the power to define credibility. What we think
of a collective struggle far away, or in the neighboring city district, is
increasingly dependent on the images we have seen on TV, in newspaper
reports, and the internet. These images may be of young men throwing
stones at the police or the windows of a McDonald’s, or they may represent
dancing, singing, and shouting women wearing flowers, or veils, on their
heads. Sometimes images of activism are filled with clouds of tear gas, at
other times, they are crowded by colorful, carnivalesque groups carrying
signs or playing self-made musical instruments. These elements appear in the
most common visual representations found in news reports on social
movements, and on the countless websites where activists themselves share
photos of their actions.
Social movement contention is a particularly spatial, bodily, and, indeed,
visual form of politics: its means of influencing the current media-dominated
public spheres lie firmly in the chances of being seen and recognized. For the
sociology of social movements, visual representations offer the possibility of
grasping elements that are complicated to analyze by means of, for instance,
interviews, such as the meanings and consequences of different aspects of
gender: masculinity, femininity, and gender/sex ambiguity. Gender aspects
matter in all kinds of collective action, and provoke a great number of
stereotypes and assumptions, but they have been the subject to less in-depth
analysis, apart from studies on movements that have explicitly gendered
goals such as feminist or gay rights movements (Charles, 2004; Einwoher,
Hollander, & Olson, 2000; Taylor, 1999; see however Adams, 2002;
Dunezat, 2007; Kolářová, 2004; Luhtakallio, 2007; Sasson-Levy &
Bodies Keying Politics 29
Rapoport, 2003). Furthermore, gender is an element proper to all visual

representations of human beings: all images of people are gender
representations, and whether the signs of gender are clear or blurred, the
question of gender is present (e.g., Butler, 1990; de Lauretis, 1987; Grosz,
1994).1 I suggest that looking closely at two limited, local cases of visual
activist publicity is one way to address the complex question of the meanings
of gender in contentious action. I argue that analyzing visual representations
of local social movements from a comparative perspective enables us to
deepen our understanding of the ways in which gendered bodies matter in
different forms of protest in different contexts.
In this chapter, I analyze the gendered representations of social move-
ment contention in two local contexts, the cities of Lyon, France, and
Helsinki, Finland.2 I ask how femininity, masculinity, and gender/sex
ambiguity intertwine with – or key, as this feature will be called later – visual
representations of different aspects of contentious action, such as mass
gatherings, violence, protest policing, and performativity. How do these
intertwinements converge and differ in two cultural contexts chosen to
provide a comparison between places of extreme historical differences in
terms of both contention and activist cultures (e.g., Alapuro, 2005a, 2005b,
2010; Balibar, 2001; Luhtakallio, 2012), and the societal understandings
of gender (e.g., Célestin, DalMolin, & Coutivron, 2003; Holli, 2003; Holli,
Luhtakallio, & Raevaara, 2006; Lépinard, 2007; Raevaara, 2005)? What
kind of visual gender representations appear, and how do they mark the
images of contention in the two local contexts that simultaneously echo the
above cultural characteristics, yet also have their own specificities?
In France, popular uprisings have marked the historical moments of
the Republic, and social movements continue to be a significant political
force exerting effective pressure on political decision-making at all levels of
government (Alapuro, 2005a, 2005b, 2010; Balibar, 2001; Rosanvallon,
1998). Concretely, in today’s France, laws may still have to be remodeled
and government policies redirected under the more or less straightforward
influence of a sufficiently strong protest movement, a trend that also echoes
the universal Republican understanding of the citizen as a direct, non-
mediated relation with the state (e.g., Alapuro, 2010; Luhtakallio, 2012;
Rosanvallon, 1998). In Finland, instead of articulating forceful protest,
popular movements have historically been harnessed in the work of building
a common nation, and citizens have been understood as a thoroughly
represented collective (e.g., Alapuro, 2005a, 2010; Luhtakallio, 2012;
Stenius, 2003, 2010). Today it remains neither rare nor particularly risky
for those in power to ignore popular protests entirely. Open contention,
30 EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
especially of a violent nature, finds few sympathizers in Finnish society

(e.g., Lindström, 2012; Siisiäinen, 1998). Therefore, the grounds from which
protest movements arise differ in France and Finland: in the former,
protesting and bringing crowds to the streets often seems the most effective –
even the only effective – way to influence politics, whereas in the latter, overt
protest may mean risking credibility rather than benefiting the cause. These
cultural understandings of the traditional place of protest have conse-
quences for the respective political cultures: in France, strong and direct
protest is a self-evident part of being a citizen from national labor union
leaders to school children, whereas in Finland only the most radical groups
or the most pressing causes have resorted to open protest. Even today, Finns
tend on average to be rather suspicious of both the legitimacy and the
efficiency of protest (e.g., World Value Survey, 2004 on the readiness of the
Finns and the French to engage in different forms of protest action).
When assessing general features such as those outlined above, it is also
necessary to pay attention to the characteristics of the actors behind actions.
Gender is particularly crucial, with its many intersections in and with other
social categorizations. In terms of cultural conceptualizations of gender,
Finland and France can be placed at the opposite ends of the spectrum in
their emphases on equality and difference. The feminist movement in
Finland has emphasized gender equality, similar treatment of women and
men in the labor market, and cooperative partnership between women and
men (Jallinoja, 1983; Raevaara, 2005). In France, in contrast, sexual
difference and the specific needs and experiences of women have dominated
the debate (Célestin et al., 2003; Lépinard, 2007). Regarding civil society
actors, in France, a firm division of labor in which men and women act in
separate groups has traditionally predominated, whereas in Finland this
division has been less clear cut, even if influential at the level of practices
(e.g., Heinen et al., 2004; Holli, Luhtakallio, & Raevaara, 2007; Raevaara,
2005). However, since the 1960s, an ideal of gender equality has been
introduced into the field of social movements worldwide (e.g., Henig, 2004).
In the Finnish activist culture, the convergence of the tradition of equality
politics with social justice ideology has been smooth, even invisible,
providing a generalized idea of ‘‘achieved’’ gender equality that makes
gender discrimination and/or differences a difficult topic to address within
movements (Holli et al., 2007; Luhtakallio, 2012). In France, in contrast, the
traditional politics of gender difference, joined with claims of equality within
progressive movements, has generated opening toward feminist politics
within movements, although often resulting in bitter conflicts with uncertain
results (e.g., Luhtakallio, 2012). The ways in which the ideal of equality
within movements meets contextual gender configurations of political power

is a crucial point for illustrating the importance of the comparative analysis
of the visual sphere of political struggles for power, voice, and recognition.
In spite of these differences, the local protest cultures and repertoires of
contention in Lyon and Helsinki have striking similarities, as the following
analysis of the visual representations will show (see also Luhtakallio, 2012).
There is no great mystery to this: today’s activists network and travel in
activist circles across Europe and elsewhere, and follow events and
developments in social movements in other countries through the internet.
The interest of comparing activism in these two countries emerges, however,
precisely from this paradox: in a European perspective, these are two both
historically and currently very different polities and political cultures that
nevertheless nurture contentious politics that cross borders, borrow, copy,
and domesticate ideas and repertoires.3 Therefore, this chapter addresses
questions of gender and contention at the intersection of differences and
convergences that provide grounds to understand the complex mechanisms
in which political cultures, local contexts, and gender are configured in
contentious politics.
The empirical material drawn on here consists of images collected from
the websites of local social movement activists in Lyon (N=230) and
Helsinki (N=275). I collected the material as part of ethnographic
fieldwork4 carried out among local activists that covered, either through
participatory observation, interviews, or both, a wide range of local groups,
from radical protest movements to lobby and service provision groups in
close contact with local authorities. This research strategy was chosen to
make sure that as many different aspects of local civic activities as possible
be included in the study. In both contexts, the web search was conducted on
two occasions, for the Lyonnais sites in December 2005, and the Helsinki-
based sites in August 2007, and both again in June 2008. The images – those
that include information on the dates of the activities – had been taken
mainly between 2004 and 2008. In collecting the visual material I visited the
websites of all the groups included in the fieldwork, but also followed links
on these sites. The websites included global justice movement branches
(local ATTAC associations), student protest groups, squatters, as well as
single-issue protest and/or advocacy groups in both cities; radical libertarian
groups and urban planning advocacy groups in Lyon; Reclaim the Streets
organizers and public services advocacy groups in Helsinki. An important
resource for images of protests with many organizers, as well as for double-
checking the coverage of the material, were two umbrella sites linking local
protest groups: Megafoni and Rebellyon (Megafoni, 2009; Rebellyon, 2010).
32 EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
I included all images found from these sources, without preselecting issues
or events, so as to make the sample as representative of the local online
activist visuality of the time as possible.5
I knew most of the groups whose images were included, and participated
myself in some of the events represented in the material, thus gaining an
understanding of the activists’ ideas of what was at stake in these
representations. I was thus able to include a larger sample of groups and
events without losing touch with the material and social conditions the
images were produced in, and therefore, in my view, maintain a noncogni-
tive, kinesthetic understanding of the activities and gender configurations
that repeatedly emerged within the two contexts (Laine, 2011, pp. 251–253),
and thereby the capacity to read the images sensitively, even though the
numbers involved are large. The ethnographic link to the material helped in
analyzing complex issues such as the meaning of gender configurations in the
two contexts.6 My take on analyzing this material is primarily that of
researcher interpretation, built on an ethnographic understanding of the
contexts these representations stem from, on the one hand, and a careful
examination of a corpus of over 500 images, on the other, thus forming a
broad understanding of the ‘‘master frame’’ in question.
While the significance of visual representations is widely recognized today
in many areas of mainstream sociological analysis, from everyday sociability
to consumption habits, work remains to be done regarding both the
recognition of visual material as a serious sociological object and methodo-
logical approaches to the sociology of visual representations (e.g., Becker,
1998; Grady, 1996; Harper, 1998; Holliday, 2000; Rose, 2001; Suchar, 1997;
Wagner, 2002). To contribute to this work, this chapter introduces a
methodological approach based on Erving Goffman’s (1974) frame analysis.
Combining frame analysis and social movement studies is no breaking news,
and the field of visual sociology is no stranger to frames (on framing and
social movements, see, e.g., Benford & Snow, 2000; Snow & Benford, 1988,
2000; Snow & Byrd, 2007; Snow, Vliegenthart, & Corrigall-Brown, 2007; on
frames and visual material, see, e.g., Fahmy, 2010; Gamson, Croteau,
Hoynes, & Sasson, 1992; Margolis, 1999; Morreale, 1991; Parry, 2010).
While acknowledging the achievements of the innumerable applications of
frame analysis in these fields of study, I suggest that going back to
Goffman’s theoretical work provides a fruitful starting point to solve some
of the troubles of analyzing visual material sociologically, and in particular,
how to figure out new ways to address social movement activities through
visual representations. An adaptation of Goffman’s idea of keying and
a suggestion of defining the dominant frames visual material entails form
the core of this methodological application that simultaneously enables the

analysis of a large set of images combined with a sensitive reading of visual
representations (see also Luhtakallio, 2005, 2012).
In the next part, I revisit Goffman’s theory of framing. In the third part,
I introduce my suggestion for visual frame analysis. Finally, the compara-
tive case of the activist website images from Lyon and Helsinki will illustrate
the methodological approach via an analysis of the dynamics of gender
keying in the dominant frames of demonstration, violence, and performance.
FRAME ANALYSIS REVISITED

In their everyday lives, people face the necessity of analyzing situations in
order to navigate in the world and understand social interactions and
encounters. Goffman (1974, pp. 8–11) calls this ‘‘framing,’’ an activity
typical to human beings, through which people try to make sense of the
world and the situations they experience.
For Goffman, the purpose of frame analysis is twofold: it seeks, first, to
identify foundational framings in society that make the understanding of
events and situations possible, and second, to analyze their vulnerability and
change. Transformations of framings take place through keying which is
‘‘y a set of conventions by which a given activity, one already meaningful
in terms of some primary framework, is transformed into something
patterned on this activity but seen by the participants to be something quite
else’’ (Goffman, 1974, pp. 43–44). Thus, keying alters the frame by creating
new interpretational connections. Keying is not static or permanent; it can
be followed by indefinite turns of rekeying that always alter both the basic
foundational framing and the previous keying (ibid., p. 45, pp. 81–82;
Heiskala, 2003, pp. 261–264; Manning, 1992, p. 125).
These characteristics render the idea of applying frames to visual material
fruitful. By deploying frames, it is possible to analyze how visual representa-
tions simultaneously create meanings within different frames, and how these
frames may shift, break, and alter through keying. In looking at an image,
new information may occur either through new interpretation within an
image – a second glance, for instance – or through a serial keying taking
place because of one or several other images bringing in new information,
and resonating in the entire ‘‘set’’ of representations in question. Further-
more, as framing is a process that structures experience and produces
meanings in communication with the contexts of a given situation, a frame
connects a phenomenon to a space and time, and places it on a continuum
34 EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
of experienced phenomena that bear resemblance. In the process of framing,

visual representations are connected to the social reality they are part of and
take part in representing, reproducing, and readjusting.
Goffman’s original work, with its empirical examples of face-to-face
interaction, puts a strong emphasis on the vulnerability, whether voluntary
or involuntary, of framing: the numerous occasions in social life where
figuring out what a situation means requires our understanding several layers
of frames, keyings, and rekeyings (Goffman, 1974, p. 10). Is a fight we see on
the street a real fight, a mockery between friends, or a staged scene to distract
people from pickpockets at work? And what happens to the definition of this
situation if we recognize one of the fighters as the prime minister, and the
other as a popular actor? Analyzing images, in terms of Goffman’s frame
analysis, means asking ‘‘what seems to be going on’’ in the light of different
elements within the image as well as in the context: the publication channel
and other similar images. Furthermore, it means asking what are the
elements that affect these goings-on in ways that make them mean the
‘‘same’’ thing – a fight is a fight, like a demonstration is a demonstration – but
in a different ‘‘tone,’’ keyed to meanings that are recognizable within the
frame, and yet a little different – or even entirely transformed.
In analyzing the visual representations of the local social movements in
Lyon and Helsinki, I argue for the use of frame analysis that examines
political struggles and contention as processes of interpretation that entail
undoubtedly strategic attempts to direct meanings, but more importantly,
for a vision of framing as repeated acts of understanding through dynamics
of individual cognition and experience, and mental reserves of cultural
competence.7 However much an activist webmaster or a photographer may
strategize about a given image in a given moment and a given place, once it
is ‘‘out there,’’ the framing processes it is subjected cannot be controlled,
even if they are not completely random either. More than mere strategies,
I trace the common, probable interpretations viewers make of these images,
and thus, the double dynamic of reflecting and producing political realities,
understandings of gender, and the possible consequences of these dynamics
that the frame approach helps to unfold. In the following, I describe the
methodological grounds and tools that are needed to accomplish this task.
TRACING THE DYNAMICS OF DOMINANT FRAMES

AND KEYING: VISUAL FRAME ANALYSIS
The starting point for developing the visual frame analysis approach was the
need to find a solution that would overcome the deficiencies and limitations
of the tools that sociological analyses of visual material mostly use: visual
content analysis for studying large sets of images, the wide variety of
semiotic approaches for studying the signs and meaning production in single
images or relatively small sets of material, and narrative analysis for
studying visual storylines (e.g., Cowie, 1994; Prosser, 1998; Rose, 2001; van
Leeuwen & Jewitt, 2001; van Zoonen, 1994). These methods have been
applied in a wide variety of cases of visual sociological analysis (on content
analysis, see, e.g., Ahmed, 2000; Billings & Eastman, 2002; Garcı́a,
Martı́nez, & Salgado, 2003; on semiotics and narrative analysis, see, e.g.,
Anttila, 2009; Harper, 2000; Harrison, 2003; Margolis, 1999; Mattoni &
Doerr, 2007; Nixon, 1997). They certainly prove useful for various kinds of
research questions. Nevertheless, when the social, contextual, and cultural
dynamics of visual representations together form the center of interest, the
troubles of the sociological analyst of visual culture are far from being
solved. The following is an attempt to solve a few more.
Studying visual representations – visually experienced ‘‘situations’’ of
everyday life – requires taking into account their simultaneously produced
and productive nature. They both articulate social processes and contribute
to them: they produce meaning from within a world, objectifying something
collectively observed or experienced, and produce, reproduce, and alter
this world (e.g., Cowie, 1994; Hall, 1997). In terms of the activist websites
I studied, the visual representations found were, thus, simultaneously
products of more or less conscious publishing processes8 and the intention
to share and articulate certain meanings and images that, once published,
enter endless processes of interpretation and negotiation with viewers.
In order to grasp this twofold dynamic of representation and to make
sense of the stream of images floating around on the internet, popping up
and commented on here and there in the flow of communication that formed
the local public spheres in Lyon and Helsinki, I began with the idea that
typically, when we look at an image, we ask what are we looking at, and
answer the question by interpreting what we see. I took it more or less for
granted that these visual representations would rarely be mistaken for
something other than ‘‘messages by grassroots activists and groups,’’ as the
media, websites of activist groups, were extremely recognizable. But what
takes interpretation – and framing – is to understand what kind of an image
this is, what does it mean, and how does it relate to the thousands of
previous ‘‘visual situations’’ one has seen, and to the reserve of visual
literacy one has gained.
In order to understand the meaning of an image, we need to come up with
an answer to the question ‘‘what is going on here?’’, and to accompany it
with additional interpretations and understandings that may either slightly
36 EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
alter or color the meaning, or redirect or change it profoundly (Goffman,

1974, pp. 8–11, 43–44). I call these two layers of interpretation dominant
framing and keying.
A dominant frame is the primary analysis of a situation. Even though
several meanings and interpretations, even contradictory ones, may arise
from one image, a primary interpretation, the first idea of what is going on,
can usually be detected.
Keying is interpretation that directs and focuses – and sometimes
transfers or even switches – the meaning of an image in a given situation.
Goffman’s (1974, pp. 40–75) own use of keying concentrates on the idea of
how play, make-believe, and dramatic or ceremonial settings alter the
framing of situations. My use of keying diverges slightly from Goffman’s
checklist of definitions – as, for instance, the question whether ‘‘participants
in the activity are meant to know and to openly acknowledge that a
systemic alteration is involved’’ is not within the remit of the visual
analysis – while still converging with its conclusion, that ‘‘a keying y per-
forms a crucial role in determining what it is we think is really going on’’
(ibid., p. 45). In terms of visual frame analysis, I argue that there is good
reason for the musical metaphor Goffman chose to describe this pheno-
menon, even if he did so with some reservations (ibid., p. 44, note 14).
Whether a frame ‘‘chimes’’ in A Major or minor makes an important
difference in visual representations. For example, in one of the common
frames of the activist websites, the frame of violence, ‘‘what is going on’’
differs quite a bit according to whether the frame is keyed with a represen-
tation of dark-colored, testosterone-fuelled rows of riot police, or with a
hint of gender ambiguity, let alone outright mockery, in the figure of an
activist dressed as a clown secretly gluing heart-shaped stickers to the backs
of police uniforms. Furthermore, like in musical arrangements, keying in
visual representations can tune the situation a little or change almost the
entire song, as in the above example.9
To break down the rather general and unmethodical formulation
Goffman presented, I rely primarily on two sources to add precision to
the procedure. First, I took on the sociological understanding of what action
consists of, notably Burke’s (1969[1945]) pentad division of act, scene, agent,
agency, and purpose: what is being done, in what circumstances, by whom,
how, and why. Second, I focused on the features that the literature on the
semiotic understanding of visual objects lists as the crucial constituents of
visual meaning, such as perspective, angle of view, relative size of elements
and people, direction of gaze, facial expression, bodily features, movements,
and mimic (e.g., Goffman, 1979; Rose, 2001, pp. 75–77, 112–114, 188–189;
Williamson, 1978).
I first went through the material in order to define and name the dominant
frames: the repeated features emerging as the ‘‘at the first glance’’
interpretations when looking at the images. This procedure can be described
as imitating a random viewer of the images trying to make sense of them,
with the difference that I had a larger number of pictures before me than an
average web surfer might care to go through at one sitting. Defining the
dominant frames means observing the mental categories one builds when
trying to understand what happens in an image: what is present that is
similar to something I have seen before, how does it differ from something
I have seen before, and how is it similar to or different from the other
representations that surround it.
I organized the images following the denominators detected at the first
reading, and took notes about the keyings that refined or redirected the
meanings of the images, including an attentive reading of the captions and
headlines attached to the images. This step further illustrates how the
method simulates the process of understanding images, and thus the
production of meaning that occurs in the ‘‘negotiations’’ between the image
and the viewer.
The idea of dominant framing enables the categorization of the general
characteristics, even for a very large set of visual material, whereas the
dynamics of keying provide a systematic yet sensitive way of analyzing both
the general characteristics and atypical or other particularly dense features
of the material in a qualitative approach.10 Framing and keying form a
continuum that helps identify the meaning dynamics of an image, and
further, of a set of strips that constitute the analyzed imagery.
Images make meaning and matter through both repetition and unique-
ness: as Gillian Rose (2001, p. 66), among others, has rightly noted, in
analyzing visual representations, frequency does not equal importance or
the density of meaning. However, as I wanted to keep the sample wide, and
not make a preselection of the images, some basic quantification helped in
the necessary moves back and forth in the steps of the analysis, keeping
different aspects – both the repetitive and the unique – of the material
tangible.
In the following, I analyze the images found on the activist websites in
Lyon and Helsinki as cultural representations that a viewer needs to frame
in order to understand what is going on, and to key in order to understand
how this going-on is happening.
38 EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
GENDER KEYINGS IN VISUAL FRAMES OF

CONTENTION IN LYON AND HELSINKI
In order to illustrate the workings of the visual frame analysis, I have chosen
three dominant frames and one important keying dynamic from the activist
website material for closer analysis. The frames of demonstration, violence,
and performance cover 47% of the material in Lyon, and 48% in Helsinki,
and gender keying is one of the most crucial elements throughout the
material, and the most articulate within the above three frames.11
The dominant frames have been identified as follows. The dominant frame
of demonstration consists of depictions of people marching, carrying
banderols or flags, and of crowds gathered in public spaces, as well as details
of these events, such as a single person depicted with a banderol where the
context of the picture is evidently a demonstration (not, for instance, a
banderol workshop held indoors). This frame was equally present in both
contexts (see Table 1). The frame of violence frames images that are either
explicitly violent – scenes of physical mistreatment, throwing objects, or
Table 1. Dominant Frames of Demonstration, Violence, and

Performance, and Gender/Sex Keying Within them, in Activist Website
Images in Lyon and Helsinki.
Dominant Frame Demonstration (%) Violence (%) Performance (%)
Context/Keying
Lyon Total N=230 26 17 4

Femininity 3 22
Masculinity 44 85 11
Femininity and masculinity 41 8
Gender/sex ambiguity 2 5 67
No gender/sex keying 10 2
Total % within frame 100 100 100
Helsinki Total N=275 25 10 13
Femininity 13 22
Masculinity 18 70 19
Femininity and masculinity 51 15 28
Gender/sex ambiguity 12 11 31
No gender/sex keying 6 4
Total % within frame 100 100 100
Source: Author’s own.

starting fires (when it is evident that the image is not of a friendly campfire) –
or scenes indexical to violence in which the expressions, mimic, or artefacts
that dominate the image have a connection to violence, such as shouting faces
involved in confrontation, or riot police gathered in a phalanx in full gear.
The frame of violence was slightly more frequent in the Lyonnais material.
The dominant frame of performance, finally, comprises depictions of a variety
of shows and theatrical scenes, organized performances, or make-believe and
mock appearances. The frame of performance shows a range of activist
creativity from concerts to dance and juggling performances to clown dis-
plays. This frame, in turn, was found more often in the material from Helsinki.
I have quantified the gender keyings not by looking at numbers of
people – counting which sex/gender has more representatives in each image
is impossible, as many of the pictures represent big crowds, and not all
human figures can be ‘‘clearly defined’’ – but instead by looking at what
actually keys the interpretation of the frame in question, that is, what is
important in terms of understanding what is going on in the image. In the
frame of demonstration, for instance, it is of less relevance whether there is
one woman somewhere in the crowd, than if this woman is leading the
cortège. Similarly, gender ambiguity keys an image in which one person can
be recognized as a man, but all the others in the foreground are dressed
as clowns, and deliberately unrecognizable as one gender or the other.
Table 1 illustrates a quantification of the three dominant frames and
gender keying within them, divided into a keying by femininity, masculinity,
the two former combined, gender/sex ambiguity, and no gender keying. The
first row of each set of images shows the volume of the frame in the whole
set of material, and the six rows below show the proportions of the gender
keyings within each frame.
On the one hand, the differences in the volumes of frame occurrence do
not, in themselves, tell us very much about the material. The reasons for the
variation of frequency can be speculated upon, but it is impossible to verify
to what degree this is due to the events that were topical and thus
abundantly posted about at the time the material was collected.12 This is one
of the reasons the quantification of the visual frames is not at the core of
the analysis, but instead a device used in figuring out the general features of
the material, whereas the actual analysis is done qualitatively.
On the other hand, however, the quantification of the keyings shows that
femininity, as well as the keying combining femininity and masculinity, key
the dominant frames more frequently in the material from Helsinki than in
the Lyonnais images, with the exception of the frame of violence that is very
strongly masculinity-keyed in both contexts. The frame of performance
40 EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
is the most feminine keyed frame in both contexts, although it is also

the (only) one in which gender/sex ambiguity keying is the most prevalent.
However, quantification only serves as a general description of the material
in the case of keying too. In the following, I illustrate the dominant frames
and gender keying dynamics qualitatively with examples of the images.
In both Lyon and Helsinki, demonstrating is the most ‘‘evident’’ of the
dominant frames: these images consist of crowds marching in city streets,
gathered in squares, holding banners, shouting or singing while marching
in groups. The most repeated element is an assemblage of human bodies
engaged in collective motion in a public space. The corporeality of the
activity itself renders gender a foremost feature of many of the images (cf.
Grosz, 1998). Paraphrasing Judith Butler (1990), these are performances of
gender within the displays of demonstrating, while at the same time
demonstrations are, among other things, acts of doing gender. In both
contexts, an image of a demonstration repetitively follows a pattern where it
consists of a ‘‘mass’’ of bodies – the crowd – and a singular figure (or a
couple) that sticks out from the crowd and seems to be leading it. This
pattern is presented in Fig. 1, and the gender keying in these images is
abundantly present in most representations following this pattern: the figures
represented in the foreground are often male.
Occupying the foreground, then, represents leadership, courage, and
sometimes aggression. Male bodies occupy the foreground as a male
vanguard marching together, as in Fig. 1(a). These representations of
‘‘activist fraternities,’’ or homo-social (-erotic) leadership echo the long
tradition of representations of masculinity and political power (Valenius,
2004, p. 49). Second, as in Fig. 1(b), a male figure stands out alone. Both the
Fig. 1. (a) Dominant Frame of Demonstrating in the Lyonnais Material

(Demonstration to Support the Decriminalization of Cannabis in Spring 2006) and
(b) In the Material from Helsinki (Euromayday 2004 Demonstration). Source: (a)
http://Rebellyon.info. (b) http://Megafoni.kulma.net/
microphone in his hand, and the perspective in which he is notably bigger

than anyone else emphasize his position as the leader of the massive cortège
behind him. The male activist bodies of the frame of demonstrating rarely
signify physical strength. Instead, they are skinny and young, even feminine –
and often provocative in one way or another. In Fig. 1(a), the two young
leaders dressed in black have an ‘‘armless but fearless’’ defiant look about
them that reflects the iconography of punk culture and stresses nonconfor-
mity to the prevailing consumption culture in terms of, for example, flea
market clothing and second hand bicycles. In Fig. 1(b), the provocation is
more humoristic, or a fashion statement produced by retro sun glasses,
stocking cap, and streamer around the man’s neck. In both contexts,
representations of male activists ‘‘in the lead’’ can be seen as a negotiation of
contentious, transgressive action and traditional gender roles. The latter are
reproduced by the male bodies in action, incorporating leadership however
untraditional their masculinity.
Women and men are also seen together in the foreground, but typically in
both contexts these depictions are less spectacular in the sense of the clear
leadership of the two examples above. Instead, when a combination of
femininity and masculinity keys the frame of demonstrating, the image is
often a depiction of the crowd, from near or far, marching behind the leaders.
Where we find female figures represented in the foreground within the
frame of demonstrating, mainly in the Helsinki material, the gender keying
directs to very different interpretations. Typically, the crowd is not clearly
visible, if at all, and thus leadership is not the interpretation that these
gender keyings produce. Instead, as seen in Fig. 2, the representation is
Fig. 2. Feminine Keying of Demonstrating in Helsinki (Demonstration for Increase

in Student Allowance, 2006). Source: http://Megafoni.kulma.net/Riie Heikkilä
42 EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
playful and ‘‘childlike’’: feminine gender keys the image with nonthreatening
joyfulness that closely resembles the infantile, regressed, nonserious
representations of women that Goffman (1979) found in his sample of
advertisement imageries.
In Fig. 2, the banderol states ‘‘Strike!’’, but this serious-sounding message
fails to direct the interpretation, so strong is the keying produced by the clumsy,
playful bodily movements and light-hearted, cheery expressions of the two
women. Rather than a defiant contestation, the keying directs understanding of
this image so that youthful hope and energy prevail, but also harmless action
provided by the small and feminine figures. In contrast with the sometimes
striking similarity in so many other features of the two contexts, the above type
of gender keying is seen exclusively in the material from Helsinki. In the
Lyonnais material, representations of both women and playfulness are
rather scarce. In this regard, Fig. 2 is also a representation of autonomous,
even slightly wild femininity, and hence simultaneously challenging in its
somewhat airy way to both the mainstream of current social movement
imagery, and the traditional depiction of women in political iconography.
This was, however, not the only manner of ‘‘blurring’’ the boundaries of
femininity in the Helsinki material. Apart from playfulness, aggressive
femininity also keyed some representations. Moving toward the dominant
frame of violence, Fig. 3 presents a rare but powerful case of feminine anger
and defiance.
Fig. 3. Gender Keying the Frame of Violence in Helsinki (Demonstration for a

Raise in Student Allowance in 2006). Source: http://Megafoni.kulma.net/
The group of activists confronting the police in this image consists of two
men and two women, so that the keying is both feminine and masculine, but
the ‘‘leader’’ of the confrontation seems to be the woman on the left. She is
shouting aggressively at the police and bending toward them. This rare
representation of a ‘‘Herculean’’ woman standing, if not alone still in the
leading position against the ‘‘oppressors’’ is, as such, an example of the
power of gendered agency in visual representations. The image has a certain
shock value to it, and as will be shown in the following, in the array of
representations of the frame of violence, this gender keying adds complexity
to the intertwinement of violence, bodily features, and representations of
power.
In overview, different signs of violence mark the dominant frame of
violence: there are representations of activists throwing stones, or making
threatening movements, but more abundantly, there is the police performing
physical repression in terms of blocking progression or more heavy-handed
acts such as pressing a person to the ground by force. In addition, the
visibility of firearms, potentially safety-threatening fires, and the con-
sequences of violence such as wounds and even possible casualties are part
of the repertoire of this dominant frame.
In the Lyonnais material especially the frame of violence includes
representations so explicitly violent that the first interpretation sometimes
approaches that of a war zone rather than civil society contention. Also, in
particular in the Lyonnais material, an important majority of the images
I interpreted within the dominant frame of violence represent police forces
‘‘in action.’’ First, police phalanx in riot gear, fleets of police vehicles, and
police officers gathered behind riot fences are represented. These representa-
tions seem to carry a ‘‘proof’’ function: these images tell the viewer that
the police symbolized a threat of violence for the activists, and point out the
disproportionate police presence in demonstrations. Second, the police are
represented ‘‘in action’’ toward the demonstrators. These representations
show how the police hindered the passage of demonstrators, aimed at them
with guns, or pressed them to the ground with sheer physical supremacy.
The gender keying in these images oozes testosterone, and whether or not
all the actual bodies underneath the masks and armors are biologically
male, a strong keying directs the interpretation of these images as signs of
masculinity.
A typical scene within the frame of violence in both contexts depicts the
‘‘faceless,’’ robot-like police officer kitted out in heavy riot gear and
equipped with shields and arms, (mis)using their supremacy in numbers,
mass and strength, on the skinny, helpless, and visibly armless activists,
44 EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
remorselessly on the losing side. The military-like equipment of the police,

as well as their actions toward the activists that in these images are, as far as
is possible to tell, young men rather than women, carry signs of masculine
confrontation, an unfair battle of physical strength. But it is noteworthy
that two very different masculinities are at play in these representations: the
‘‘masculine’’ male – a repressive, powerful, physically fit one – and the
‘‘feminine’’ male – a repressed, helpless, and weak one. This keying of
multiple masculinities is presented in Fig. 4.
Marginal masculinities marked by blurred boundaries with the feminine
are ‘‘dangerous’’ and fracturing to a fundamentally hetero-normative gender
order (e.g., Valenius, 2004, p. 41). These kinds of keyings can be seen as
transformative: when masculinities and femininities are repeated differently,
the entire arsenal of possible gender representations changes (de Lauretis,
1987, pp. 3–5; Luhtakallio, 2003, pp. 139–140; Rossi, 2003, p. 111). Blurring
the boundaries of masculinity calls the legitimacy of prevailing power
structures into question, and visual representations are a powerful medium
for this as the ‘‘argument’’ of these images is difficult to disprove.
Finally, the dominant frame of performance displays a variety of colorful,
theatrical ‘‘shows,’’ music performances, and parties, organized on the
streets, in shopping centers, or in squats. These representations concentrate
on the ‘‘fun’’ and ‘‘artistic’’ side of activism, from simply portraying the
good times among the activists at their own gatherings to representing
transgressive, spectacular performances in public. These representations
resonate within the entire master frame of activist imageries: in these
images, the power of social movements as agents of radical change and
Fig. 4. Masculinities Keying the Frame of Violence in (a) the Lyonnais (CPE
Demonstration in 2005) and (b) the Helsinki Material (Omega Squat Support
Demonstration, 2005). Sources: (a) http://Rebellyon.info. (b) http://Megafoni.
kulma.net/
whistle-blowers is perhaps at its clearest (see Laine, 2011; Rosanvallon,

2006). Playfulness is twofold: it shows how much fun activism is, how
creative and full of positive emotions, and at the same time entails a power-
ful political message of difference and alternative. The different funny,
mocking, and goofy representations of local activists carry a subtle set of
meanings that redirect the threats and fears of the frame of violence toward
irony and mockery of power. In addition, if the examples of the frame
of violence illustrate different keyings of masculinities and femininities in
activist representations, the dominant frame of performance adds yet
another feature: that of gender ambiguity. Either more or less feminine or
explicitly gender-blurring and ambiguous keyings in which signs of neither
femininity nor masculinity orient the interpretation occurred often in the
frame as Fig. 5 shows.
In Fig. 5(a), the activist-clowns next to the somewhat confused-looking
police officer draw a direct link to the historical tradition of fools, whose
purpose was to expose the ridiculous ways of the powerful. In Fig. 5(b), the
activist performing an act of covering a surveillance camera is at the same
time artistic and safe: s/he is not recognizable thanks to the mask s/he is
wearing.
Performers often performed in a masquerade disguised as clowns or other
theatrical and/or political figures, a feature well-known from demonstration
coverage in the mainstream media all over the Western world since at least
Fig. 5. The Frame of Performance Keyed with Gender Ambiguity (a) in Helsinki
(‘‘The Clown battalion’’ Hinders Entrance to Kamppi Shopping Mall in 2005),
and (b) in Lyon (‘‘Non à Big Brother’’ Activists Cover Surveillance Cameras
with Balloons in 2004). Source: (a) http://megafoni.kulma.net/. (b) Non à Big
Brother.
46 EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
the 1980s. The representations of Fig. 5 remind us of the tradition of fools

and clowns as subversive actors and ‘‘truth-tellers’’ throughout Western
cultural history (see Bakhtin, 1987). It is noteworthy that explicitly masculine
keyings are rather scarce as central figures of the ‘‘carnival aspect’’ of
activism in both Helsinki and Lyon: the masquerades are feminine
representations, or play with signs of homosexuality, or blurred, confusing,
unclear signs gender (see Butler, 1990, pp. 50–52). Only musical perfor-
mances, that is, rock gigs or DJ sets, have masculine keyings in this frame.
Gender is a coercive performance: even if the scale of representations of
femininity and masculinity, women and men, is a constantly changing one,
gender remains a structuring principle for representations of humans, one
that dictates rules concerning normality, acceptability, beauty, desirability,
and credibility (see Butler, 1990; de Lauretis, 1987). Challenging these rules
is a metaphor of challenging the entire societal order. Furthermore, in the
frame of performance, blurred signs of gender emphasize one source of
power: the power of powerlessness, and thus the power to ridicule. Clowns
are out of reach of the categorizing power of gender, as they are neither one
gender nor the other. They are at the same time tragically powerless, and
extremely powerful.
CONCLUSION
The representations of local activism discussed in this chapter portray

gender through a variety of keyings that both reproduce and fracture the
gendered division of labor in activism, its prevailing power structures, and
finally, the entire social order. The reproductive features can be seen in the
representations of masculine leadership as well as the confrontations
between activists and the police. However, even in the midst of the mas-
culine power game, tracing the keying dynamics provides for the fracturing,
transgressive idea of nonuniform masculinity in both contexts, however
weak a sign that may be. Similarly, images in which female activists are
keyed by childlike, ‘‘sweet’’ femininity, as in the Helsinki case, repeat and
reproduce recognizable features of representations of women. At the same
time, their presence as autonomous actors within the frames of contentious
action should not be deprecated. Maybe the playful, cheery girls – just like
the flower-headed dancers in Marta Kolářová’s (2004) analysis of women’s
roles in the visualization of protests – are more powerful than they first
seem. Their anchorage in joy is perhaps a stronger sign than the bleak
vicious circles of violence.
The two contexts share several transgressive features in the representation

of social movements, such as the coincidence of gender ambiguity and
performative dimensions of contention. Signs of unclear, blurred gender are
meaningful in the range of activist representations. In the Helsinki case in
particular, cultural antinomies like aggressive women seem recognizable
visually. Frames of visible female aggressiveness on the one hand, and
intentionally blurred and unclear keyings of gender on the other, offer
important hints of fractions, and thus also avenues of change, in the cultural
repertoires of political agency.
The findings of this study show a strong intertwinement of violence and
masculinity, and a rather scarce role of femininity altogether in the Lyonnais
imagery, whereas in Helsinki gender representations were somewhat more
varied. Why features of femininity are absent in the Lyonnais case is a
question this analysis cannot answer, but the contextual differences outlined
in the introduction may point to some clues. First, in France, recent urban
riots have further polarized relations between civil society and the police,
resulting in more violence from both sides. The masculinity of violence and
the threat of it is, therefore, an element that colors the prevailing culture of
struggle (Balibar, 2001) with rare exceptions. Second, the tensions within the
local movements in Lyon regarding the place of women and the ongoing
internal feminist struggles may be echoed in the visual publicity as exclusion
or cautiousness (see Luhtakallio, 2012, pp. 82–87). Also, the traditional
culture of gender difference gives women a particular status in French
political culture: they are at the same time uplifted, idolized creatures who
symbolize the entire nation, and invisible, politically under- or un-
represented parties excluded from ‘‘actual’’ struggles of power.
Equally, the Helsinki case reflects certain elements of the prevailing
political and gender culture in Finland. First, gender equality is assumed
and un-problematized, and a certain ‘‘innocence’’ concerning gender also
characterizes local civil society. Second, the traditional ‘‘companionship’’
between men and women provides Finnish civic culture with a long history
of women’s recognition as civic actors. Strong, independent, even masculine
women are part of a widely recognized cultural understanding of what
‘‘Finnishness’’ includes (e.g., Rossi, 2003).
In light of the historical and national contextual differences in terms of
both activism and gender systems discussed in the introduction, the analysis
of visual representations of local contention brings to the fore the impor-
tance of sensitivity to local variation more than any other thing, but also
the question of isomorphic trends in European activist cultures. Even if the
actions of the groups in Lyon and Helsinki were not the same, even if
48 EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
the activists’ thoughts about many things, including the gender configura-
tions in activist milieus, differed greatly (Luhtakallio, 2012), their ways of
visualizing their doings still converged often. Certainly, there were
differences, ones in which we can see echoes of the cooperative gender
equality culture of Finland, or the sexual difference emphasis of France, or
again the more peaceful and consensual civic repertoires in Finland as
opposed to overplayed masculine violence in France. Nevertheless, the
visualizations of the activist events fit within the same set of frames, and
could be understood by deploying similar keyings in both contexts.
These results show the importance of methodological tools that
simultaneously help us capture the meanings of images as such, and enable
us to position these meanings in social and societal contexts. The visual
frame analysis approach I have proposed in this chapter offers such tools to
facilitate visual analysis in the field of social movement studies, and other
fields of sociology in which visual objects are crucial in understanding the
ensemble of the social.
There is no direct link from an activist website image to the influence of
contention, or a fundamental social change. Visual representations
do, however, both report on and participate in producing the political
climate and conditions of politicization in local public spheres. Analyzing the
ways in which they do this – what kinds of frames and keyings emerge –
provides the basis for a nuanced understanding of the complexity of political
struggles, marked by a variety of gender dynamics and multiple contextual
characteristics. Visual representations play an important role in political
struggles, reflecting and modeling political cultures. A comparative analysis
of social movement imageries shows the particular strength of images in
accessing dimensions of politics and contention that are hard to grasp in
traditional studies of politics. Analyzing visual representations of poli-
tical struggles make transparent the bodily and gendered groundings of
contention.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply indebted and grateful for thoughtful comments and numerous

conversations on earlier versions of this chapter, and all kinds of help and
support, to Lena Näre, as well as Sofia Laine, Laura Lyytikäinen, Suvi
Salmenniemi, and other members of the ‘‘Sociological salon’’ at the
University of Helsinki; to Anu-Hanna Anttila, Riikka Homanen, Merja
Kinnunen, and Alexandre Aubin; and to the Helsinki Research Group for
Political Sociology seminar participants. I have greatly benefited from the

insightful and challenging comments of the RSMCC anonymous reviewers,
and appreciated the encouraging support of the volume’s editors. Early
versions of this chapter were presented at the conference of the European
Sociological Association, 2009, at the Emory S. Bogardus Research
Colloquium Series, University of Southern California, 2009, and at the
annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, 2011, the
participants of which have inspired me to work further on the text on
the basis of their feedback.
NOTES
1. Gender is naturally not the only thing defining human representations: the signs
of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, ability and disability, age, and other visible physio-
logical features cannot be isolated from one another, but interplay and affect the
process of looking and giving meaning to images (e.g., Nixon, 1997, pp. 297–298).
2. In terms of comparability, the two local contexts in this study are cities of
similar size, with one being a regional capital and the other a national one. Lyon and
Helsinki are also both important centers of civic activities within their national
contexts, and are both marked by a particularly wide variety of progressive groups
and movements (further details in Luhtakallio, 2012, pp. 16–21).
3. The isomorphic features of contentious politics have been addressed before, for
instance in the debate about the Europeanization of protest (see della Porta, 2009;
della Porta & Caiani, 2007; Tarrow, 1995).
4. The fieldwork consisted of a seven-month period in Lyon (2005–2006), followed
by several shorter visits to the field, and four years fieldwork in Helsinki (2003–2004;
2006–2008). The selection of the groups followed in the fieldwork, and those included
in this study, was based on multiple sources: literature, local media, key person
interviews including both long-term activists, politicians and civil servants, and
participant observation at numerous civic events and activities in the two cities (see
Luhtakallio, 2012).
5. Representativity in statistical terms is not, however, applicable for this type of
research material. Activist website images do not form an observable, quantifiable
universe. Instead, the material and its display change constantly through the posting
of new images, the removal of websites, and the creation of new links. The collection
of the material here simulates a (thorough) web surfer’s exploration of the visual
contents of activist websites in two cities at a given time.
6. This project did not, however, include visual ethnography in either of its most
commonly used senses: I did not shoot any of the images myself, nor did I ask
anyone to shoot them (e.g., Auyero & Swistun, 2007; Back, 2007; Laine, 2011; Pink,
2007; Young & Barrett, 2001), but collected them after activists had published them
on their websites.
7. The abundant usage of frame analysis in social movement studies for nigh on
four decades has created a ‘‘school’’ of its own and stabilized several concepts in
50 EEVA LUHTAKALLIO
analyzing contention (e.g., Benford & Snow, 2000; Snow & Benford, 1988; Snow &
Byrd, 2007; Snow et al., 2007). The common denominator of many of the works in
this line of thought is an emphasis on the cognitive and even strategic uses of frames
and framing. This emphasis has faced criticism pointing for example at how it at
times forgets about discourses and meaning (Fisher, 1997; Steinberg, 1998) and
ideology and politics (Oliver & Johnston, 2000; see also a response to the criticism in
Snow & Benford, 2000), while over-emphasizing the actors’ conscious choices.
8. There is an important difference here to the studies analyzing commercial or
news images: the process of publication of activist website images is ‘‘light.’’ On these
kind of sites, measures of selection were more dependent on who cared to shoot the
photos and download them, than on a consideration and selection by some
authoritative party.
9. When keying becomes so fundamentally altering that it actually changes the
entire frame of the situation is a question Goffman leaves somewhat open. I have
included the idea of switching and overlapping frames in visual frame analysis
elsewhere (Luhtakallio, 2005, 2012), but as it does not bring any additional depth to this
analysis, but does add to the complexity of the procedure, I leave the matter alone here.
10. In comparison with other methods of visual analysis, visual frame analysis is a
combination of content analysis without its common problems of nitty-gritty
categorizations that end up being more laborious to create and follow than they offer
deep interpretative power, and a sensitive semiotic reading of images, often hard to
connect to wider contexts. Undeniably, during the procedures of both calculating
and writing the qualitative interpretations, visual representations are subject to
multiple ‘‘translations’’ that are verbalizations and numerical representations, but
also, as in Table 1, re-visualizations. This, however, should not produce an obstacle
to the analysis of visual material any more than other types of empirical objects. The
debate concerning these translations, and more generally the relationship between
images, words, numbers, and so on, is extensive (see, e.g., Mitchell, 1994, pp. 111–
117; Mitchell, 1986, pp. 42–74; Barthes, 1977, pp. 38–41).
11. The other dominant frames in the material were marking (Lyon 54%; Helsinki
36%), working (Lyon 1%; Helsinki 8%), and deliberating (Lyon 1%; Helsinki 7%).
For gender keyings in these images, as well as other keying dynamics in the material,
see Luhtakallio, 2012, pp. 92–109.
12. Typically, a massive demonstration was reported on several local websites and
illustrated with several series of images.
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IMAGES OF SURVEILLANCE: THE
CONTESTED AND EMBEDDED
VISUAL LANGUAGE OF
ANTI-SURVEILLANCE PROTESTS
Priska Daphi, Anja Lê and Peter Ullrich
ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an analysis of images produced and employed in

protests against surveillance in Germany in 2008 and 2009. For this
purpose, a method of visual analysis is developed that draws mainly
on semiotics and art history. Following this method, the contribution
examines a selection of images (pictures and graphic design) from the
anti-surveillance protests in three steps: description of components,
detection of conventional signs, and contextual analysis. Furthermore,
the analysis compares the images of the two major currents of the protest
(liberal and radical left) in order to elucidate the context in which images
are created and used. The analysis shows that images do not merely
illustrate existing political messages but contribute to movements’ systems
of meaning creation and transportation. The two currents in the protests
communicate their point of view through the images both strategically and
expressively. The images play a crucial role in formulating groups’
different strategies as well as worldviews and identities. In addition, the

ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X(2013)0000035007
55
56 PRISKA DAPHI ET AL.
analysis shows that the meaning of images is contested and contextual.

Images are produced and received in specific national as well as issue
contexts. Future research should address the issue of context and reception
in greater depth in order to further explore the effects of visual language
on mobilization. Overall, the contribution demonstrates that systematic
visual analysis allows our understanding of social movements’ aims,
strategy, and collective identity to be deepened. In addition, visual
analysis may provide activists with a tool to critically assess their visual
communication.
Keywords: Visual analysis; protest movements; surveillance; semiotics;

art history; culture
INTRODUCTION
In Autumn 2008 a new protest wave emerged in Germany. For the first time
since the protests against the population census in the 1980s, a protest
movement against governmental surveillance and control developed and
received considerable attention from the mainstream media. With annual,
nationwide demonstrations under the slogan ‘‘freedom not fear’’ (‘‘Freiheit
statt Angst’’) the protests succeeded in raising critical awareness about data
protection and surveillance. This wave of protest – parts of which were
coordinated across Europe – was sparked by the German government’s
decision to implement data retention.1 It brought together different political
actors: established activists encountered a new generation of protesters –
young and internet savvy – and Free Democrats met the radical left. Images
played a significant role in these protests. The ubiquitous production of
pictures (with Closed Circuit Television, for example) is, among other
things, one of the reasons for the protest. Concurrently, pictures were
ubiquitous in the protest repertoire as symbols, posters, banners, flags,
stickers, photos, logos, caricatures, installations, and performances.2 This
chapter analyzes the visual language of these protests. More specifically, it
compares the images created and employed by its two major currents, the
liberal and the left spectrum.
Images are crucial means to express a political message. In doing so,
images are not mere illustrations of this message; rather they are part of the
production of social and political reality (Doerr & Teune, 2012; Frey, 1999;
Gamson, 1992; Maasen, Mayenhauser, & Renggli, 2006). In this vein, they
Images of Surveillance 57
serve to make the invisible (e.g., surveillance) visible (Münkler, 2009) and
thus have considerable political power – in particular with respect to social
movements. Despite their ubiquity in political communication, however,
analysis in the social sciences has focused on text rather than images
(de Opp Hipt & Latniak, 1991; Jäger, 1999). Social movement studies have
also largely neglected visual analysis (cf. Doerr & Teune, 2012) – though
there are exceptions (e.g., DeLuca, 1999; Lahusen, 1996).
Only more recently have movements’ visual languages received more
attention. Several scholars have explored movement images in a broad
sense with respect to the media images produced during protest events
(e.g., Delicath & DeLuca, 2003; Fahlenbrach, 2002; Juris, 2008; Teune,
2012), political colors used and worn (Chester & Welsh, 2004; Sawer, 2007)
as well as art (Adams, 2002). Other scholars have analyzed movements’
images in a narrower sense, focusing on graphic designs used on posters,
flyers, and patches deployed in campaigns (e.g., Doerr, 2010; Doerr &
Teune, 2012; Mattoni & Doerr, 2007; Ullrich & Lê, 2011). These contri-
butions reveal that movements’ images both draw from as well as counter
existing visual codes. Alice Mattoni and Nicole Doerr (2007), for example,
show how visual depictions of precarious workers in the Euro May Day
Parades aimed to subvert popular culture while drawing on the aesthetics
of saint portrayals.
The analysis of social movements’ visual languages provides crucial
insights into movement dynamics, with respect to both strategic and
expressive aspects. First, images have a strategic function similar to frames
(Snow & Benford, 1992). They are employed to highlight certain issues,
raise awareness, and mobilize people (Adams, 2002; Fahlenbrach, 2002,
p. 142). At the same time, images are embedded in an existing stock of
visual codes. While these codes may be challenged to some extent, social
movements largely need to stay within their confines in order to get their
message across – either with respect to society at large or to their specific
subculture. In this way, images are also an expression of belonging to a
certain group (Casquete, 2003) or general cultural context. This means that
the analysis of images provides insights into the formative conditions of
the activists’ outlook on the world. Visual analysis, hence, combines the
framing approach’s dominant strategic ‘‘lens’’ (Johnston, 2009, p. 5) with an
emphasis on expressive aspects like worldviews and belonging coming from
the sociology of knowledge, discourse analysis, and New Social Movement
theories (Buechler, 2000; Baumgarten & Ullrich, 2012; HeXdörfer, Pabst, &
Ullrich, 2010; Johnston, 2009). In addition, it allows the issue of reception
and its potential discrepancy with the producer’s intentions to be addressed.
This chapter analyzes a selection of images produced and employed by

activists involved in the protests against surveillance. The analysis focuses
on images in a narrow sense by addressing only two elements of social
movements’ visual expression (Doerr & Teune, 2012): images and graphic
design – leaving out performances of the body and arrangements of objects.
The analysis concentrates on the variety of expressive and strategic aspects
of the images, while reception is covered only anticipatively. The chapter’s
main purpose is of an empirical nature. We will focus on the comparison of
the visual languages of the two major currents within the anti-surveillance
protests in order to explore the various layers of meaning and the context in
which they are employed. Due to the lack of elaborated methods for visual
analysis in movement research, we develop methodological tools borrowed
from outside political sociology – thus also reflecting the authors’ different
backgrounds in art history, cultural studies, and sociology.
The first section provides an overview of the protest coalition against
surveillance and its major political cleavages. Second, we introduce our
analytical approach to images drawing mainly from art history and semi-
otics. A subsequent part analyzes and compares the liberal and left currents’
visual languages revealing, on the one hand, the meaning images transfer
beyond illustration and, on the other, how movements’ ‘‘imagineering’’ is
contested yet embedded in a specific cultural and historical context.
PROTESTS AGAINST SURVEILLANCE IN GERMANY
The point of departure of the protests against surveillance in Germany was

the Federal Parliament’s ratification of a number of policies related to the
collection, processing, and storage of – often personal – data: the intro-
duction of a national health card system, the blocking of websites, and
above all the permission to store data about internet and telecommunication
use without a specific reason (data retention). Alongside the annual
‘‘freedom not fear’’ demonstrations, protest was expressed in a variety of
activities at local or regional level (e.g., info stalls, demonstrations, activist
performances, lectures, camera plays, and many more).
The protest coalition was supported by a broad spectrum of actors
ranging from the FDP (Liberal Party), the Green Party, trade unions, and
Die Linke (The Left Party) to autonomist anti-fascists and other radical
left groups. In addition, a variety of individuals, associations, and NGOs
took part in the mobilizations, among them groups specializing on the issues
of surveillance, control and repression, lobby groups, and professional

associations such as the medical association Freie Ärzteschaft. Thus, the
issue concerned resonated in a wide organizational field and related to a
wide range of political questions such as internet freedom, freedom of
speech, freedom of press, democracy, transparency, economic inequality,
and social exclusion.
The broad interest in the issue of surveillance also reveals itself in the
emergence and success of the German Piratenpartei (Pirate Party). Founded
in 2006 following the Swedish prototype, the party has a strong focus on the
issues of surveillance and data retention, while offering comparably little
substance on other policy fields. Heavily shaped by computer affinitive
youth and small IT entrepreneurs, it campaigns against surveillance and for
a free internet as well as transparency in politics and administration. It has
had some electoral success in recent years, gaining about 8% of the votes in
four federal states since 2011. While this electoral success is currently forcing
the party to broaden its programmatic scope, the party contributed
considerably to the anti-surveillance protests due to its presence in activities
(with banners and party flags) and, more recently, by advocating its claims
in institutionalized politics.
The central role in this broad coalition was played by the Arbeitskreis
Vorratsdatenspeicherung (German Working Group on Data Retention,
abbr. AK Vorrat). This group was the major organizer of the analyzed
protests and contributed considerably to establishing surveillance as a
contentious issue. The AK Vorrat is an association of civil rights
campaigners, data protection activists, and internet users – partly stemming
from the hacker-community – as well as associations and initiatives against
excessive surveillance and the unfounded storage of personal data. The AK
Vorrat campaigns for ‘‘more data protection, for the right to privacy, for
unobserved communication, and for more respect of human dignity, in
particular the right of informational self-determination.’’3 It is a loose
national network with several local sections, without formal membership
and organized mainly via mailing lists. It is supported by civil rights
organizations, in particular FoeBuD e.V.4 and, depending on the occasion,
also by larger organizations such as trade unions and parts of the left-liberal
parties. Within the anti-surveillance sector, the AK Vorrat functions partly
as an intermediary network. The AK primarily belongs to the liberal current
of the protest (see next section), but it ensures ties to most sectors through
its open structure and the possibility of organizational and individual
affiliation, and thus also to groups of the libertarian left which are generally
only marginally institutionalized in any formal way.5
Two Major Currents within the Protest Coalition
While the opposition to surveillance provided an umbrella for various

groups to organize and mobilize jointly, the coalition remained hetero-
geneous. The rather abstract consensus about the rejection of data retention
and state surveillance draws on very different analyses of the problems’
causes, conditions, and solutions (cf. Helle Panke e.V., 2010). The different
perspectives go hand in hand with certain action repertoires, relations to
militancy and civil disobedience and, last but not the least, visual realization
of the surveillance critique. The most significant cleavage within the broad
protest coalition can be found between the liberal and the left (radical)
spectrum. This does not mean, of course, that all actors can be identified as
either liberal or radical left groups. The ideal-type distinction drawn here
highlights the extremes in order to clarify the different points of view.6
Differences manifest themselves both with respect to protest culture and
framing efforts. Furthermore, the liberal and left currents have different
perspectives on surveillance and its relation to the state and law.
The liberal current is constituted by established political actors such as the
liberal FDP, large parts of Bündnis90/Die Grünen (Green Party), trade
unions such as the public sector union ver.di and the youth organization of
the DGB (German Federation of Trade Unions), the Jusos (Youth
organization of the Social Democratic Party), some lobby groups and civil
rights organizations, as well as large parts of the Piratenpartei. These
groups’ main point of criticism concerns the growing competences of the
state in restricting its citizens’ freedom through surveillance. This point of
view draws on classical liberalism – not anti-statist, but with reservations
about too strong or too authoritarian a state.
While accused of excessive surveillance, the state and its institutions,
especially the German constitution,7 are also seen as the framework in which
good solutions can be realized. Accordingly, these groups prefer conven-
tional and nonconfrontational forms of protest and distance themselves
from militant forms.8 Next to classical forms of protest on the streets
(demonstrations with posters) and lobbying, protest is frequently expressed
in direct democracy measures (petitions) and legal pressure (appeals to the
constitutional court) (Steinke, 2009; Steven, 2009).9
Moving from the liberal to the left spectrum, the critique of the
surveillance state becomes more fundamental and turns into a radical
critique of the (liberal democratic) governmental system. Groups constitut-
ing the left spectrum are: radical left and anti-fascist groups (e.g., SAV,
Antifa), Rote Hilfe (a solidarity organization supporting politically
prosecuted activists from the left spectrum), as well as Berlin-based groups
critical of surveillance (Out of Control, Seminar für angewandte Unsicher-

heit). Despite ideological differences, these groups base their critique on an
anti-statist and anti-capitalist stance.10 Accordingly, the analyses, positions,
and political styles of the liberal spectrum are considered insufficient.
The anti-statist and anti-capitalist perspective is relevant to both the left
current’s goals and its forms of protest. The aim is not to improve the liberal
state but to level fundamental criticism at the political form of statehood,
specifically the police, secret services, and armed forces. Accordingly, more
confrontational protest forms are preferred and cooperation with govern-
mental organs of repression is largely rejected.11 Furthermore, following an
anti-capitalist perspective surveillance is interpreted as a means of the
exclusion of marginal social groups. Hence, left groups do not primarily
address surveillance as everybody’s problem as the liberals do, but stress its
selectivity: socially marginalized groups are affected by governmental
surveillance and control to a significantly higher degree, especially precarious
workers and the unemployed, as well as those who do not have fundamental
rights to start with such as refugees. This selectivity is attributed not only to
the hysteria about terrorism after the events of 9/11 but to the acute and
enduring crisis of capitalism.
A METHOD FOR ANALYZING PROTEST IMAGES

The goal of this part is twofold: first, drawing mainly on art history and
semiotics, a three-step analytical approach to analyzing images is developed.
Second, the visual expressions of surveillance critique of two currents are
analyzed and compared, drawing conclusions about their perspectives on
surveillance and its relation to the state. The analysis focuses on a selection
of images from the protests against surveillance. Based on the above
distinction between the two currents,12 we have selected pictorial
representatives which draw from symbols and icons widely shared in each
current. Due to the limited size of this chapter, only one image per current is
analyzed in full detail. The other analyses are kept short, blurring to some
extent the distinction between the three analytical steps while highlighting
certain aspects of overarching importance.
The Analysis of Images Beyond Protest Research:

Semiotics and Cultural Sciences
Research on political communication in the social sciences can benefit

greatly from the various techniques of visual analysis developed in art and
cultural sciences – often developed long before the pictorial turn in the
humanities of the 1990s (cf. Mitchell, 1994). For our analysis we draw
especially on semiotics, the history of art, and, partly, cultural studies and
discourse analysis. These offer fruitful approaches to decoding political
images, as they allow the analyst to distinguish between different levels of
significance and meaning. First, drawing on structural linguistics, most
prominently developed by Ferdinand de Saussure (1960), semiotics
distinguishes between the two sides of a sign (in our case an image or a
part of it), that is, between the signifier and signified. While the signified
concerns an idea or concept (e.g., a flag), the signifier is the means of
expressing this concept (e.g., a piece of colored fabric). Because there is no
fixed or universal relation between a sign’s two sides, we cannot take what we
see as immediate access to the intention of the image’s producer, nor can we
be sure about what kind of meaning a viewer attributes to the image. Second,
following the work of Roland Barthes (1985), two ways in which signs
convey meaning are identified: while denotation concerns the decoding of a
sign at a simple level, often on the basis of conventional conceptualizations
(e.g., a piece of specifically colored fabric=flag), connotation links the sign to
broader cultural themes and concepts (e.g., a flag=nationality) and its
evaluation (Barthes, 1972, 1985; Eco, 1968).
To be able to transfer these distinctions into a concrete methodology,
recourse to the interpretative scheme by Erwin Panofsky (1975[1957]) is
helpful. Panofsky has played a crucial role in developing a methodology for
analyzing artwork. While his concepts have been developed for a different
subject (i.e., renaissance art)13 and long before the cultural and discursive
turn in the social sciences and humanities, they nevertheless offer useful
analytical tools for the present analysis. In particular, this analytical method
allows the scholar to take distance from the visual material and differentiate
between different layers of meaning. Panofsky distinguishes three layers of
meaning, which partly overlap with the basic distinctions just introduced
(see Table 1):
Primary or Natural Subject Matter (pre-iconographic description):

analysis of the purely material configurations of colors and shapes, as
well as ‘‘natural’’ beings or things (e.g., animals, women/men, a table).14
Secondary or Conventional subject matter (iconography): analysis of the
composition of the motives and images (e.g., anecdotes or allegories) as
carriers of meaning for whose identification knowledge of the conven-
tional meaning patterns is required (e.g., a man with a knife represents
St. Bartholomew in a renaissance painting).
Table 1. Layers of Meaning and Methodological Steps.

Rising Level of Abstraction Panofsky Paper Analytical
from the Image Method
Sign Signifier Form Primary or Natural 1st step: Description

Subject Matter of image components
Signified (concept) Denotation Secondary or Conventional 2nd step: Detection

Subject Matter of conventional signs
(Iconography)
Connotation Intrinsic Meaning 3rd step: Contextual

(Iconology) analysis
Intrinsic Meaning or Content (iconology): ‘‘analyses of the meaning or

content of an artwork, which can only be grasped when one knows the
founding principles of a nation, an epoch, a class, a religious or
philosophical conviction’’ (Panofsky, 1975, p. 40). This means full
meaning can only be understood, when the technical abilities, cultural
webs of meanings, and discursive context are known, which – modified by
its creator – are condensed in the artwork.
These distinctions also draw attention to the difference between the

intention of an image’s producer and the image’s reception. While there is
no objective interpretation, analyses can approximate the meaning conveyed
with respect to the socio-cultural context in which the image is placed.
Culture functions as a filter between signifier and signified, denotation and
connotation. In highlighting the significance of the socio-cultural context in
which an image is produced and interpreted, Panofsky’s third level of
meaning anticipated a central theme in cultural studies. Merging semiotics
with post-structuralist discourse theory, cultural studies scholars emphasize
that meaning is not only produced through language but also more
generally through a culture’s practices, beliefs, institutions, and political,
economic, or social structures (Bryson, Holly, & Moxey, 1994; Hall, 2003).
In this way, cultural studies draw attention to the possible difference
between the context of an image’s production and its reception. Combining
these overlapping approaches, the following analysis will proceed in three
steps, each rising in level of abstraction (for an overview see Table 1). Due to
the limited length of the chapter, the analysis cannot cover all possible
symbolic references and iconological meanings. Instead it exemplarily
highlights possible interpretations.
Three Steps of Analysis
The first step of analysis entails extensive description of the image’s

components (pre-iconographic, basic denotation). This entails the descrip-
tion of lines, colors, forms, and their arrangement. Typically, art historians
start with the image’s foreground, proceeding over the middle and finally to
the background. This method allows the beholder to take distance from the
image’s general and holistic impression and the subjective associations it
invokes. This step aims to detect the image’s visual elements on a very basic
level and to avoid leaving out elements unnoticed at first sight.
The second analytical step focuses on the detection of denotative or
conventional content. The aim here is to identify symbols, metaphors,
allegories, and allusions created in the combination of motives on the
basis of conventional meanings. This requires knowledge of the specific
symbolic and metaphorical meanings referred to through the image’s
detailed arrangements (iconography). These conventional meanings refer,
for example, to well-known sacral or political motives (such as St. Bartho-
lomew as the man with the knife, or a swastika as a symbol of Buddhism as
well as German National Socialism). They also refer to particular ‘‘moods’’
conventionally linked to, for example, specific combinations of colors and/or
forms. Dark colors, for example, are usually associated with a ‘‘negative
mood’’ in a Western/European context. Due to the link established to
broader themes, this step partly entails what has been introduced as
‘‘connotation.’’
The third and last step draws on both iconological and connotative
analysis in order to identify the broader themes and claims alluded to in the
image. In this step the conventional meanings identified in step two are
related to the specific cultural and political context of the image’s
production and dissemination. In order to do this, the researcher identifies
underlying concepts which are characteristics of the culture or epoch in
which the images are produced or shown in order to elaborate the diverse
possible meanings of the images. For example, while the sacral iconography
of St. Bartholomew as the man with the knife may have remained rather
stable over time to Christian viewers, for nonreligious viewers or viewers
practicing a different religion these sacral meanings may be inexistent. For
the issues at stake in this chapter this means that: depending on the political
beliefs and convictions of producers and beholders, motifs in images
may have quite different meanings. Throwing a stone may signal heroic
resistance for one person or movement sector but mere destructivity for
another. This variability of meaning applies to both the production
(a symbol can be used with different intentions) as well as the reception (the
symbol can be read differently). In the following analysis, the contex-
tualization of the image will often proceed using comparisons and will
include the consideration of textual elements. Comparisons in particular are
crucial to reveal consensus on context-specific meaning.
VISUAL ANALYSIS OF PROTEST AGAINST

SURVEILLANCE
The Visual Language of the Liberal Current
Data Retention and Big Brother

The first image15 to be analyzed in detail is a poster by the AK
Vorratsdatenspeicherung (German Working Group on Data Retention) that
appeared on a number of occasions.16
First step: the image displays a face in close-up in the background; only
two wide-open, blue eyes as well as a shadow above one eye indicating an
eyebrow are visible. In the image’s foreground, between the eyes and the
place one would expect to see a nose the viewer sees a black figure from the
back – only the face is turned and its profile is visible. On account of his
male features the figure can be identified as a man. Below, filling almost half
of the poster’s space, white and red letters in different fonts and sizes state:
‘‘Wir beobachten dich’’ (‘‘We watch you’’; white, bold, and in capital
letters), ‘‘Weil wir dich lieben!’’ (‘‘Because We Love You!’’; white, the word
love in red, in a different font and italicized), and ‘‘Deine Bundesregierung’’
(‘‘Yours; the (Federal) Government’’; bold, smaller, and different font).
At the bottom, the web-address of the AK Vorratsdatenspeicherung is
written in black letters on a blue background.
Second step: the large eyes together with the invisible base of the nose give
the face a child- or doll-like appearance, often seen in cartoons or manga
drawings. The male figure displays a defensive posture (the upper body bent
back and arms splayed out) that seems to be directed toward the outsized
face. Moreover, the image draws on and alludes to different existing
aesthetics. First, the male figure’s features are similar to the depictions of
workers found in the posters of workers’ parties in the 1920s and 1930s
(though they usually only used two-tone prints). The male figure’s hat also
points to this: it is a flat cap often associated with workers or non-noble
subjects. Second, the simplified and planar style of the drawing is
reminiscent of the aesthetics of film posters from the 1950s – thriller and
horror movies in particular due to the indication of shock and/or excitement

conveyed by the wide eyes. Finally, the eyes in conjunction with the text
allude to a particular story: George Orwell’s 1984. In this dystopian novel
Orwell depicts an omnipresent surveillance state dictating the lives of its
citizens. The eyes of the ruling party’s leader, Big Brother, are a frequently
returning image in visual realizations of this novel, along with the famous
slogan: ‘‘Big Brother is watching you,’’ similar to the text ‘‘We are watching
you’’ in the picture. The gray bottom line and the generally dark lower parts
of the image invoke a gloomy, frightening mood.
Third step: through the visual reference to the Orwellian surveillance-state
as well as allusions to cinematic depictions of fright, the image evokes a
horror scenario with its roots in governmental surveillance. In this vein, while
the eyes stand for surveillance (as well as horror), the male figure can be
interpreted as surveillance’s counterpart: it is the subaltern goal and victim of
surveillance. Since the liberal current usually does not refer to legacies of
workers’ struggles, the image’s depiction of a worker may be interpreted as a
reference to vulnerability and potential resistance by the non-privileged
population. This first of all reveals that the state is the image’s central
addressee. It is surveillance by the state not by corporations or other
entities that is repudiated. Second, the image highlights the threat to the
individual. The horror scenario evoked decries surveillance as excessive and
interprets it as an attack against the individual and his/her privacy. The close-
up of the face amplifies this as an invasion of intimate spaces. This points to
the liberal groups’ focus on privacy and citizens’ rights, which – as central
legitimizing principles of liberal democracies – they aim to defend against
attacks by the state. Data retention is interpreted as a sign of growing
surveillance and the reduction of privacy by the state.
Furthermore, the image ironically denounces the government’s claim of
good intentions by contrasting the horror scenario of surveillance with the
seemingly well intended ‘‘Yours, the (federal) government.’’ Similarly, the
doll or childlike eyes may be read as a reference to feigned innocence.
In this vein, the image implies that surveillance is not worth whatever it is
said to be good for (e.g., security). The rejection of the advantages of
surveillance refers to the post 9/11 discourse about whether security justifies
restrictions to civic freedom. In line with the demonstrations’ long-standing
slogan ‘‘freedom not fear,’’ this image strongly supports the claim that
restricting freedom through surveillance in order to increase security is
not legitimate and only creates a climate of insecurity. The threat posed by
the state is even more evident in another image from the liberal current
analyzed below.
German Democracy and its Historical Others

Warning against data retention, an article published on the website of a
commercial technology magazine in 2009 takes up a report written by the
hackers association Chaos Computer Club on data retention. The next image
to be analyzed17 stems from this article linking the issue of data retention
with governmental surveillance at the working place.
The image’s dark blue background is dominated by a picture of the
former German minister of the interior, Wolfgang Schäuble (2005–2009).
The image’s lower foreground displays the silhouettes of people at work:
they are sitting at desks or stand facing each other. Yellow beams of light
lead down from the interior minister’s eyes to the people, who have a white-
yellow mist above them. The head of the former interior minister is
immensely larger than those of the people – a depiction that alludes to his
superiority. The image’s build-up hints at two ‘‘totalitarian’’ systems: on the
one hand, the centrality of Schäuble’s head is reminiscent of the iconic
image of the Big Brother in the 1956 film adaptation of Orwell’s 1984 (even
the eyebrows resemble those of Big Brother). On the other hand, the image’s
build-up is almost identical with the film poster18 of the Oscar-nominated
German movie Der Untergang (The Downfall, 2004) depicting the last
days of Adolf Hitler’s life. The head and shoulders of Bruno Ganz, the actor
who portrayed Adolf Hitler, sit enthroned above several small silhouetted
figures and a tank surrounded by white mist. As a statement about present
conditions or a future scenario, the reference to this film poster and, with it,
to Germany’s dictatorial and repressive past, dramatizes the issue of
surveillance significantly.
The comparison to the Third Reich is even more explicit in an image19
that has been circulated on various websites critical of surveillance. The
image is divided into three parts. The depiction of the former Interior
Minister’s head in the middle is framed by two German flags with Federal
Eagles on the left and right side. Across all three parts a heading asks in
large white letters: ‘‘Wollt ihr die totale Überwachung?’’ (‘‘Do you want
total surveillance?’’). In the image’s lower foreground much smaller white
letters state ‘‘Totale Überwachung ist sicherste Überwachung!’’ (‘‘Total
surveillance is the most secure surveillance!’’). The image combines symbols
of the Third Reich and the Federal Republic of Germany. The text is written
in old-German lettering20 and refers to Joseph Goebbels’ (Reich Minister of
Propaganda) infamous 1943 Sportpalast speech, when he asked his audience
‘‘Do you want the total war?’’ The colors of the Federal Republic’s flag,
its Federal Eagle as well as the image of Schäuble refer to the present
German state.
In a similar way, parallels are often drawn with another German

authoritarian regime: the German Democratic Republic (1949–1990). Fig. 1
combines a black illustration of the head of Wolfgang Schäuble (alluding to
the man held responsible for surveillance at that time) against a white
background with the very popular surveillance critical slogan ‘‘Stasi 2.0,’’
ironically implying a remake of the GDR’s Ministry for State Security (the
‘‘Stasi’’). This reference to the central surveillance institution of the GDR
functions as a powerful denunciation of the present state’s surveillance.
Over the last two decades, the GDR has replaced the Nazi period as the
ultimate other of German national narratives (Zuckermann, 1999, p. 8) and
has become a symbol for the absence of freedom and democracy, which are
supposed to be central assets of today’s Germany. Blurring this distinction
in the protest images thus strongly signals a danger to democracy.
The analysis of the images of the liberal current reveals the emphasis on
the threat posed to privacy, civic freedom, and ultimately democracy by the
government. The allusion to past authoritarian regimes in Germany not
only drastically highlights the dangers associated with surveillance, it also
Fig. 1. The Prominent Symbol of Wolfgang Schäuble’s Face with the Slogan ‘‘Stasi
2.0’’ (On a Banner at a ‘‘Freedom Not Fear’’ Demonstration in Berlin, 2008).
(Photo: Priska Daphi).
substantiates the liberal current’s strong focus on the state. It is the German
state that is held responsible. This can be derived from the reference to the
federal government in the first image and the former interior minister in the
second, fourth, and fifth images. Other agents of surveillance such as
corporations are neglected. At the same time this implies that changes
should also occur within the framework of the state. In comparing the
present government with the Third Reich and the GDR, it is not the state as
such that is questioned but its form. Hence, the liberal critique identifies the
state as both the cause and solution to the problem: on the one hand, it is
held accountable for excessive surveillance; on the other, alternatives should
occur within its confines.
The Visual Language of the Left Current

In the left’s visual language, particular protagonists such as Wolfgang
Schäuble or the character of Big Brother are much less common. Much
more typical are depictions of specific governmental organs of repression, in
particular the police.
Fig. 2 is a poster calling for participation in the (radical) left bloc at the
2011 ‘‘freedom not fear’’ demonstration published by the group Out of
control.
First step: two (originally pink) horizontal lines divide the image into
three parts. The upper and lower parts contain text and surround the middle
Fig. 2. ‘‘Uns wird’s zu bunt,’’ Out of Control, 2011 (http://www.outofcontrol.

noblogs.org).
part which contains images. The upper part’s text in white, smeared capital
letters reads: ‘‘Uns wird’s zu bunt’’ (‘‘For us, it goes too far’’). The lower
part states in smaller letters: ‘‘Überwachungsstaaten wegputzen!’’ (‘‘Polish
off surveillance states!’’) and provides information about the demonstration.
The image’s middle part contains several icons separated by dots. The icon
furthest to the left representing a round head is dark red, nearly black, with
a light area around its eye. The head’s open mouth points in the direction of
simplified depictions of a camera, a police officer’s head, a DNA-strand, and
RFID waves (Radio-Frequency-Identification).
Second step: the icon on the left can be identified as an altered version of
the very popular Pacman, a computer game in which the round-headed
Pacman eats his way through various dots and other objects. With his
hungrily open mouth Pacman mirrors the second line’s theme of eating
(‘‘polish off’’). In place of his usual yellow color, the Pacman on this poster is
dark red/nearly black. The white space around his eye indicates a (radical
activist’s) mask. The other icons substitute Pacman’s usual ‘‘food’’ and depict
specific aspects of surveillance: a camera, a policeman, DNA, and RFID.
Third step: the image combines a radical critique of surveillance states
with a popular computer game. Despite the radicalism of the critique and
the measures implied against it (‘‘polish off’’) this combination has a rather
playful tone. The game Pacman and its pixel style is very popular today
among computer-savvy youngsters. Its icons can be found on T-shirts,
stickers, and other merchandise. The allusion to this game hence locates the
image and its producers in a young and trendy scene. At the same time, the
image clearly signals active and radical resistance against surveillance
through its particular pairing of visual elements and text. This is due first to
the depiction of a masked Pacman (resembling an anarchist’s balaclava)
and the substitution of his ‘‘food’’ with objects of surveillance. Second, the
text underlines the radical position with the call to ‘‘Polish off surveillance
states.’’ The opposition to surveillance states – not just surveillance – marks
the left groups’ anti-statist stance: the solution is not a change within the
state. Instead, the state is identified as inherently prone to surveillance and
hence needs to be abolished. Also, the use of the plural – surveillance states –
reveals that it is not a single state (Germany) that is addressed. Rather, it
implies the more general problem that we live in an era of surveillance states.
In addition to the opposition to surveillance states, the inclusion of the
RFID in Pacman’s ‘‘food’’ reveals that surveillance is not only attributed to
the state but also corporations (RFID is not only used in ID cards, but also in
customer cards as well as in price tags or entry controls in companies).
Furthermore, the first line of the text denounces other, more ‘‘colorful’’
solutions to the problem of surveillance: ‘‘Uns wird’s zu bunt,’’ literally tran-

slates as ‘‘For us, it is too colorful’’ and figuratively means ‘‘That’s enough!’’. It
is a play on words which not only seems to criticize excessive surveillance but
also distances itself from the ‘‘colorful,’’ that is, non-radical parts of the
protest. The distinction between black and colorful groups is common in left
protest mobilizations. In anti-fascist mobilizations, for example, the radical
autonomist groups and their predominantly black clothing (the ‘‘black bloc’’)
are distinguished from the moderates who often describe themselves as
‘‘colorful instead of brown’’ (brown being the color of Nazis).
A similarly militant message is employed in a poster against the creation
of a European police authority (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3, published on a blog about the monitoring of the European police,
comprises three parts. The central part shows two faceless and simplified
police-figures in full combat gear walking slightly to the right, facing the
viewer. Above, in an urban landscape of skyscrapers, a camera behind
the policemen points away from them to the left and a helicopter flies to the
right. This ensemble in blue is bordered by yellow stars, referring to the flag
of the European Union. The left part of the image depicts a piece of broken
glass, while the right part states ‘‘Monitoring European Police!’’ in red
letters and the blog’s website in smaller letters. The policemen in full combat
gear together with the cameras and helicopter display the force and ubiquity
of surveillance/control. The text ‘‘Monitoring European Police!’’ calls for
the table to be turned and the police to be monitored instead. In this vein,
the broken glass pane in the left part of the image implies destruction (of
a camera for example) and may be read as a call for militant action.
The call for militant action is more explicit in Fig. 4, which constitutes an
instruction to saw off surveillance cameras. Published by the alternative
news website Inforiot, the image displays a camera sawn off by a large red
saw with red arrows on both sides indicating sawing movements and headed
by the equivocal text: ‘‘Wir haben etwas gegen Überwachung!’’ (‘‘We have
Fig. 3. ‘‘Monitoring European Police’’ (http://www.euro-police.noblogs.org).

Fig. 4. ‘‘Wir haben etwas gegen Überwachung!’’ (http://www.inforiot.de).
something against surveillance’’ the play on words working similarly in

English and German). The red arrows on each side of the saw allude to an
instruction manual and suggest that this is easily done.
The analysis of the left current’s images reveals, first, the radical critique
of the governmental system and surveillance. The inclusion of various aspects
of surveillance (police, cameras, the storage of biological data, Radio-
Frequency-Identification, helicopters) clearly points to the more fundamental
level of critique: surveillance by the police/state is (albeit only marginally)
connected to commercial and scientific surveillance. Furthermore, the second
image extends the issue of surveillance from a national to a European level
due to the reference to the ‘‘European Police’’ and the European Union.
Second, the images clearly suggest militant forms of resistance. Unlike the
dramatization of surveillance and the passive depiction of the threatened
citizen in the liberal current images, the images of the left current stress
active resistance including the destruction of surveillance equipment:
a masked Pacman alluding to the dress-code of the black bloc (Fig. 2),
depiction of resistance in the form of broken glass (Fig. 3). and sawing off
cameras (Fig. 4). In this, the police are a central addressee as the reference to
policemen in images 2 and 3 reveals. This has to do with the fact that during
protests collective empowerment vis-à-vis the police is crucial, for example,

through the enforcement of transgressions. Creating spaces free of
governmental surveillance and control during demonstrations is not only
the means to an end but also an end in itself (cf. Haunss, 2004).
Comparing the images of the two currents, three central differences can be
highlighted. First of all, while the liberal groups primarily address the
government, the left groups issue a more fundamental critique of the state
and focus on resisting the police. Liberal groups see the framework of the
(democratic) state as both the cause of and the framework for a solution to
increasing surveillance, and focus their efforts on ‘‘restoring’’ or strengthen-
ing citizens’ rights. Accordingly, the liberal groups’ images conjure up
horror scenarios by drawing comparisons with dictatorships or totalitarian
regimes – both fictional and real – implying the present democratic regime is
in real danger, or, more precisely, needs to be reinstated to its pre-9/11
constitutional status. It is not the state as such, but specific tendencies and,
quite prominently, people that are criticized.
In contrast, left groups – drawing on an anti-statist and anti-capitalist
stance – level a radical criticism at the state and the capitalist world order
and place the issue of surveillance and control in the context of social and
political exclusion (especially through the depiction of riot police).21 The left
groups’ images emphasize control by the state and repression by the police
as part of the rejected system’s structure. Accordingly, radical left imagery
puts an emphasis on militant resistance against state institutions, civil
disobedience, and the creation of spaces free of governmental control. While
the liberal current’s images depict the observed as passive victims, the left
current emphasizes active resistance.
Personalization and references to dramatic dystopias or authoritarian/
totalitarian regimes are not as common in the image repertoire of the left
current because these groups do not see the present democracy as
endangered by surveillance, but rather surveillance as one of the central
characteristics of the capitalist state both before and after 9/11. Their
struggle is not only about protecting rights that are being lost, but fighting
for a new social order. In order to make this claim, the left groups use
playful rather than dramatizing imagery.
CONCLUSION
Two basic observations summarize our analysis and are applicable beyond
the movement sector under study. First, the use of images within political
mobilizations is contested. Images depict different perspectives – both

strategically as well as expressively. Second, all three aspects of images –
strategy, expression, and reception – depend on the discursive context in
which they are embedded. These points show that the analysis of protest
images with a systematic methodological approach can significantly deepen
our understanding of different aspects of social movements.
First, the analysis of the images used in protest against surveillance shows
that a broad repertoire of images is employed. Despite an abstract consensus
on the opposition to surveillance as well as participation in joint protest
events, the images are contested in the organizational field dealing with the
issue. This is due to the fact that the liberal and left currents’ different
perspectives are reflected in as well as formulated through these images.
Only certain aspects of the image repertoire are shared across the different
groups (in our case the reference to the state as the agent of surveillance and
a visual dramatization of the issue at stake).
Through the images, the two currents voice their point of views not only
strategically but also expressively.22 On a strategic level, the images are
intended to highlight a situation, and should convince the viewer of the need
to act. The images explicate the group’s particular analysis of problems and
how best to solve them. In addition to consciously intended effects, the
images entail particular worldviews and meaning systems that constitute a
sense of belonging and draw the borders of the own groups (cf. Melucci,
1996). In this vein, all the images identify an opponent that differs from and
thus demarcates the own group (i.e., the state, the police). More specifically
(and possibly intended as such), Fig. 2 even distances itself from more
moderate allies.
Second, this chapter reveals that the meanings of images (intentional as
well as expressive) are embedded in specific contexts. Movements, like other
social actors, form (ulate) their ideas and messages embedded in a culturally
and discursively preformed setting that enables and restricts their universe
of what is imaginable and sayable (Foucault, 1974). Hence, an image’s
producer can only include strategic and expressive meaning within this
framework, within the socially structured arrangement of ‘‘what makes
sense.’’ Hence, despite their variety, meanings entailed in images are not
arbitrary, nor merely chosen from a ‘‘tool kit’’ (Swidler, 1986). In this vein,
the analysis showed that images are created in reference to other images
which are iconic for surveillance, such as Big Brother or other cultural
models (e.g., specific aesthetics, genres, or basic legitimizing principles like
democracy and freedom).23
Many contexts can be relevant in this respect: place, time, issue field, or
‘‘culture’’ more generally. The national context seems to be of particular
formative power as the frequent historic allusions to the German past (the
GDR and the Third Reich) reveal. In fact, the allusion to the Nazi regime
seems to be common among left-libertarian movements in Germany
(cf. della Porta, 1999). The comparison with the Nazis is still among the
strongest methods of political dramatization and stigmatization available in
the German political context. Generally, national past and politics of
remembrance offer a political language and interpretive frames for several
issues24 (cf. Daphi, 2013; Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002;
Ullrich, 2008, 2012).
This chapter confirms the significance of both national context and issue-
related contexts. In fact, it showed that the interplay of both is decisive in
shaping movements and their image production. The images revealed the
strong interplay of these two dimensions: while the national context
provided certain options for allusion and comparison, only one current
picked this up. Only in the liberal current, with its focus on the loss of
democracy, are these contrasts useful. The radical left current, on the other
hand, does not rely on the dramatic horror scenario due to its strong general
critique of the state. In other words, they do not see Western liberal
democracy in opposition to surveillance, but surveillance as an expression of
the capitalist (though formally democratic) state.25
Furthermore, it should be noted that a viewer’s discursive context affects
how they interpret an image – though this aspect is not explicitly addressed
in this chapter. Whatever strategic and expressive aspects images entail,
they may be interpreted in a variety of ways and detached from the context
of their production or the producer’s intentions. For example, the allusion
to Nazi Germany may be primarily seen as a mere dramatization to mobilize
people or as a genuine demarcation from dictatorship as part of the
producers’ conception of themselves. It also may be interpreted as a state-
ment about structural similarities between present-day and Nazi Germany,
or as a relativization of the Nazi atrocities. For future research it will be
fruitful to analyze the different possible meanings of images and to reflect on
the effects for mobilizing strategies.
Thus, visual analysis provides a crucial key deepening our insights into
how social movements work. Through their various layers of meaning,
images communicate messages differently than texts, and add crucial
information. While strategic aims may also be analyzed with respect to
leaflets and other explicitly formulated textual material, images condense
central claims and add symbolic layers. Images do more than illustrate
existing political messages: they play a crucial role in formulating groups’
different strategies as well as worldviews. In this vein, images are not only a
product of movements, but also part of the symbolic practices which
constitute the movement and its identity, and are embedded in national and
sectoral contexts. A systematic visual analysis (including distancing and
thick description) is hence key to explaining social movements’ aims,
strategies, and collective identities. In this vein, visual analysis could also
provide a crucial tool to explore possibilities for and restrictions to coalition
building in and between movements. Finally, visual analysis may provide
movement actors themselves with a tool to reflect critically on their visual
communication.
NOTES
1. This development stands in the context of what has been considered the ‘‘rise of
the surveillance society’’ (Lyon, 1994). For an overview of this debate see Haggerty
and Ericson (2000), Lyon (2001), and Garland (2002). For the European context,
ever more important due to the European Union’s increasing legislative and
executive rights, see Hempel and Töpfer (2009).
2. The central role of artistic contributions in surveillance-critical debates has led
to the creation of new concepts such as ‘‘artveillance’’ (Brighenti, 2009). For an
overview on research about resistance against surveillance see the special edition of
the journal Surveillance and Society (Huey & Fernandez, 2009), as well as Marx
(2003) and Monahan (2006).
3. http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/13/37/lang,de/ [1.11.11],
translation by the authors.
4. For several years this association has presented a negative prize for excessive
surveillance, the ‘‘Big Brother Award.’’
5. For a more detailed account of the protest movement and the cleavages therein
see Leipziger Kamera (2009) and Ullrich and Lê (2011).
6. Groups located between the liberal and the radical left spectrum are: the youth
organization of the Left Party, the Association of Republican Lawyers, and some
civil rights organizations (Humanist Union, Committee for Fundamental and Human
Rights, International League for Human Rights).
7. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the German Constitution, for
example, activists staged protests against surveillance with info booths and actions,
among them the symbolic burial of the Constitution and the announcement of its
death in obituary notices.
8. This was especially the case after excessive police violence (sic!) during the
demonstrations in Autumn 2009.
9. In particular, the lawsuit filed against data retention drew a great deal of
attention since it put a provisional end to data retention.
10. The (statist) ‘‘old’’ left radical current (such as the Communist Party) was
much less active in these protests.
11. During demonstrations in Leipzig and Berlin in 2008, for example, left
demonstrators jeered at coordinators’ attempts to obsequiously fulfil the police
restrictions imposed on the protesters or to thank the police for its presence.
12. See also Ullrich and Lê (2011).
13. In this context it should however be mentioned that art sciences have not only
dealt with high culture but also with mass culture, for example, Baxandall (1985) and
Kemp (1985).
14. The concept of ‘‘natural things’’ follows an outdated, pre-discursive turn
theory of science. Yet the following steps can compensate for this shortcoming.
15. http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/images/Eyeballs.png [30.10.12].
16. For copyright reasons, this image as well as the following three cannot be
reproduced in this volume unfortunately.
17. http://img4.magnus.de/Bundestrojaner-was-technisch-m-glich-ist-r599x585-C-
726da535-62642322.jpg
18. http://imagecache6.allposters.com/LRG/56/5663/T2GUG00Z.jpg [30.10.12].
19. http://4topas.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/ueberwachung3.jpg [30.10.12].
20. It is the font most often used to refer to the Third Reich, though in fact it does
not constitute the most commonly used font of the Nazi era.
21. For other examples see Leipziger Kamera (2009, pp. 132–179).
22. Our analytical distinction between strategy and identity should not, of course,
be mistaken for an ontological differentiation. In movement praxis both aspects go
hand in hand and, as James Jasper (1997) for example has shown, strategic decisions
depend on the group’s identity (cf. Daphi, 2011).
23. Accordingly the reiterated use of a set of symbols and signs is part of the
stabilization of this discursive structure. Movements play a double role in this field as
they reproduce their formative conditions as well as try to challenge their limitations
(at least in cases of radical or transformative movements).
24. Without wanting to fall into the trap of reproducing ‘‘holistic nationalist
clichés’’ (Koopmans & Statham, 2000, p. 31).
25. This adds to radical left groups’ caution with historical comparisons. The
radical German left decreased their use of Nazi-references since a long and ongoing
debate about the singularity of the Shoah and the specifics of German National
Socialism raised activists’ awareness about the politics of remembrance. Hence,
potential accusations of relativizing the Shoah are avoided.
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THE EMOTIONAL IMPERATIVE
OF THE VISUAL: IMAGES OF
THE FETUS IN CONTEMPORARY
AUSTRALIAN PRO-LIFE POLITICS
Kirsty McLaren
ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the value of visual analyses for studying social
movements through a study of pro-life uses of images of the fetus in the
Australian abortion debate. In doing so, it points to important connections
between the study of emotions in politics and visual approaches to social
movement studies. It also contributes new primary material on the politics
of reproduction through its study of the Australian pro-life movement,
on which little has been written. Through discursive analysis of visual
materials and practices embedded in three case studies, I demonstrate the
range of strategies being used; their selection was informed by a wider
survey of available records of pro-life uses of images of the fetus over the
past four decades. Emotion is a powerful element of politics, and images
of the fetus challenge the emotions, and hence the humanity, of the viewer.
I identify three major themes represented in pro-life images of the fetus:
the wonder of life; the human form and human frailty of the fetus; and the
barbarity of modern society. The meanings of these images are built on

ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X(2013)0000035008
81
82 KIRSTY MCLAREN
our parallel understandings of both sight and emotion as immediate and

unmediated. Moreover, the ambiguities and dualities of images of the
fetus make their themes more, rather than less, persuasive.
Keywords: Social movements; emotion; visual culture; reproductive

politics; Australian politics
INTRODUCTION
I showed my friends some letters and pictures I printed from AbortionTV.com.

Suddenly, through the veil of deception they saw the truth and reality of cold blooded,
terror-cloaked murder of defenseless children who had no chance and absolutely –
no choice.
(Pro-life activist Peter Erbacher, quoted in Pro-Life News, 2005).
Images of the fetus are a striking and potent element of pro-life repertoires
of contention. Indeed, visual images are central to the repertoires of many
social movements. Yet it is only comparatively recently that social
movement scholars have focused on the visual dimensions of politics. This
chapter presents an exploration of pro-life uses of images of the fetus in the
contemporary Australian abortion debate, as a small example of the value
of visual analysis of social movements. I argue here that analyzing the
meaning and importance of the fetus as a visual symbol leads to insight into
the pro-life movement, as well as into the interplay between emotion,
intuition, and reason in the formulation and reproduction of moral and
political beliefs.
The chapter begins by discussing how the existing literature on social
movements deals with the use of visual images, and provides an overview of
feminist scholars’ work on images of the fetus. It then describes the context
and the research design. Drawing on a survey of the pro-life visual landscape
dating from the 1970s, three cases were selected to encompass the breadth of
pro-life tactics and materials used in the past 15 years. Each case is discussed
in turn: the Maternal Health Information Act in the Australian Capital
Territory (ACT); Protect Life sit-ins in Brisbane, Queensland; and the Tell the
Truth campaign in Victoria. Taken as a whole, this chapter presents a unique
record of the contemporary visual culture of Australian pro-life politics.
The analysis identifies three main themes that are represented in pro-life
images of the fetus: the wonder of life; the human form and human frailty of
The Emotional Imperative of the Visual 83
the fetus; and the barbarity of modern society. In the final section of the
chapter, I argue that these meanings are built on our parallel understandings
of sight and feeling as immediate and unmediated. Emotion is a powerful
element of politics, and images of the fetus challenge the emotions, and thus
the humanity, of the viewer. This interpretation considers pro-life activists’
discussions of images of the fetus, and work on embodiment, emotion, and
visual culture. Thus, I contend, visual analysis of this social movement
activity reveals an important intersection between the visual and the
emotional.
Two preliminary notes on terms are necessary. First, I use the terms ‘‘pro-
life’’ and ‘‘pro-choice.’’ Although these phrases are not always adequate to
encapsulate the positions of the various actors, they are in common usage
and would be happily worn by most of those they label. Second, the word
‘‘fetus’’ is used throughout. Medical and scientific language distinguishes
between the ‘‘embryo,’’ from conception to 12 weeks’ gestation, and the
fetus, from 12 weeks until birth. The vast majority of abortions take place
during this first 12 weeks; according to this definition, pro-life images depict
both embryos and fetuses. However, to talk about ‘‘images of the fetus,’’
rather than using two discrete terms, makes more sense and seems the most
neutral term available.
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES AND

VISUAL IMAGES
Three areas of literature are important for this chapter. First, visual
materials are an important part of many social movement strategies, and
therefore appear in accounts of movement campaigns and history. For
instance, wilderness photography has played an important role in
environmental campaigning since at least the 1960s (see Hutton & Connors,
1999). In Australia the iconic photographs of Olegas Truchanas and Peter
Dombrovskis helped inspire the mobilization to save Tasmanian wild rivers
in the 1980s. Similarly, visual politics are central to the culture-jamming
tactics of anti-corporate activism, which disrupt or subvert corporate
messages through satire, graffiti, hacking of corporate materials and sites,
and parodies of advertising practices (see Harold, 2007).
Second, scholars taking a cultural approach to the study of social
movements have sometimes analyzed the meanings or the impact of visual
materials. Some of this work has argued that visual and pictorial genres can
make particular arguments more powerful. For instance, Morrison and
84 KIRSTY MCLAREN
Isaac (2012) demonstrate why cartoons were especially suited to the

communication of labor movement ideas in the early twentieth century.
Cartoons amplified the labor movement’s collective action frames particu-
larly well, they found, because cartoons could present ideas in concrete,
dramatic forms (‘‘Mr. Fat’’), and because, as a popular, widely read genre,
cartoons resonated with working class readers.
Other work has focused on visual images in the course of more broadly
exploring the use of imagery in movement stories and campaigns. James M.
Jasper and Jane D. Poulsen argue that ‘‘moral shocks’’ can be as effective as
social networks in recruiting people, defining moral shock as ‘‘when an
event or situation raises such a sense of outrage in people that they become
inclined toward political action.’’ They consider visual as well as nonvisual
means of inducing such shock and argue that ‘‘[t]he most effective shocks
are those embodied in, or translatable into, powerful condensing symbols.’’
The concept of a condensing symbol is drawn from Edward Sapir, and
describes a ‘‘verbal or visual’’ image that can ‘‘neatly capture both cogni-
tively and emotionally a range of meanings and convey a frame, master
frame, or theme’’ (Jasper & Poulsen, 1995, p. 498).
In a similar vein, Drew Halfmann and Michael P. Young (2010) examine
the use of graphic and shocking imagery in their study of abolitionist
writing, on the one hand, and pro-life visual materials on the other. They
consider imagery conveyed by both writing about the suffering of slaves
and by pictures of aborted fetuses. Halfmann and Young adopt from
literary criticism the concept of the grotesque to explain the force of violent
or graphic images. This provides a framework for understanding images of
the body in pain, and for explaining readers’ and viewers’ resistance to such
imagery. These scholars acknowledge that grotesque images and moral
shocks can be Janus-like, but argue that the small number of transformative
occasions when a bystander feels spurred to action is very significant.
Furthermore, moral shocks may help to revitalize or reinforce existing
activists’ commitment (Jasper, 2011, pp. 292–293).
Third, there is a specific strand of literature on images of the fetus. This
material is linked to the broader social movement literature. Works such as
Kristen Luker’s on pro-life activists cross into, and inform, both areas of
literature (Luker, 1984; see Condit, 1990 and Jasper & Poulsen, 1995).
Moreover, there is much similarity between the frameworks used, as both
areas see culture and politics as closely connected. The touchstone within
the literature critiquing fetal images is Rosalind Pollack Petchesky’s analysis
of the role of ultrasound images in mass culture and in pro-life materials.
With campaign materials like The Silent Scream, Petchesky argued that ‘‘the
political attack on abortion [had] moved further into the terrain of mass
culture and imagery’’ (1987, p. 263).
Anglophone feminist scholars have mostly focused on critique and
deconstruction of these images, rather than on their meanings for pro-life
activists. Scholars contributing to this literature have sought to destabilize
pro-life visual practices by demonstrating how epistemologies and
especially visually based epistemologies of pregnancy have varied over
time (Duden, 1993, 1999; Morgan & Michaels, 1999). They have critiqued
the assumption that the technology is objective, analyzing the artifice
involved in the production of images of the fetus (Ginsburg & Rapp, 1999;
Haraway, 1997), and also exploring the impact of fetal imaging on women’s
reproductive choices (Rapp, 1997; Zechmeister, 2001).
While these scholars have considered the power of images of the fetus to
shape our understandings of pregnancy, they have spent less time
considering these images power to alter viewers’ political opinions, and
then mainly through informed speculation or limited research. Celeste
Michelle Condit is one of the few who has touched on the persuasive effects
of images of the fetus, and she comes to a similar conclusion as the social
movement scholars:
Although such persuasion does not change pro-Life advocates and supporters from a
completely hostile to a supportive position, it does justify, integrate, and activate their
beliefs. yWhen pro-Life rhetors talk about why they believe as they do, the role of the
photographs and films becomes quite clear. (Condit, 1990, p. 80)
This chapter, then, draws on these bodies of literature in its analysis of

Australian pro-life visual discourses. It emphasizes the ambiguities and
dualities, as well as the emotional and intersubjective nature, of the images.
It helps to explain how images can be important for social movements, and
especially for creating moral shocks and emotional meanings.
BACKGROUND AND RESEARCH DESIGN
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, campaigns for abortion law reform
gathered strength, as ‘‘second-wave’’ feminism became more visible and the
women’s health movement emerged (Gray Jamieson, 2012). Legislative
change in South Australia, and court decisions articulating a definition of
‘‘legal abortion,’’ reduced legal barriers, if not removing all uncertainty (see
Cannold, 2009; Gleeson, 2009). This was the catalyst for the emergence of
the current pro-life movement.
86 KIRSTY MCLAREN
This chapter focuses on the pro-life movement in the more recent

period from the late 1990s to the end of 2009. During this time events in
the different jurisdictions of Australia’s federal political system have kept
the issue of abortion on the public agenda. As Stefania Siedlecky has
observed, although ‘‘[m]any people may have thought that the arguments
over abortion had been resolved, y the subject never really goes away’’
(2005, p. 16). The ‘‘arguments,’’ however, are mostly reiterations of previous
ones: the main positions are quite static, and, consequently, new ‘‘con-
troversies y prompt the recycling of the same issues’’ (Gregory, 2007, p. 62).
In Australia, pro-life networks are dominated by two groupings: on the
one hand, the state-based organizations affiliated with the Australian
Federation of Right to Life Associations; and on the other, Right to Life
Australia, based in Melbourne. These organizations campaign on matters
such as euthanasia, stem cell research, and abortion. In addition there are
small groups of the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants, linked to the
American organization of the same name, in different cities and towns.
Conservative Christian groups notably the Australian Christian Lobby
also support pro-life campaigns, as do a small number of politicians
standing on family-values, conservative Christian platforms. A pro-life
organization, Pregnancy Counseling Australia, operates a counseling phone
service, and some local organizations provide assistance to pregnant women.
Overall, the pro-life movement is small and relatively static. One change
in recent years is that there have been increasing signs of ‘‘pro-woman’’
pro-life activities (Cannold, 2002); the tenor of these is evident in the
empowering and affirmative orientation of organizations such as Brisbane’s
Cherish Life.
To analyze the nature of recent pro-life visual discourses in Australia
I began with a survey of visual material and discussion of visual tactics.
These were collated from four sources: current pamphlets and flyers
provided by Right to Life Australia in 2006 and 2007; a wide-ranging survey
of pro-life websites and publications from 1995 to 2010; newspaper articles
about pro-life campaigning, from the late 1960s to today; and materials
copied from historical archives especially library ephemera collections
which dated back between 30 and 40 years. From this search, I compiled a
dataset of 221 representations of the fetus, in 45 sources between 1995 and
2010; this set comprised 105 images from 34 pamphlets or flyers, and 116
images from 11 websites. To provide historical context, and enable me to
judge whether the images were similar to or different from those used in the
past, the older materials formed a supplementary dataset, with a further 105
images from 32 items. I also collected samples of descriptions of the fetus
that were not accompanied by images and of articles and items discussing
the use of images of the fetus and abortion politics.
The survey was constrained by what materials had been kept and made
available to researchers. Hence, it was not used for quantitative analysis but
to identify dominant ideas and ways of representing the fetus. Informed by
the broader survey I undertook three case studies of tactics used in three
different Australian jurisdictions: a government-mandated information
booklet in the Australian Capital Territory; protests outside medical centers
providing abortion in Queensland; and leaflets and internet-based cam-
paigning against abortion law reform in Victoria. These were selected as
most different cases, chosen to illustrate the range of pro-life activities, and
the range of pictures themselves, from stylized to shocking. Though they
show this range, neither the tactics nor the images used are outliers. All the
tactics were used or promoted in other contexts, and all of the images of the
fetus appeared in multiple other sources in the datasets.
In fact, both the survey and the case studies demonstrated that visual
materials using images of the fetus have changed very little over four
decades. The images themselves and the arguments being used have
remained almost entirely the same. Throughout this time, images and
materials have been highly derivative, even being printed in the United
States. Technology has had some impact: the quality of pictures, the use of
color, and the media employed have all changed markedly. The internet
allows many more images to be used, and links to international websites
effectively expand the ‘‘gallery’’ of materials provided. Nonetheless, the
discourse is mostly static, and in some cases, strikingly so. For instance,
during the 2007 election campaign, conservative Queensland Senator Ron
Boswell used a cartoon of a fetus holding a sign that was almost exactly the
same as a newspaper advertisement from 1977 (Stop Abortion Fund, 1977)
and election flyers from 1979 (held in the State Library of Victoria’s
ephemera collection). The writing on the fetus’ placard, ‘‘I demand my
constitutional rights, too!’’ (emphasis in original) clearly derived from an
American context, as the Australian constitution does not deal explicitly
with rights. Collating such materials is useful, because their circulation has
been quite uneven common in some areas, for some people, and absent in
others. It also constitutes an important resource for future study (see
Halfmann & Young, 2010).
Analysis of the material was guided by principles from the social science
literature on the study of visual culture and visual methods. This means that,
most importantly, ‘‘reading’’ an image means reading both the content the
‘‘internal narrative’’ and the context in which it is ‘‘read’’ the ‘‘external
88 KIRSTY MCLAREN
narrative’’ (Banks, 2001, pp. 10–11). Though my analysis considers both

elements, the two should not be thought of as entirely distinct: ‘‘the notion of
discourse is central [with] y its emphasis upon the integral relations of
meaning and use’’ (Evans & Hall, 1999, p. 3). Indeed, insufficient attention to
details which frame images, such as the captions and language used alongside
them, has limited otherwise excellent analyses of visual images of the fetus
(see Park, 1998, reviewing Newman, 1996).
Similarly, the analysis attempts to pay attention to the particular, material
form of the image, as a visual image. Gillian Rose argues that visual images
possess an ‘‘irreducible’’ visual character (Rose, 2007) that should not be
elided by subsuming them into the broader category of texts. Visual theorist
W. J. T. Mitchell (2005) draws a distinction between an image and a picture,
that is, the material form of an image. This distinction, which focuses
attention on the practices through which images are created and commu-
nicated, can help guard against ‘‘disembodying’’ images by treating them as
just another text (Armstrong, 1996). Hence, in short, the analysis considers
images of the fetus, rendered as pictures for particular uses, framed by the
social and political context in which they are created, shown, and seen.
CASE STUDIES OF AUSTRALIAN PRO-LIFE

REPERTOIRES AND MATERIALS
As noted, the cases selected for close study encompass the full range of
tactics and types of image disclosed by the survey and are sourced from
different States and Territories, the first being from the Australian Capital
Territory.
The Health Regulation (Maternal Health Information) Act
From 1999 to 2001, the Health Regulation (Maternal Health Information)

Act ACT 1998 required that women seeking an abortion be provided with a
government-produced pamphlet. This pamphlet (Department of Health and
Community Care, 1999) included information on fetal development,
illustrated with images of the fetus. The Act also required that a ‘‘cooling-
off’’ period of 72 hours be observed before consent for the procedure could
be given. The Act constitutes the most recent instance of legislative change
placing constraints on access to or the practice of abortion. Indeed, it can be
considered one of only two pro-life ‘‘victories’’ over the past decade and a
half (see the pro-life view presented in ACT Right to Life Association
Newsletter, 1998). The other was the failure of Senator Natasha Stott
Despoja’s campaign on pregnancy counseling advertising, with the defeat of
the Transparent Advertising and Notification of Pregnancy Counselling
Services Bill 2005 and the cross-party Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in
Advertising) Bill 2006.
The Act was the culmination of much maneuvering in the ACT’s
Legislative Assembly, which is elected through a proportional representa-
tion system. This was led by Paul Osborne, an independent MLA with a
platform of Christian and family values, in an Assembly where ‘‘he had the
numbers, with 10 of the 17 Members broadly opposed to abortion’’
(Canberra Times, 1998). Though the legislative success was unusual, the
legislators’ views were less so: typically, Australian parliamentarians hold
more conservative views on abortion than the general public (Betts, 2004;
see also Pringle, 2007).
Initially, the expert committee charged with creating the prescribed
pamphlet decided that pictures might be unhelpful or distressing. Pro-life
MLAs then rectified this, passing regulations specifying that the information
booklet include a description and images of fetal development. As a result, a
timeline of development milestones was added, accompanied by three
images from the photography of Lennart Nilsson, captioned ‘‘Embryo at
8 weeks,’’ ‘‘Embryo at 9 weeks,’’ and ‘‘Foetus at 14 weeks’’ (Department of
Health and Community Care, 1999, pp. 11–12).1 There was, however,
‘‘spirited community and Assembly debate’’ about the change, and some
medical services refused to return copies of the first edition or to use the
second (see Jackson, 2000).
Supporters of the regulatory change felt that visual images were especially
important. Brendan Smyth, a Member of the Legislative Assembly who had
supported the amendment of the prescribed information, thought the
pictures irrefutable.
These pictures are of the young unborn. They are pictures of unborn human beings,
Mr. Speaker. If I were pro-abortion, I would not want my arguments in favour of
abortion clearly and easily undermined by the simple, undeniable, irrefutable, clear,
distinguishable, recognisable truth that these pictures show. yI believe that the pictorial
information will enable women in fact, empower women to make an informed
decision. (Australian Capital Territory, Legislative Assembly, Debates, 1998, p. 2838)
In the debate about the Act, ‘‘informed consent’’ came to imply a sensibility
of the enormity of abortion, and pictures were presumed to be a more
powerful medium for evoking such a sensibility. Some of those who argued
90 KIRSTY MCLAREN
against the information pamphlet, on the grounds that images of the fetus
might cause distress, were using the same premise as those supporting the
bill: that images of the fetus have some innate emotional power.
Alternatively, some argued that it was unnecessary, because women already
make informed, considered decisions, while others pointed out that the
quality of women’s decisions did not have any bearing on their right to
make those decisions.
There are few copies of this booklet remaining, although copies of the first
version, which did not contain any pictures (published in April 1999), can be
found in libraries. The three pictures used in the booklet are photographs
by Lennart Nilsson, published in a well-known Life magazine photo essay
and multiple editions of a book, although the originals are in full color
(Nilsson, 1965, 2003). Nilsson’s work explores the beauty and wonder of
life; his photos, supreme examples of documentary photography, are usually
presented as providing a rare entry to a realm of wonder and amazement
(see, for example, Good Weekend: The Sydney Morning Herald Magazine,
2006, p. 32). This sense of crossing new visual frontiers is invoked by many
images of the fetus. For instance, Petchesky (1987) notes how ultrasound
was presented as opening up new horizons, sending pictures from previously
unknown worlds.
Traces of the origins of the images can still inflect how they are read.
Hence, the images retain both an aura of scientific authority and traces of
wonder: this is a genre in which wonder is an expected response. This sense
of awe is compounded by the interpretation of the images as showing ‘‘new
life.’’ Indeed, the very fact that the fetus is hidden and rare that mere
images of it are treasured, precious – emphasizes the value of the subject
being represented.
The most striking element of these three images is the fetal body itself, and
its form as a kind of human body. Condit argues that pro-life images often
function as tropes, that the parts of the fetal body which most resemble
those of a child or adult – hands, feet, and face – represent the whole
(Condit, 1990). This is not the case here: instead, the entire fetal body is
shown, and is clearly not that of a child or an adult. Indeed, showing the
entire fetal body is extremely significant, for its form is also quite different
from the adult human form, by turns a human and a not-quite-human form.
It is disproportionate in ways that signify weakness and fragility: its limbs
are spindly, its body is hunched, and its frame looks underdeveloped in the
way of a malnourished child’s. Though the text explains the developing
capabilities of the fetus, all three images show how much development is yet
to be completed.
This ambiguity that the fetal body is both human and not human
does not diminish its significance. First, the emerging humanity of the fetus
is established by the developmental sequence, which collapses time and
creates a sense of inevitability in fetal development. The sequencing of fetal
development pictures pulls the familiar baby back into the early stages of
growth, and encourages the viewer to note the trends connecting early,
strange forms to later, somewhat more recognizable body. Thus, the
strange, boxy skull of the first picture is rendered recognizable.
Furthermore, in these images, the fetus appears in a vacuum, surrounded
by empty space. This image excludes the woman’s body, a matter
emphasized by feminist criticism. While feminists have argued for women’s
control over their own bodies, pro-life activists have rejected these feminist
arguments and presented the fetus as a delineated body of its own ‘‘an
individual organism of the human species’’ (Shanahan, 2009, p. 9). And
this is not merely a distinct body: it is a vulnerable body. The fetus has
skin which is almost translucent. Moreover, appearing in a vacuum makes
it appear unprotected, at best sometimes surrounded by the almost trans-
parent wisps of tissue that are the amniotic sac in Nilsson’s photographs.
This is a consequence of Nilsson’s methods: he created most of his images by
suspending the embryo or fetus in saline in a glass container and photo-
graphing it. The message of frailty compounds the air of wonder in so many
of these images.
This cluster of characteristics combine to reinforce the duality of the fetus’
embodiment: the body which is simultaneously discrete and complete,
fragile and vulnerable, signifies simultaneously that it exists and that it
cannot fend for itself: the fetus needs protection. Thus, these images present
the fetus as a special moral subject, to which we owe greater care.
The scientific authority of the pamphlet, as an official government
publication, heightens the impression that these are objective, correct
images. The ACT’s information booklet ended up resembling the materials
used by pro-life crisis pregnancy counseling services. In Australia,
Pregnancy Counseling Australia, the most prominent pro-life counseling
service attempting to reach women considering abortion, uses similar visual
material (see, for instance, Pregnancy Counselling Australia, n.d.). The
failure of Senator Stott Despoja’s truth in advertising bill was hence a
significant ‘‘victory’’ in the very same arena as the Osborne bill. Although
the intentions of the pamphlet’s creators, constrained by regulation, were
quite different from pro-life pregnancy counselors’, the impact seems to
have still been similar. Indeed, the official character of the publication
makes it more authoritative.
92 KIRSTY MCLAREN
Protect Life Sit-Ins
The second example comprises the occasional pickets of clinics performing

abortions by a small Brisbane group called ‘‘Protect Life.’’ In recent years,
Protect Life has moved its protests beyond the footpath outside clinics
offering abortion services. Since 2002 they have staged dozens of small
nonviolent protests, of a few people trespassing onto clinic grounds and
sitting in doorways with placards (see ABC News, 2005). Calling these
actions ‘‘rescues,’’ they explicitly modeled their behavior on the American
organization Operation Rescue.
These pickets aimed to attract additional attention, by breaking the law
to raise awareness of a moral issue (as explained in newsletter articles,
including Festival Focus Queensland, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c). The most
frequent participant in the sit-ins, Graham Preston, has been arrested for
failing to move on, in protests involving, for instance, sitting ‘‘in a
doorway holding a plastic fetus and color photos of abortions’’ (Lill, 2003,
p. 6; see also Courier Mail, 2000). The civil disobedience has included
spending weeks in custody awaiting his hearing rather than agree to stay
away from the clinic as a condition of bail, and refusing to pay fines for
several years (Herald Sun, 2003). Images of the fetus appear not just as
components of the original protest, but also as part of supporters’ response
to court appearance. For example, in July 2003, being fined and released,
‘‘Preston was greeted with a plastic model of a fetus and a hug from wife
Liz, and the admiration of a team of placard-waving supporters’’ (Lill,
2003, p. 6).
Pro-life activist Peter Erbacher, (n.d) posted photographs of a protest
on the American website ‘‘AbortionTV.’’ The website features a plethora
of images of the fetus, including a large number of ‘‘aborted fetus’’ pictures.
In the protest photographs posted, a number of people are sitting in the
doorway to the clinic. They are holding placards with a stylized fetal form.
The fetus seems to be lit from behind by golden light, and the picture looks
as though it has been painted.2
Like the Nilsson photographs that were part of the last case, the placards
include bright colors and illumination of the subject. Yet as well as these
characteristics of documentary images, there are also strong religious
connotations to these pictures. The light streaming from behind the fetus’
body is a strong marker of the sacred nature of the symbol. In this way, the
ambiguity of visual images, where symbols must be recognized by the
viewer, means that these pictures are simultaneously showing a natural
wonder and a religious wonder: the illumination of the subject takes on new
meaning in a context where many people’s opinions are based on religious

beliefs. Religion has not been replaced by science in pro-life images, but
rather has melded with it: the contemporary, scientific ‘‘sacrum’’ (Duden,
1993, pp. 108–110) that is ‘‘Life Itself’’ (Haraway, 1997) is indistinguishable
from the sacrum that carries religious import for pro-life believers.
Rather than diminishing its power, the varying, and even contradictory,
attributes of the fetus make it even more richly significant. The coexistence
of scientific and religious ideas is easily understood through the combination
of two sets of connotations. Each set of connotations may be more evident
or more meaningful for different audiences, but religious and scientific
themes can be simultaneously significant for the same viewer. Wyatt and
Hughes, in one of the few articles on the Australian pro-life movement,
describe how pro-life activists invoke both religious and scientific argu-
ments. Though they view this coexistence as paradoxical (Wyatt & Hughes,
2009, p. 245), it is rather quite normal to construct multiple arguments using
multiple frames:
Given the fact that, y most ordinary people’s beliefs are vague, shifting, diverse, and
internally contradictory, why should we expect that people will put a premium on clarity
and consistency in the messages they attend to and believe? (Polletta, 2008, p. 4).
In short: the fetus is a complex icon, a repository of a multiplicity of ideas,

both scientific and religious.
The silhouette of the fetal body is the focus of the placards. Despite its
‘‘underdevelopment,’’ the fetal head and eyes, and to some extent, its chest,
are oversized and emphasized. These are precisely the body parts that com-
municate personal identity and where we locate the mind and the heart –
the soul. Resembling in this way the archetype of the sensitive, ethereal
invalid (cf. Susan Sontag’s (1978) discussion of the wasting consumptive),
the fetal body depicts a person who is undersized and weak in the physical
body, while stronger or greater in mind and spirit.
Finally, the placards, images are only part of the overall visual scene: the
protesters’ behavior frames the picture of the fetus. This behavior is both
defiant in blocking an entry, and also quiet and subdued. The placards are
presented as an explanation, a motivation, and as a challenge to the public.
It is useful to think of these as vigils rather than demonstrations: this
repertoire of ‘‘contentious behavior’’ (McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly, 2001)
includes prayer, religious hymns, and silent or nonconfrontational vigils.
Small groups of people have been doing this regularly for decades around
Australia. The Helpers of God’s Precious Infants is one widespread example
(see, e.g., Zajac, 2006).
94 KIRSTY MCLAREN
The Tell the Truth Campaign
This third example focuses on more grisly images of aborted fetuses. The
Tell the Truth Coalition was established when it became clear that a bill to
legalize abortion would be introduced to the Victorian parliament. From the
Melbourne networks of Right to Life Australia, a separate organization was
set up, to carry out a ‘‘radical new campaign’’ (in the words of the email
seeking interested people). The connections with other groups were still
close: the Tell the Truth website was registered in the name of Margaret
Tighe, of Right to Life Australia; and a former campaign director for Right
to Life Australia was an active member of both organizations. Strategy
and particularly the use of graphic, shocking images has been a fraught
issue for the pro-life movement in Australia. As in the case of Protect Life,
formal divisions like this protect major pro-life organizations from financial
risk and negative public perception. Moreover, while interlinked organiza-
tions may pool resources, individuals can still choose in what kind of
activism they are or will be involved.
During February and March 2008, Tell the Truth delivered letters across
Victoria, including in Melbourne, Bendigo, and Gippsland (McArthur,
2008). In envelopes marked ‘‘To the adult householder’’ and ‘‘Viewer
discretion advised’’ were fliers with graphic images of aborted fetuses
(Jackson, 2008). The fliers were described in the media as ‘‘[d]epicting
images of a 24-week-old dead baby soaked in blood, an aborted 8-week-old
fetus and the hands of an aborted 11-week-old fetus’’ (McArthur, 2008).
They also contained descriptions of ‘‘what organs and body features have
developed by the stage of most abortions’’ (Brown, 2008). I have had
difficulty obtaining a copy of this flier, but have been able to collect a similar
flier distributed in central Melbourne shortly before the Tell the Truth
Coalition formed, by an activist who played a role in that formation.3
Again, there are many older examples of this tactic (see Roberts, 1984). The
mail out was the subject of complaints and an investigation by the
Advertising Standards Bureau. In upholding the complaints:
The Board noted the complaints’ concerns about that the images portrayed in this print
advertisement were graphic, frightening, and distressing.
The Board viewed the advertisement and agreed that the images were extremely graphic
and had the potential to cause alarm and distress. (Advertising Standards Bureau, 2008,
p. 2, emphasis in original)
Many of the complaints and the media reports emphasized that children
could encounter the images, or that women who had previously terminated
a pregnancy could experience distress.
The leafleting and letter-drops were accompanied by other tactics. As well

as attempting to influence public opinion, Tell the Truth contacted
parliamentarians and staged demonstrations. During the Parliamentary
debate, the media reported that politicians received graphic or emotive
correspondence from other groups:
The representative of the Coalition for the Prosecution of Prenatal Child Killers, Mr.
Powell recently sent leaflets to state politicians depicting a late-term abortion in
cartoon form. ‘‘The child killer jams scissors into the baby’s skull,’’ it reads. The leaflet
carries the politicians’ [sic] photograph: ‘‘Is this to be his 2008 legacy to you?’’
(Bachelard, 2008).
Tell the Truth’s website also featured graphic content, and links to sites
with graphic content. The website used links to piggy-back on the resources
of American sites: the home-page featured links formatted as though they
were pages within the site, but which took the user to the Centre for
Bioethical Reform (http://www.abortionno.org/) and Priests for Life (http://
www.priestsforlife.org/). These featured images labeled as aborted fetuses,
and video of a curettage being performed.
The flier distributed by the Tell the Truth Coalition depicts a modern
barbarity, showing evidence of the wrong of abortion. Blood and flesh are
usually internal matter which should remain hidden. To expose innards
requires violence, violation, and pain. The visceral reaction to blood and
flesh and violence is a deliberate aim of such pro-life campaigns, which seek
to construct the viewer’s emotional reaction as a sign of the significance of
the fetus. The viewer’s flinch becomes proof of a violent act. Flesh is a
marker of destroyed significance, of a destroyed moral subject.
These markers of atrocity are found in bodily destruction, and hence
require an imagined fetal body to be destroyed. Thus, the pairing of images
of an aborted fetus and a healthy baby, as in the flyer distributed earlier
in central Melbourne, is not just illustrating the logical contention of the
text. Likewise, images highlighting the preciousness and vulnerability of
the fetus make images of fetal slaughter even more powerful. The fetus that
Petchesky described as ‘‘chaste’’ (1987, p. 263), the ‘‘secretive’’ creature
glimpsed in breathtaking shots with advanced technology, is transformed
in ‘‘post-abortion’’ images into a dismembered, exposed, mutilated corpse.
This contrast is a very common way of presenting the pro-life argument.
For instance, a Sydney campaign against a local politician (Roberts, 1984)
distributed a leaflet titled ‘‘Life or Death,’’ which featured the same
juxtaposition of images of a baby and of a bloody aborted fetus (published
by Dr. and Mrs. C. J. Wilkie, 1975, available in the Victorian State Library’s
ephemera collection).
96 KIRSTY MCLAREN
That is, there is a strong link between vision and voyeurism in this
opposition: a chaste glimpse of the wonder of the hidden fetus (Petchesky,
1987, p. 276) is a rarely afforded privilege, but the exposure of the blood and
flesh and gore is violating, excessive, and horrifying. To look at and expose
the mistreated corpse is a violation which implicates the viewer as an
accomplice of the ‘‘abortionist.’’ It is not just that the mistreatment of the
fetus is depicted, but that the act of depicting it is also rather horrific, a
public desecration of a body. Once we see desecration, we are recognizing
the destruction of something of significance.
THE EMOTIONAL MEANINGS OF PRO-LIFE

VISUAL REPERTOIRES
These cases involve images of the fetus which encapsulate and communicate
three themes. The pictures are meant to evoke wonder and awe to illustrate
the wonder of life; they are meant to prompt recognition of the human form
of the fetus and evoke empathy or a sense of protectiveness for it as a
person; and they are meant to evoke shock and horror at the violence. These
three themes are all dependent on a fundamental claim: that images of the
fetus show a powerful reality.
Visual images are a medium well suited to such a claim. As Marcus Banks
writes, ‘‘for centuries vision sight has been a privileged sense in the
European repertoire, a point well-established by philosophers, social
theorists and other cultural critics’’ (Banks, 2001, p. 7). Pro-life visual
materials are part of a discourse in which images reveal truths concealed by
a deceptive modern society (see, e.g., Hobart Mercury, 2001). According to
this narrative, visual images are an important corrective to the misleading
and manipulative communications of the modern world. That is, words
deceive, but pictures reveal the truth.
The discourses involving pro-life images of the fetus also position the
viewer as being confronted by the visualized fetus. This is emphasized by
confrontational tactics, using images of violence, in the case of Tell the
Truth, and blocking entrances, in the case of Protect Life. The very act of
holding images up is a challenge: look at this and tell us you do not feel
anything. Visual images may fix this confrontation of the viewer more
forcefully, for while a reader can choose not to visualize something, or not
to keep reading, a viewer (we believe) usually can only reject what he or she
has seen.
This close connection between seeing and feeling is central to the meanings
of the images. Images portraying the wonder of life whether evoking life
as a scientific or a religious quality are presenting life as wondrous and
awe-inspiring. Images of violence to the fetal body are shown as evidence of
actions which, it is implied, should evoke horror and outrage. The fetal body
is shown as both human and not-quite human, with the implication that the
viewer should identify with the fetus as human, and also feel protective of it
as a frail and vulnerable human. Thus, images of the fetus try to evoke
emotion, and cast that emotion as evidence of the significance of the fetus.
This emotion of care feeling protective of the fetus, or feeling empathy
for its pain in the more grisly images is an intersubjective act. That is, the
viewer’s (presumed) reaction to seeing the fetus establishes the fetus as a
subject. This reaction is construed by pro-life campaigners as a natural and
irrefutable indicator of the moral connection between our society and the
fetus. The philosophical conceptualization of personhood (in which capacity
and autonomy are usually necessary) is not relevant in this moral landscape;
the fetus’ being places a moral duty on pro-life activists because of its
incapacity. As Mitchell argues, we regard images as objects of emotion,
affection, desire, and power (2005). Those forces are sufficient to make the
fetus akin to a subject. This is not the only ‘‘way of seeing’’ the fetus, in John
Berger’s (1972) famous phrase; it is not the only mode of visuality available.
Built in to an image, though, are the visualities with which it can be seen.
This is, in Mitchell’s (2005) conceptualization, ‘‘what a picture wants’’: it
presents a way of constituting the act of seeing, a way of positioning the
viewer and meta-level epistemological assumptions. There is power in that
positioning relations and positions that are implied and must be accepted
or resisted.
One source of the power of images of the fetus is that they present the fetus
as an embodied subject. That is, visually embodying the fetus makes it easier
for the viewer to think of it as a social subject. Jenny Hockey and Janet
Draper analyze how traces of the material body enable the social
constructions of persons before birth and after death (Hockey & Draper,
2005, p. 44). Conceptualizing the life course is ‘‘a social institution’’ (p. 44,
emphasis in original), Hockey and Draper argue that material traces of
the body, such as ultrasound, anchor practices, and ways of thinking that
create that are ongoing interactions and relationships (p. 47).
This embodiment bolsters images’ claims to a relationship with the viewer.
Moreover, this claim, a challenge to the humanity of the viewer, constitutes
an especially potent challenge to the maternal character of the woman
98 KIRSTY MCLAREN
viewer. Throughout this time, motherhood has dominated the politics of

abortion. Political scientist and reproductive rights activist Rebecca Albury
(1999, pp. 166–168) describes the equation ‘‘women=Woman=Mother’’ as
a powerful force in the politics of reproduction, and one which can be almost
impossible to escape (see also Luker, 1984). The exhortation to care
resonates with this equation, and the expectation of care and emotional
involvement is particularly heavy for women (see Cannold, 2001).
Indeed, visual images are an especially effective medium for emotive
arguments. The interaction between our assumptions about vision and
assumptions about emotion are particularly persuasive. When looking at
images, what we see is framed as ‘‘natural.’’ Whether vision is socially
constructed as such, or innately so, matters less: we understand it to be thus.
One prominent conservative commenter recently claimed that ‘‘even at the
most visceral emotional level’’ we recognize the place of the fetus in natural
law (Shanahan, 2009).
There are strong parallels between our understanding of sight as
unmediated or more immediate than other senses, and our understanding
of emotion as prior to reason, more innate or instinctive (though sometimes
also inferior). Moreover, the artifice involved in producing visual images is
often perceived to be less in written descriptions. This is fundamental for a
successfully emotive argument, as feeling or empathy must be seen as
authentic, originating in the audience rather than being a product of the
manipulation of the speaker of writer. In this way, it seems that sight, or our
dominant ways of seeing (Berger, 1972), may be a medium particularly
suited to creating moral shocks.
Francesca Polletta (2008), examining storytelling as a form of social
movement argument, suggests that ambiguity is crucial for a persuasive
story, indeed, that the ambiguity of stories makes them more powerful. The
spaces with the reader or listener must jump where connections are left
unsaid make the conclusions more persuasive. Similarly, the ambiguity of
visual images, which are not constrained by linear grammars or logics,
means that they can communicate multiple themes, but also that viewers
may be more persuaded by what the images suggest. Thus, again, visual
images may be especially powerful.
CONCLUSION: THE VALUE OF VISUAL ANALYSIS

OF PRO-LIFE POLITICS
The visual repertoires of the Australian pro-life movement outlined in this

chapter provide insight into the motivations of long-term activists. The
Australian pro-life movement is extremely small, so small that the

description of ‘‘social movement’’ can seem overblown. Many Australian
scholars describe the pro-life movement as simply part of reactive
conservatism. Moreover, these strategies which have changed little in
the last four decades do not seem to be effective. For instance, political
scientist John Warhurst studied the impact of pro-life letter-drops in the
1970s and 1980s, and concluded that there was no discernible effect on
voting patterns (1983).
Though many of the practices, arguments, and even materials documen-
ted here have remained static for many years, the activism itself continues.
The visual culture of pro-life politics suggests that this is precisely because
these are not instrumental or strategic endeavors, but rather matters of
emotion and symbolic action. Protect Life’s ‘‘rescues’’ or pickets, which
combine two powerful symbolic acts, demonstrate this. First, futilely
standing outside presents the protesters as keeping a vigil, obeying a duty to
bear witness. These actions constitute participants as acting from
conscience, and from care for a hidden or forgotten victim. Second, the
act of holding placards, of holding truth aloft, is a defiant challenge to a
duplicitous society. The Protect Life website explains this, describing the
‘‘rescues’’ as a Christian duty (Protect Life, n.d.). Images of the fetus,
representing a group of beings with special moral status and strong
emotional meaning, explain the futile gesture as a performance of care for
what is seen as a fellow moral subject.
I would suggest that future work on the visual dimensions of social
movements would benefit from continuing to explore the connection
between the visual and the emotional. There is much to be examined, as
both emotion and visual culture have historically been neglected by social
movement studies (Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2000). Relating these two
lines of inquiry is likely to be productive. There is little value in describing
different dimensions of social movements – or any other aspect of politics
for the sake of it, unless it provides new insight or theoretical perspectives
(see Tilly, 2003).
In the case studies discussed above, images of the fetus are significant and
powerful. They provide evidence of the fetus’ substance and enable its social
embodiment. Yet they also emphasize the fragility and the vulnerability of
the fetus, and invite the empathy of the viewer. Indeed, images of aborted
fetuses prompt a visceral reaction and thus demand empathy. This empathy
is fundamental to the intersubjective connection created between the
fetus and the viewer, and, in turn, that intersubjectivity demonstrates the
moral significance of the fetus for the pro-life viewer. Thus, in Australian
pro-life politics, visual repertoires are central to expressive politics and
100 KIRSTY MCLAREN
provide compelling evidence of how emotions animate and sustain social

movement activity.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Marian Sawer and Norman Abjorensen for their
helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the two
anonymous referees for their invaluable feedback, which greatly improved
the chapter.
NOTES
1. Hard copies of this version of the booklet (i.e., with the images) are extremely
rare. I am aware of a low-resolution digital copy only, which was not suitable for
reprinting. The included images come from the photography of Lennart Nilsson.
They are in color but with a blue tint. The image captioned ‘‘8 weeks’’ is a
photograph titled ‘‘7 weeks’’ by Nilsson; the ‘‘Embryo at 14 weeks’’ is a version of
Nilsson’s ‘‘Spaceman (13 weeks)’’ photograph, flipped on its vertical axis. The
photographs can be seen at http://www.lennartnilsson.com/child_is_born.html. The
disparity in the number of weeks in the captions reflects different ways of
determining the ‘‘age’’ of the fetus, or the duration of pregnancy.
2. A practically identical image though it is rotated is used to illustrate a 2011
blog post by Prolife New Zealand. See http://prolife.org.nz/2011/10/alranz/
3. This flier is quite graphic, and has not been reproduced here. It is A4, in color,
with the title ‘‘Why not protect them both?’’ It is illustrated with two pairs of
pictures. The first pair comprises a picture of a premature baby and a picture of an
aborted fetus. This picture, titled ‘‘24 week abortion’’ is posted by the American
Centre for Bioethical Reform, at http://www.abortionno.org/abortion-photos/?pid=47.
The second pair comprises a smiling, older baby, and a fetus, with the head separated
from the body, and an arm, also separate, being held by a gloved hand. It can be seen
at http://www.100abortionpictures.com/Aborted_Baby_Pictures_Abortion_Photos/
Enlargement.cfm?ID=29. The images were accompanied by some text, and, at the
bottom of the page, the question: ‘‘What are you doing to help these children?’’
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PROTEST MOVEMENTS AND
SPECTACLES OF DEATH: FROM
URBAN PLACES TO VIDEO SPACES
Tina Askanius
ABSTRACT
Much scholarship has looked at how radical politics and its symbolism are
framed and distorted by the mass media, while less attention has been
devoted to how the symbolic imagery of violence and death is used in
activists’ self-representations. This chapter provides one such alternative
angle by probing how ‘‘visual protest materials’’ are creatively used in
activists’ own videos to pass on stories of communion and contestation.
It interrogates how activist video practices mirror the continuum between
physical places and mediated spaces in political activism by analyzing a
thread of videos circulating on YouTube that commemorate people who
have died in connection with three protest events across Europe, putting
on display the ‘‘spectacles of death’’ punctuating each of these events. The
analysis draws on social semiotics, in particular the work of Barthes
(1981) and Zelizer (2010), to examine how death is used as a visual
trope to signify the ultimate prize of taking to the streets. This chapter
suggests how agency and meaning travel back and forth between offline
and online spaces of activism. Engaging with some implications of this

ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X(2013)0000035009
105
106 TINA ASKANIUS
interplay, the chapter argues that, in the quest to document truth and
induce realism and immediacy, tensions between fact and fiction emerge
in the creative appropriation and remixing of images. Finally, it demon-
strates how the cityscape is recruited to document and dramatize the
spectacle of death as part of a larger struggle for semiotic resources
within the protest space and over media representations of social
movements more generally.
Keywords: Protest movements; video activism; spectacle of death;

commemoration; geographies of resistance; YouTube
INTRODUCTION
Yet scattered and fragmented under the weight of technology, body and city can’t be
recovered by means other than those that displace them: they must be recorded or
registered anew. Video replaces the personal diary. Made up of images, urban culture is
like a hall of mirrors, its reflections reproduced to infinity. Confronted with their own
technological images, the city and the body become ruins. Even technology is attacked
by an obsolescence that renders it old instantly. We are faced with a transitory
landscape, where new ruins continually pile up on each other. It is amid these ruins that
we look for ourselves. (Olalquiaga, 1992)
In the past decade, the recurring political summits of the G8/20, World
Trade Organization (WTO), and World Economic Forum (WEF) have
attracted a large number of political protesters, who ‘‘occupy’’ and reclaim
the host cities with mass demonstrations and counter-summits, contesting
the political agendas of the leaders of the world economy. The streets
of these cities thus become not only arenas for radical politics, but
concurrently settings for spectacular and colorful cultural expressions of the
struggle for voice and access to public spaces in an urban environment.
In Genoa in 2001, in Athens in 2008, and in London in 2009, the mass
demonstrations had a deadly upshot since three men were killed in
confrontations with police.1 In commemoration videos on YouTube, these
men, regardless of the different circumstances of their deaths, are inscribed
into a consecutive and still ongoing narrative of martyrdom. Images of their
deaths are woven into those of past, present, and future political
mobilizations, with the urban space forming the backdrop against which
their dead bodies are depicted. This chapter takes as its empirical starting
point videos documenting the events in the three cities as places. From these
places, we may raise questions about how YouTube forms spaces in which
Protest Movements and Spectacles of Death 107
videos documenting the events and commemorating the people who were
killed link up with one another. In a semiotic analysis paying specific
attention to ‘‘the voice of the visual’’ (Barthes, 1981; Zelizer, 2004, 2010) in
these images of violence, death, and collective trauma, this chapter
interrogates the continuities of practices and collective rituals from physical
urban places to representations in online spaces. By exploring the
continuum between offline and online practices, I raise questions of how
representations of the ways in which activists alter and redefine urban
landscapes by means of cultural expressions and protest artefacts such as
graffiti, street jamming, and vernacular street memorials are (re)mediated in
online videos calling for future mobilizations. I take a particular interest in
representations of the city as a site of struggle for visibility and symbolic
resources, and in how the tropes of semiotic disobedience take center stage
in video documentation of the protests. Against this backdrop, this study
asks, first: how is the spectacle of death in three distinct protest events staged
through the multimodal orchestration of written, verbal, aural, and visual
modes? And second: how does the architecture of participation in YouTube
shape meaning-making practices around these online videos? By the notion of
the ‘‘spectacle of death’’ I mean to signal certain elements of performativity
and dramatization in the way that these commemoration videos stage the
protest events through narratives that move beyond record and strict
documentation. The chapter is structured as follows: first, the literature
devoted to the interplay between media and movements is briefly reviewed,
identifying a pronounced scarcity of audio-visual analyses of social
movements. As a point of entry, the initial analytical effort establishes
how the commemoration videos interweave the individual deaths and
martyrdoms of the three men into a depiction of an anti-capitalist
movement’s collective struggle. The next sections of the analysis are
dedicated to understanding the various ways in which tensions between
fact and fiction emerge in the creative appropriation and remixing of
images of the three events. In this context, critical concerns are raised
about the ethical frameworks involved in recruiting the aesthetics of death
for purposes of political mobilization. The analysis finally establishes the
importance of the city as a protest space in order to open up the analysis of
the video representations of these spaces. In so doing, the last section asks
how the cityscape is recruited to document and dramatize the spectacle of
death by exhibiting the commemorative rituals and symbols spread
across the city as part of a larger struggle for semiotic resources within
the protest space and over media representations of social movements more
generally.
108 TINA ASKANIUS
CONTEMPORARY PROTEST MOVEMENTS AND

THEIR VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS
Whether dealing with questions of social movement media or social

movements in the media, research on the relationship between collective
action and political identities on the one hand, and media on the other, has
primarily provided insights into the textual representations and articulations
of social movements (for some exceptions to this rule, see, e.g., Doerr, 2010;
Kurtz, 2005; Mattoni & Doerr, 2007; Schwartz, 2002). An extensive body
of literature has addressed the analysis of websites, mailings lists, e-zines,
newsletters, manifestos, political debate forums, surveys, newspaper cover-
age, etc., thus privileging the written word at the expense of visual and
audio-visual representations and practices (see, e.g., Cammaerts & Van
Audenhove, 2005; Cottle, 2008; della Porta & Mosca, 2005; Graeber, 2007;
Juris, 2005; Kavada, 2009, 2010; Kutz-Flamenbaum, Staggenborg, &
Duncan, 2012; Perlmutter & Wagner, 2004; Rauch, Chitrapu, Eastman,
Evans, Paine, & Mwesige, 2007). Thus, while the so-called ‘‘visual turn’’ has
slowly secured a foothold in many areas of the social sciences, scholars
of social movements rarely recognize visual methods (Phillips, 2012). In a
contemporary mediascape where new forms of visibility have become
inextricably linked to new forms of action and interaction (Thompson, 2005),
this chapter is a response to a gap in the literature on political activism
concerning video representation specifically, and more broadly the role that
the distribution platform YouTube has come to play for contemporary
protest movements. I begin this endeavor with an analysis of a particular
genre of video that has emerged on YouTube: those documenting protests
and mass direct actions against neoliberal globalization around the world.
Within this thematic cluster of activist videos, I pay specific attention to a
thread of videos commemorating people who have died in connection with
protests across Europe in the past decade, putting on display the ‘‘spectacle
of death’’ that came to punctuate each of these events. Building on past
research on this particular genre of radical video (Askanius, 2012), this
chapter focuses on how the politicized space of the city is recruited as one
of the storytelling devices of the commemoration videos. In so doing, it
demonstrates how the ‘‘visual protest materials’’ (Philips, 2012) that
constitute semiotic resources within the ‘‘urban space of resistance’’ (Pile,
1997) and draw attention to the aims and orientations of activists during the
protests take on new meaning when remediated in the open-ended,
participatory cultures of online video.
Documenting Counter-Summits
Bringing together single-issue campaigns stemming from environmentalism,

feminism, anti-capitalism, human rights activism, and anti-war movements,
the global justice movement convenes at regular intervals in social forums
and counter-summits targeting the symbols and institutions of neoliberal
globalization. These gatherings usually involve a number of organized and
preplanned direct actions and a series of large-scale demonstrations con-
testing the high profile meetings of those considered by activists to be the
self-appointed leaders of the world economy. In so doing, activists seek to
hijack media attention around issues of social justice and political alternatives
to global capitalism and neoliberal governance. The large-scale demonstra-
tions in Seattle in 1999, which effectively derailed and ultimately shut down
the WTO meeting, received extensive media coverage and were followed by a
number of high-visibility demonstrations in cities such as Prague, Nice,
Montreal, Gothenburg, and Genoa. More recently, larger mobilizations have
taken place, for example, in Gleneagles, London, Copenhagen, and Toronto.
(There is of course a vast literature dedicated to the global justice movement
and its recurrent counter-summits; for a comprehensive overview, see, e.g.,
della Porta & Tarrow, 2005; Munck, 2007; Smith, 2001.)
The physical gatherings of the global justice movement are heavily policed
and over the years have seen a number of violent clashes between protesters
and authorities. Engaging in spectacular, theatrical, and at times, violent
displays of protest and civil disobedience, activists practice what Juris (2005)
refers to as ‘‘performative violence,’’ providing activists with valuable
symbolic resources for the conveying of political messages. However, these
same images are used by police and government officials to delegitimize
protesters, depicting them as dangerous criminals or terrorists, and to
prosecute activists in the legal aftermath of demonstrations (Juris, 2005,
p. 414). Furthermore, mainstream media have been known to frame the events
as random acts of senseless violence, disregarding performative violence as a
means of communicating and dramatizing certain social values and political
alternatives (Donson, Chesters, Welsh, & Tickle, 2004; Gitlin, 1980; Graeber,
2007; Juris, 2005, 2008). In a contemporary media environment driven by a
media logic in which violence both travels and sells well, peaceful protests
often go unnoticed, while the iconic images of burning cars, teargas, and
activists hurling themselves at heavily militarized contingents of riot police
make instant headlines (Juris, 2005, 2008; Rosie & Gorringe, 2009). A great
deal of scholarly attention has thus been dedicated to questions of how
110 TINA ASKANIUS
(militant) political activists enact performative violence in order to commu-

nicate political messages, construct identities, and generate affective ties
within political communities (see, e.g., Juris, 2005; Sullivan, 2004). Similarly, a
number of studies have looked at how militant actions and their symbolism
are framed and distorted by the mass media (Juris, 2005, 2008; Perlmutter &
Wagner, 2004; Rauch et al., 2007), while less attention has been paid to
how the symbolic imagery of violence is used strategically in the context of
alternative media and activists’ self-representations.
The awareness among activists of the imperative for the visual
documentation of a protest event in order to bypass the gatekeepers of
mainstream media and/or counter-spin their representations, as well as to
provide visual evidence of police brutality, has made camcorders and camera
phones an essential part of any demonstration. In recent years, YouTube
has become a popular platform for disseminating, viewing, and archiving
videos documenting protest. In an era where the ever-wider availability of
technology and the proliferation of free and easy-to-use online platforms
makes it relatively effortless for anyone taking part in or witnessing a
demonstration to record and disseminate images, the abundance of protest
videos uploaded on YouTube by users across the world makes for a motley
and cacophonic blend. The majority of videos on YouTube documenting
protests consist of little more than raw, unedited footage depicting the events
in an often chaotic audio-visual swirl of shouting protesters, sirens, water
cannons, and teargas. In these ‘‘bearing-witness’’ videos, a short text is
usually added on-screen or as part of the video’s presentation, indexing the
place and time of the demonstration or direct action event. In the more
creatively sampled and edited videos, often with a more explicitly stated
political motive, a range of different modes of documentary are put into play,
mixing still images, snippets of film, music, text, graphics, and artwork in
endless combinations. Demonstrating amateur editing skills, the videos
combine the shaky, handheld footage taken from within the crowd at a
demonstration, encoding a sense of presence and immediacy, with slow-
moving slideshows of photographs set to music. In the following analysis,
I focus on a small thread of videos that stage three distinct protest events as
‘‘spectacles of death’’ by means of these practices of bricolage or mash-up
which have come to characterize contemporary forms of online video.
ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY
This study is anchored within the sociology of media, focusing on the social
processes constituted and enabled by the media. This approach starts not
with media texts or institutions, but with media-related practices (Couldry,

2004, 2012). YouTube attracts and supports a number of specific (in this
case political) practices which are addressed as situated and contingent
dynamics. A practice-based approach helps us to discriminate between
distinct uses of YouTube and modes of engaging with video, without
making generalizing claims concerning its ‘‘effects’’ or impact on viewers
and their agency (Couldry, 2012).
From an analytical viewpoint, the conceptual framework of social
semiotics informs and operationalizes the qualitative analysis of the video
material. Considering visual meaning-making as an open-ended social
process, the signifying practices around the three deaths in these videos are
seen to revolve around a multimodal ensemble of semiotic resources (Kress,
2010; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). Semiotics thus provides me with two sets
of analytical lenses for approaching the material. First, in an attempt to
understand the appropriation of images of death and how this trope is used
pervasively in the videos, I seek assistance and inspiration in the work of
Barthes (1977, 1981) and specifically in what he refers to as an image’s third
meaning, addressing the photographic message and its ability to move the
viewer and to travel across different contexts.2 Applying the work of Barthes
to the study of contemporary news journalism, Zelizer (2010) provides a
semiotic framework for analyzing and understanding the aesthetics of death
and dying in a contemporary mediascape. Second, a semiotic vein of inquiry
similarly guides the analysis of how performative violence and the staging of
death in the cityscape form part of a broader semiotic struggle over signs
and symbols in media representations of social movements. For these
purposes, I use the notions of geographies of resistance (Pile, 1997;
Routledge, 1997) and the spatial legacy of protests (Vradis & Dalakoglou,
2011) to guide me in the analysis of how the cityscape is used in the videos as
a canvas for the protesters to tell their stories of police brutality and
injustice. In this manner, with the notion of practices at the hub of the study,
the methodological framework links the concern for human signifying
practices in social semiotics with a focus on media-related practices in the
study of political activism (see, e.g., Mattoni, 2012; McCurdy, 2011).
Video Selection
Within the abundance of videos that deal with the deaths of the three men
circulating on YouTube, I was interested only in those that could be
described explicitly as commemoration videos. Although genres are flexible
and unstable entities, especially in these nonprofessional contexts, the
112 TINA ASKANIUS
commemoration video can be seen as a distinct genre within the melange of

videos documenting protest movements, and as distinct from the witness
video, from the mobilization video which explicitly calls for action, and
from videos featuring alternative news of protests, mixing snippets of
broadcast news with archival and user-generated footage. Against a set of
relatively fixed parameters, the commemorative genre was established by
using the user’s own tags, titles, or video presentations as guidelines. In this
way, only the videos explicitly entitled, tagged or presented with expressions
such as ‘‘in tribute to,’’ ‘‘in memory of,’’ ‘‘RIP,’’ or ‘‘mourning the death of’’
were included in the final set of 36 videos. Also, in the process of selection,
priority was given to videos made by producers who explicitly stated their
affiliation with or support for the counter-summit protests on their channel
or video presentation. With this explorative approach, guided by a strategy
of purposive sampling to identify cases judged to be typical of the
population, I subscribe to the interpretive tradition in qualitative visual
methods which aims to provide depth rather than generalizability (see, e.g.,
Knoblauch, Baer, Laurier, Petschke, & Schnettler, 2008; Seale, 1999). The
final population of selected videos is thus by no means exhaustive of the
genre. Rather, the purposeful sample provides me with a substantial range
of video material that demonstrates the contingency and variety within the
thematic cluster of videos, while allowing for an understanding of these as
part of a distinct genre that, despite variations, is united by purpose,
practice, and form. While the empirical framework builds on three cases of
protest events distinct in space and time, the approach is not focused on an
explicit comparison between the three events. Rather, I consider the
different cases as cumulative materials providing similar contexts where
parallel practices take place. The emerging analytical categories of
commemorative modes of video are thus equally distributed across the
three cases.
ANALYSIS
On the afternoon of July 21, 2001, a series of brutal clashes between Italian
riot police and fractions of the broad coalition of G8 protesters gathered in
Genoa culminated in the shooting of a 22-year-old man. Images of the dead
body of Carlo Giuliani on Piazza Alimonda continue to haunt accounts of
what would become known as ‘‘the battle of Genoa.’’ Seven years later, a
15-year-old boy named Alex Grigoropoulos was shot dead by police in an
Athens neighborhood. His murder sparked a wave of school occupations,
commemoration marches, and massive street battles between protesters and

riot police. Public outrage at state repression and police brutality quickly
fused with anger at the flawed economic system at the heart of the
burgeoning financial crisis, which was dramatically affecting the lives of
ordinary citizens in Greece. Within a short time, the story of a meaningless
police killing became part and parcel of a broader struggle against
capitalism and precarious labor conditions, culminating in a general strike
by Greek unions and mass demonstrations targeting the symbols of
neoliberal globalization and consumerism, especially in the rich city centers
(Petropoulou, 2010; Sotiris, 2010).
Fast forward to April 2009, and the leaders of the G20 convene once
again, this time in London. Counter-summit protesters were contained in a
small area of the city, with no access to water or toilet facilities, by police
using a technique known as ‘‘kettling.’’ The newspaper vendor Ian
Tomlinson, caught in the ‘‘kettle’’ on his way home from work, suddenly
collapsed and died. His death was swiftly attributed by the police to natural
causes. The case would have probably ended had it not been for a snippet of
shaky video footage taken by a witness, accidentally capturing Ian
Tomlinson’s fatal encounter with a member of the Metropolitan police
minutes before his death and showing him being struck repeatedly with a
baton and pushed violently to the ground. After a series of questionable
investigations by the UK Independent Police Complaints Commission
(IPCC) and contradictory forensic reports,3 the police officer was finally, in
June 2011, put on trial for manslaughter. The trial began on June 18, 2012.
The preceding inquest ruled that the officer unlawfully killed Tomlinson,
but a trial jury acquitted him of manslaughter in July 2012. On September
17, 2012 officer Simon Harwood was fired from the Metropolitan Police
Service with immediate effect after a disciplinary hearing found he had
committed gross misconduct.
OF MYTHS AND MARTYRS
The lives and political trajectories of these three men never crossed, and of
the three, only Carlo Giuliani can be said to have been involved in the global
justice movement and to have actively participated in its mass direct actions.
In their online afterlives, however, their individual stories are woven
together in particular and creative ways through videos that fuse political
contestation with vernacular commemoration. Here, the men are martyred
and brought together in coinciding representations of their ‘‘spectacles of
114 TINA ASKANIUS
death,’’ claiming access to the past and promising insights into the future in
various ways. Thus, although they contemplate and revisit the past, the
videos do not only point back in time but more notably point forward and
inscribe the names and images of the men in future mobilizations. While
strategies of sequence construction and combinations tie the three men
together visually, the connection between the events is sometimes made by
comments left about videos, such as ‘‘viva carlo viva alexis, u r my brothers’’
(see appendix, Item 4), or by a video being given a certain title or tag. One of
the many ways of linking the death of Alex Grigoropoulos to the aims and
struggles of the global justice movement has been ‘‘jamming-by-tagging,’’ a
practice typical of the opportunities offered by YouTube for individual
expression and influence over how a video is framed and found (van
Zoonen, Vis, & Mihelj, 2010, p. 255). A video entitled ‘‘Another world is
possible – start the riots!’’ (see appendix, Item 16) does not itself address the
death of Alex Grigoropoulos or the riots in Athens as such, but consists of a
short documentary about the global justice movement. This catchphrase
used by and associated with the movement is accompanied by a call for
action to spread the riots beyond Greece and the immediate social struggle
taking place there. Only in the tags and in the textbox presenting the video
is the story of Alex Grigoropoulos raised and construed as part and parcel
of the larger struggle to make ‘‘another world possible’’:
The death of an innocent 15-year-old Greek boy by Police as well as the consequtive (sic)
deaths of several Pakistani migrant workers by racist cops, sparked a mass movement
against police brutality. The Movement for Justice and Equality still goes on. Youth,
students, workers, immigrants – all have taken to the streets to protest against the
conservative Greek government and racist Police Force. (See appendix, Item 16)
When searching online for videos of Alex Grigoropoulos, the user is sure to
find this short documentary in the initial pages of results. As a statement
indicative of how one might respond to the concrete incident and the riots
that took place in Greece at the time, joining the movement is construed
as a possible way of taking action against the injustices witnessed on the
screen. Further, the video ‘‘Fight Capitalism! Block G8!’’ (see appendix,
Item 35) is an example of how the names of both Ian Tomlinson and Carlo
Giuliani are used as tags in a mobilization video for the 2009 G8 summit
taking place in L’Aquila, Italy, some three months after Ian Tomlinson’s
death in London. In YouTube’s wedding of technology and commerce,
jamming-by-tagging becomes one small way for activists to make sense of
what is essentially an apolitical and chaotic platform and to navigate in the
biased search algorithm, which favors commercial content partners over
user-generated content (for a critique of the use of YouTube for social

activism, see, e.g., Gregory, 2010; Juhasz, 2008). Further, in the video
comments subtle signs and indications of a shared frame of reference
densely saturate the viewers’ responses. This is done by means of short and
simple statements, often in the form of abbreviations such as ‘‘ACAB’’ (All
Cops Are Bastards) followed by a reference to the specific event as
illustrated in this commentary to the video commemorating Grigoropoulos:
‘‘ACAB! 6.12.2008 – We will never forget’’ or as in yet another comment
stating ‘‘A.C.A.B. B Belgium – thnx for your support!! Anger has no
borders y RIP AlexXxXx’’ (see appendix, Item 27). These and similar
comments are markers of both mourning and collective identity, pointing
toward the ‘‘we-ness’’ of a group. In this manner, the death of three men in
different locations across Europe is interwoven in online modes of
commemoration and they are constructed as martyrs fallen prey to the
same enemy. Further pursuing this narrative, I now turn to a more detailed
visual reading of how the dying/dead bodies of the three men are put on
display in the videos.
Dying the ‘‘Street Side Death’’
Zelizer (2010) argues that, in a Western media context, images of death are
controversial and subject to taboo and nuanced regimes of social ethics.
Western societies find it legitimate to portray people in their suffering, but
not in their death. The about-to-die mode represents this distinction, as
news journalism tends to represent death through this visual trope alone
(Zelizer, 2010). In a similar argument, Tait (2009) notes that, while Western
mainstream news media conceal the corpse from public view, the Hollywood
aesthetic of cinematic death is spectacular and entertaining designed to be
enjoyed and consumed. In recent years, however, digital technologies and
online distribution platforms have blurred this distinction, as a new hybrid
genre of documentary imagery of death has emerged online (see, e.g.,
Christensen, 2008; Mortensen, 2009; Papadopoulos, 2009; Tait, 2009). In a
media-saturated society, digital camera technologies and a plethora of
online distribution forms rupture and complicate previous distinctions and
ethics of representing death. In online spaces such as YouTube, Live Leaks,
and Vimeo, global audiences have access to the images of mutilated bodies
and graphic death that have otherwise been censored and withheld from
public gaze, creating what Tait (2009) terms a novel regime of post-mortem
representation.
116 TINA ASKANIUS
In mainstream media coverage of the deaths of both Carlo Giuliani and

Alex Grigoropoulos, no images of the actual dead bodies were published
(see Perlmutter & Wagner, 2004, for a detailed analysis of press
photography used in the coverage of the Genoa protests). In the
commemoration videos, on the contrary, the graphic nature of these images
is shown in an uncensored form in a media environment where the so called
‘‘breakfast cereal test’’ of mainstream journalism (Zelizer, 2010, p. 19) does
not apply to what or how much is put on display for the viewer to see. In
this manner, whereas the sanitized mainstream media representations tend
to reduce coverage to the ‘‘as if’’ of death, alternative video representations
stage not only impending death or the about-to-die moment, but also
‘‘certain death’’ (Zelizer, 2010, p. 173) in all its ugliness and messiness. The
video representation of what I here term ‘‘the street-side death’’ is one of
certain, rather than impending, death. Using Zelizer’s (2010) vocabulary, it
moves the ‘‘as if’’ to the ‘‘as is’’ of an image.
In some images the spectacle of death and the spatiality of the geo-
political context in which it took place are fused in quite explicit ways. In a
digitally manipulated image, the pool of blood flowing from Carlo
Giuliani’s head has been given the shape of Italy. In addition to indicating
how the life of a young man was lost, this remaking of the iconic Reuters
press photograph suggests to us how an entire nation can become ‘‘a
wounded place that embodies the pain of others and an unreconciled past’’
(Till, 2008, p. 108). Tait (2009) argues that today’s visualizing technologies
have made graphicness a contemporary signifier of realism and authentic
performance. In a sense, putting the dead body on display in its most
uncensored and graphic form seems to be part of the original motive for
making the video and telling the story. This is the real or full story of what
happened in the streets. For this purpose, graphicness is used to encode
realism and as a signifier of veracity, enabling viewers to access the story
that was never fully recorded or conveyed to them. In this manner, a
discourse of truth and authenticity saturates the videos and the way they are
presented in user profiles. However, the videos seem to traffic between fact
and fiction in an elision of the boundaries between the fictional and
documentary aesthetics of death. Not only do the digitally manipulated
photographs, as exemplified above, bring into question where the ‘‘real,’’ the
‘‘as is,’’ of death ends and the digitized ‘‘as if’’ of death and its artistic
reproduction begins. More notably, the amateur cinematographic skills –
the compiling of images within a storyline, cutting and mixing footage, and
adding musical scores to cue the viewer on significant sequences – ultimately
contribute to the fictionalization of the documentary image of death.
Therefore, in the process of telling the story, providing facts and a fuller
picture, a level of interpretation and creativity is added and the eyewitness
gaze loses it power. Digital reproduction has often been seen to complicate
the evidential claims about visual representations of the world and political
realities, prompting scholars to refer to this as a ‘‘crisis of the index’’ (see,
e.g., Gaines, 2007; Juhasz & Lerner, 2006; Landesman, 2008). Digital visual
technologies and the online video practices of playing with the tenets of fact
and fiction destabilize the already highly contested status of video as truth,
evidence, or document. In this manner, we may want to ask ourselves what
the dual processes of digitization and dramatization do for truth claims and
political aspirations to document and reveal uncensored reality on a
platform which is designed (what is more) to entertain and serve the
corporate imperative of bringing eyeballs to advertisements. Entertainment
draws on fiction and creativity, and in this case is not just a ‘‘neighboring’’
context to political activism, but may well be seen to affect the messages and
knowledge that are outsourced from the platform. This is an example of an
area where the blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction deserves our
continued attention. Let us therefore move on to a consideration of some of
the ethical implications of dubiously situating representations of death at
the juncture of these two modes of address.
The Ethical Witness
In Western cultures, images of death are embedded in an ethical frame of

bearing witness (Chouliaraki, 2006; Zelizer, 2010). Conflicting accounts of
the moral justifications for showing and watching death switch between the
viewpoints that, on the one hand, witnessing a graphic and physically
horrific death lends itself to a voyeuristic or pornographic perversion of
the public, and, on the other, watching and engaging with death may be
considered a moral obligation and a practice in which the media encode the
spectator to watch and act upon what is seen (Papadopoulos, 2009; Tait,
2009). Although the act of putting on display uncensored images of death is
a defining feature of the videos, the commemorative discourse is coupled
with that of political mobilization. The discourse of mobilization is often
made explicit in the final sequence of the video, which contains a direct
address to the viewer and points to a space of potential action: take to the
streets! join this group! look up that website! The images thus make an
appeal for people to do more than just watch and bear witness to death.
Putting on display and watching the graphic deaths of Alex Grigoropoulos
118 TINA ASKANIUS
and Carlo Giuliani is construed as a moral duty, with the aesthetics of death
embedded in a sequence of actions and actors in order to emotionally and
morally move the viewer from passive spectatorship into action. From the
perspective of a human rights activist, Gregory (2010) has called attention to
the need to define a new ethics of video practice that address the challenges
of the online remix ethos. In a contemporary mediascape marked by the
ubiquity of camera technologies and mash-up video aesthetics, online videos
that appropriate existing visual representations of public trauma respond to
the immense ethical responsibility the image is burdened with (p. 202).
Endless possibilities of remixing, reappropriating, and recirculating images
encumber the principles of ensuring the integrity of the victim as well as the
role of ‘‘the ethical witness’’ (Gregory, 2010). The remix practices of online
video pull the material farther and farther from its original source testifier
and the point of display. While this transformation may increase the chances
that the footage will actually find an audience, it also beckons the
responsibility of the witness to represent death with ethical integrity
(Gregory, 2010; Guerin & Halas, 2007).
Returning to the 2009 images of the collapsed body of Ian Tomlinson on
Cornhill, a street in London’s financial district, these tell us a different, less
graphic story of death. With no blood or signs of death on the body, death
evades visual representation (Zelizer, 2010). In videos paying tribute to Ian
Tomlinson, the visual language seeking to compensate for the invisibility of
death is built up around images of street memorials at the site of his
collapse and of the memorial rallies and speeches around London in the
aftermath of the G20 protests. Although a few videos include images of his
collapsed body, the narrative primarily focuses on a meticulous documen-
tation of the minutes preceding his death, providing eyewitness accounts as
well as a space for the voice of the grieving family (see, e.g., appendix,
Items 31, 34, 36). In this manner, the story of Ian Tomlinson becomes a
story of empowerment through video. By furnishing visual evidence, the
videos direct renewed attention to a long-standing campaign against police
violence and the criminalization of peaceful protest in Britain. Within this
national campaign, his name is added to the list of people who have died
in recent years in confrontations with, or custody of, the British police
(see, e.g., appendix, Item 29). In the short term, by putting on display Ian
Tomlinson’s death on a London street, the videos facilitate multiple
responses to the local G20 protests of 2009 and bring insights to the
national controversies over British policing tactics. Over time, however,
as the images leave their original context and the immediate debate
they spurred, their recycling in new videos engages viewers in a broader
struggle for social and economic justice beyond the borders of the United
Kingdom.
Fictionalizing Facts
The iteration of images and the commuting of meaning between the three
events demonstrate what Zelizer (2010) terms the contingency and
changeability of certain representations of death, indicating how meaning
does not necessarily settle at an image’s original point of display. Carried by
the voice of the visual, meanings tend to alter over time when put to multiple
uses in new contexts by different people who reactivate and adapt them to
an updated political context. By this token, the images of the three men in
their about-to-die, dying, and post-mortem moments travel across
circumstances. They are transformative, playful, and hypothetical, and
sometimes even internally contradictory (Zelizer, 2010, p. 12). These insights
may assist us in understanding the way in which Alex Grigoropoulos’ death
is associated with counter-summit protests despite the fact that his death
and the subsequent uprisings in Greece (at least in the beginning) had
different origins and aims. Similarly, they may help to explain why Ian
Tomlinson – who was no activist, let alone an anarchist – is commemorated
in the name of anti-capitalism. Critical observers might claim that this is a
case of opportunistic (ab)use of images of dead people and their
posthumous reputation; that these are videos in which random bystanders
are mobilized as martyrs. While this claim may be specious, the aim here is
in any case not to put forward a critique of the (at times) dubious modes of
deploying the images. Rather, from an analytical perspective committed to
understanding the mash-up practices that typify contemporary online video
cultures, what is of concern is not so much the legitimacy of the rationale by
which heroes and epics are constructed, but rather the various creative ways
in which the connections between the three men are made and their stories
told, and by which meaning travels between distinct events and spaces.
We see cases where the factuality of the documentary modes of representing
these events and the broader political struggles they feed into are
jeopardized in order to dramatize and magnify their political implications
and future directions. Death is used as a powerful visual trope to signify the
ultimate price of commitment to a political cause and as a rallying cry for
future mobilization. But, put to a political test, do these images include
instances where video documentation degenerates into propaganda or a
‘‘pornography of grief’’? (Lule, 2012). We have seen examples of how the
120 TINA ASKANIUS
digital manipulation of the photographic image of a dead body can

destabilize its status as testimony, while continuing to produce political
augmentation. Again, we may ask whether the dramatization of the
spectacle of death devalues its poignancy and undermines the claims to
veracity made in the videos. These critical questions might encourage a
reading of the staging of dead bodies as apolitical sensationalism, dubiously
preying on the victims and their representational afterlife. However, death is
not detached from context, nor from knowledge. By providing the viewer
with the broader context of their political martyrdom, the videos give
purpose and add sense to the ruthless and graphic portrayal of death and
the publicizing of intimate scenes of grieving families (as exemplified by the
images of the families of Ian Tomlinson and Alex Grigoropoulos at the
funerals and at public memorial rallies). Crying out against the injustice of
these men’s deaths and the illegitimacy of the political system that killed
them, a crime scene is simultaneously charted and tampered with; a crime
both proven and fictionalized. We may consider the emotive and
dramatizing modes of video documentation to be aligned with the
productive overstatement and melodramatic hyperbole that support and
foster the possibility of and hope for action and change. The affective
aesthetics of entertainment should not thus necessarily be seen to deflate the
political efficacy of the video testimony. On the contrary, emotions can
enable action, and the indexical critique inherent in the videos is made ‘‘all
the more poignant through a paradoxical supplement to their apparent
microscopic factuality’’ (Gaines, 2007, p. 9).
The Punctum
As a final consideration of the powers at play in the ‘‘about-to-die’’ image

and the emotional, contingent, and imagined appeal it wields in relation to
the viewer, let us revisit the videos paying tribute to Alex Grigoropoulos.
These videos present the viewer with a slideshow of photographs of what
appears to be a carefree, smiling schoolboy with his whole life ahead of him,
taken in the time preceding the December riots. By situating him in a spatio-
temporal setting, unaware of his impending demise, the photograph acts as
what Barthes (1981) has described as the punctum within the stream of
images presented to the viewer in this particular video montage. A certain
poignancy and immediacy is thereby added to the photo and the viewer is
‘‘poked’’ (Barthes, 1981, p. 26) by the certainty of knowing what is
irreversibly to come.
Rather than relating to any physical or factual details in the photograph,

the punctum points to the more elusive dimension of temporality. The
photograph becomes evidence of what has ceased to be, rather than proof of
what is real. Verisimilitude is downplayed in favor of the subjunctive and
imaginative, the ‘‘as if’’ of the image, by coaxing the viewer into considering
how the story might have ended differently in a scenario of his not being
dead. The punctum is then situated at the junction between a photo’s
symbolic meaning and the purely personal and subjective dimension of an
image that establishes an emotional relationship between the viewer and the
person depicted – the one emotional detail in the image that succeeds in
touching the viewer.
By considering the online afterlife acquired by some representations of
death, we have seen how an image can animate wideranging engagements
with the ‘‘as if,’’ inviting subjunctive considerations of the person depicted
as still alive, or of how his life might have evolved had he been still alive. In a
recent Indymedia posting marking the third anniversary of the Greek riots,
an anonymous author reflects:
I never knew you. I only ever encountered you through your commemoration, from the
very first hours of that Saturday night over 1,000 nights ago up until now. I often try to
imagine what could have become of a life I never crossed paths with. You would
graduate from school. You would perhaps enrol in some university. You would consider
migrating, just like so many of us do. I think you would ponder about the Occupy
movement, too. You would excitedly watch videos pouring in from Tahrir, from
Madrid, from New York and from Oakland. You would say aloud that you
never thought you would live to see such a thing as an Oakland Commune, and
deep inside you would know this is the sweetest of revenge, that none of this would
have ever happened if they hadn’t shot down Oscar Grant. None of this would have
happened if they hadn’t shot down you. I wish you were here to see what the flame
of a candle is like after the candle is blown out. I do miss you, kiddo. (Indymedia,
December 6, 2011)4
This confessional posting, like a letter to the dead boy, bears on Zelizer’s
(2010) ideas of how the third meaning of an image, the ‘‘as if,’’ carries a
person’s posthumous existence into art, poems, short stories, etc. In this
poetic statement, Alex Grigoropoulos’ death is allied with that of Oscar
Grant, a young Afro-American shot dead by police in 2009 in front of
numerous witnesses and a dozen camera phones. Their lost lives are
presented as important pieces in a larger puzzle and as a necessary sacrifice
to the sequence of political events that were to follow in the current wave of
protests taking place throughout the world, from the European austerity
protests to the global Occupy movements.
122 TINA ASKANIUS
RECLAIMING THE CITY: THE CITY (SCAPE)

AS A TERRAIN OF ANTI-CAPITALIST STRUGGLE
Having examined how the videos stage the dead/dying body in very explicit
ways, I now turn to how death is represented implicitly through the
commemorative rituals and symbols spread across the city. However, in
order to understand how the spectacle of death is staged in the videos
through signs and symbols within the cityscape, we must first understand the
importance of the urban terrain of resistance to the practices of
contemporary activism.
Since 9/11, European cities have become increasingly monitored and
citizens experience an extensive policing of everyday life, especially in city
centers (Petropolou, 2010). To many of the youth revolting in Athens and
beyond, what was shot down in the student neighborhood of Exarcheia that
night in December 2008 was not just a 15-year-old student, but the freedom
of all to stroll in the city and their freedom of expression in public spaces –
their ‘‘right to the city’’ (Harvey, 2008). In his recent account of how the
current financial crisis refocuses politics on the city as a terrain of anti-
capitalist struggle, Harvey (2012) reminds us that long before the emergence
of groups such as Reclaim the Streets or the recent wave of protests by the
Occupy movement, modern cities were central sites of revolutionary politics.
To Harvey ‘‘the right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to
access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city’’
(Harvey, 2008, p. 1). In liberal democracies, the management of populations
and the exercise of power are primarily achieved by controlling the
collection of metaphors and messages that dominate urban space. In this
sense, issues of the spatial manipulation of signs and symbols are essential to
understanding the dynamics between resistance and dominance, as well as
the symbolic–expressive aspect of violent performances in protests, which
largely function through ‘‘non-verbal spectacular forms of iconic display
within the city’’ (Juris, 2005, p. 415). In this regard, the management of
space is central to both police and protesters. During a global political
summit, a protest-free ‘‘red zone’’ is set up around the summit venue and
other strategic sites considered to be possible targets of militant protesters.
Counter-summit protesters, on the other hand, divide the urban terrain of
resistance into different spaces to accommodate diverse forms of political
expression, including pacifist and militant ‘‘black bloc’’ tactics (Juris, 2005).
While police use tactics such as the partitioning of space, the rearranging of
protesters, and the use of less-lethal weapons (Noakes, Klocke, & Gillham,
2005), protesters’ tactics often involve trying to take back the fenced-off
areas to set up a peoples’ assembly in a ritualized siege of the red zones.
The incessant ideological struggle between the official and the banished,
subaltern city thus becomes particularly evident at the time of global
political summits during which cities are showcased as official host venues
yet at the same time besieged by protesters strategically targeting their
symbols of power and capital (Ibrahim, 2007). Visually, cities parade the
cultures of consumer capitalism: these are the targets of the protesters and
their destruction or vandalization form recurring tropes in the videos. This
double articulation of the city is reflected aesthetically in the videos by
conflicting images of the dystopian, postmodern city which has succumbed
to global consumer capitalism, on the one hand, and the cityscape construed
as a site of resistance and emancipation, on the other. Juris (2005) has
drawn attention to how newspaper coverage of the demonstrations against
the G8 summit in Genoa represented the city predominantly as a victim of
wanton destruction. In newspaper headlines such as ‘‘Genoa in a state of
death,’’ ‘‘a war torn city,’’ ‘‘a depressed and humiliated city’’ (Juris, 2005,
pp. 424–425), the city is personified and lamented. These representations
stand in startling contrast to how the city and its functions in direct actions
are presented in activist videos, in which the city is a site of agency and
empowerment, and resistance is crafted through the amalgamated body of the
protester and the city. In image slideshows, scenes of bodies clashing and
bodies moving as a mass pass by on the screen, using the aesthetics of
performative violence and its symbolism to drive the narrative forward. These
images of the politicized body summon the notion of body genres as a
doorway to understanding the commonalities of visual work engaged with the
‘‘production of outrage’’ to galvanize the spectator into action and mobilize
body work (Gaines, 2007, p. 50). Within the wider array of activist videos,
body genres are characterized by the way in which the evidentiary status
makes its appeal through what Gaines (1999) terms the ‘‘pathos of fact.’’ In
these commemoration videos, the pathos of fact tells us: ‘‘this happened;
people died for this; others are suffering; many took to the streets; this
innocent victim can be saved if only something is done’’ (Gaines, 1999, p. 92).
Cityscapes in Videoscapes
If we then start to chronicle in more detail just how these spatial and bodily
practices are recruited as visual tropes and storytelling devices in the videos,
124 TINA ASKANIUS
we see how some of the most commonly depicted motifs are the residues
left by the activists within the cityscape: the various material marks that
the demonstrations and their deadly upshots have left around the cities. This
visual protest material (Philips, 2012) ranges from images of graffiti,
‘‘jammed’’ street signs, tagged commercial billboards, and street memorials
to banners, stickers, and fly-posters flagging up the names and faces of the
victims. These visual expressions in the inner city can fruitfully be seen
to map geographies of resistance in urban riots and mass demonstrations
(Pile, 1997).
In the city, a building facade becomes a message board for recording and
testifying to what happened in the street. An alley is designated as a public
restroom by protesters corralled and detained during the G20 protests in
London. By these means of civil disobedience and semiotic playfulness,
protesters alter the urban landscapes, literally inscribing the power struggle
into the material texture of the city. In the videos, images of these practices
take center stage. In strategies of sequence construction and linking, the
videos augment and dramatize the territorial tug-of-war that unfolds in
public spaces during demonstrations.
Threatening the ‘‘spotlessness’’ of dominant ideas, and generally
considered as vandalism, graffiti, tags, and stencils are always swiftly
removed by the authorities. Documenting and distributing the images online
therefore becomes a way of preserving and archiving the ephemeral ‘‘writing
on the wall.’’ In the videos, photographs exhibit the messages left by
protesters tagging the streets with names, initials, or a date of death, using
the city as a canvas for projecting the spectacle of death. The showcasing of
these urban spaces in the videos suggests how activist practices seek to
simultaneously occupy both the physical and the representational spaces
of the protest event – and how online video is used to sustain attention
and commitment to the struggle long after the dust has settled in the
streets. From this perspective, the videos are part of the ‘‘spatial legacy’’
(1997, p.78) of protest events and form one small component in the wider
struggle to contribute to and contest the symbolic meaning of their
representational spaces.
Archiving the Ephemeral Street Memorial
Representing yet another type of ephemeral visual artefact of the protest

event are the many vernacular memorials set up spontaneously in the city,
often at the site where death occurred. The material texture of the city is put
to use in a variety of creative ways to build street memorials against large
blank walls or fences that, for a short time, are turned into shrines. In the
videos these memorials are recurring features, and in comment-postings
viewers leave ritualized commemorative markers resembling those left on
street memorials in offline settings. In fact, there is an immediate
continuation between the makeshift tombstones and their online appro-
priations when viewers leave online comments such as ‘‘6-12-08 – never
forget’’ or ‘‘RIP – fuck the new world order,’’ echoing the graffiti scattered
across the city. Similarly, exclamations such as ‘‘Carlo vive’’ or ‘‘the struggle
continues – never forget Carlo Giuliani,’’ scrawled on walls, posters, and
pavements in Genoa, reverberate in the video comments.
By this token, death has left its marks around the city. Geographically
circumscribing the terrain of struggle and carving resistance into its walls,
pavements, and spatial texture, these images indicate how the events not only
left scars of a trauma inflicted upon a political community, but left the
spectacle of death engraved into the urban space in which it took place.
Within this massive explosion of signs, the names of the three dead men are
spread across the landscape, laid in flowers, formed by candles, written on
the walls, or engraved into the pavement. In this manner, the stories of
violence, death, and collective trauma concurrently become a story of how
protesters alter and redefine the urban landscapes of the cities, where the
streets become sites of radical politics and urban spaces the backdrops
against which the men’s dead bodies are depicted. In the city, these visual
territorial markers are used to delineate space between red zones and free
zones and to project thoughts onto the urban landscapes. But as they travel
from offline to online spaces, they turn from markers of territory into
semiotic resources in the symbolic representation of the events. Within the
videos, they point to the imagined boundaries of a community and provide
indications both of the ‘‘we-ness’’ of a group and of who constitutes the
external enemy of this ‘‘we’’ (Melucci, 1996; Mouffe, 2005). In the shifts
between off-screen and on-screen practices, the global counter-summits in
Genoa and London fuse with the localized struggles of the Greek riots, which
inscribe themselves in the long history of political dissent and unrest in that
country’s post-dictatorial era. The three place-specific protest events are
thereby given broader relevance and a transnational audience on YouTube.
CONCLUSIONS
While large-scale, coordinated demonstrations against global economic

summits and associated political elites may be the physical and most visible
126 TINA ASKANIUS
manifestations of the global justice movement, scholars have demonstrated

how much of the activity, organization, and planning of key events takes
place online (see, e.g., della Porta & Mosca, 2005; Kavada, 2009). This study
demonstrates how protest events not only have a lengthy online trajectory
that runs prior to mass direct actions, but similarly take on an afterlife in the
trails of audio-visual documentation they leave behind in online settings,
currently most notable on YouTube. These digital visual trails took center
stage in an analysis demonstrating how the ephemeral visual expressions
produced in protests, which may otherwise have been rebuffed, obliterated,
and forgotten, are archived, recycled, remixed, rearticulated, and given new
meaning in online contexts.
Protest movements have been situated within a constant struggle between
dominant media frames of protester violence versus police violence. In this
ongoing struggle, these commemoration videos seek to challenge trivializing
or sensationalizing representations of protest movements by providing
street-level accounts of police brutality and repression. For these purposes,
the cityscape is used as a canvas upon which the protesters tell stories of
violence and death. In the process of becoming signifiers, as the signs leave
the walls and pavements to become embedded in multimodal representa-
tions and online mash-up cultures, they are removed from their physical
location and origin. De-territorialized, moving from one space to the other,
the images of localized and situated protest events are embedded into a
narrative of global resistance in which the original point of display of an
image is of little importance to the broader story it seeks to convey. With the
notion of the spectacle of death as a prism for addressing questions of how
meaning travels back and forth between representations of three distinct, yet
interconnected, protest events across Europe, the analysis demonstrates how
the subjunctive voice of the visual can carry an image beyond its denotative
and connotative impulse to engage with other contexts, viewers, and events.
In the ‘‘YouTubification’’ of the events, so to speak, a semantic drift takes
place. In this interplay between the events and the online modes of engaging
with them, tensions between facts and fiction, politics and performance,
emerge. The playful orchestration of multimodality and the creative
appropriation of images adds subjunctive aspirations, ambiguity, and
emotive layers of dramatization and entertainment to the videos that work
concurrently to fictionalize and advance the political struggles unfolding on
the screen.
Offering a small window onto broader debates concerning contemporary
struggles for visibility and spaces of alternative media practices, this study
demonstrates how YouTube constitutes a key arena in the production,
distribution, and mobilization of images to support and sustain political

activism. In the specific case of these commemorative videos, YouTube and
the modes of participation facilitated by the platform serve as a site of social
integration for a group of people brought together by a set of shared
political martyrs and bereavement rituals. As a space of meaning-making
and remembrance, YouTube becomes a shrine to be remembered, revisited,
responded to, continuously added to, and altered. Here, in this transitory
landscape, our endless digital trails pile up in ruins that are built and taken
down again, only to resurface in new contexts and take on new meaning
elsewhere.
NOTES
1. The attentive reader might object to the formulation used here, indicating that
Alex Grigoropoulos died ‘‘in clashes with police,’’ as he was not involved in an actual
confrontation or fight with police but simply killed by the police. In October 2010,
a police officer was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment (partly
on the basis of video evidence taken at the moment of the shooting from a balcony
close to the murder scene). This discrepancy, and the specific circumstances
surrounding his death and the following urban riots across Greece, are accounted for
in more detail in later sections.
2. The idea of an image’s ‘‘third meaning’’ was introduced by Roland Barthes
(1977, 1981) as an additional force at play in the meaning-making of an image,
complementing its connotative and denotative forces. Elaborating on Barthes’
conceptual frame, Zelizer (2004, 2010) uses the notions of ‘‘the voice of the visual’’
and ‘‘the subjunctive as if’’ of an image to help elucidate how images work across
represented events from different times and places. The three, more or less
synonymous, terms are used interchangeably throughout this text.
3. For access to the full IPCC reports, see: http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/en/Pages/
investigation_reports.aspx
4. Posted in Indymedia Athens on December 6, 2011. Retrieved from http://
athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=en&article_id=1361196. Accessed on
January 25, 2012.
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APPENDIX
1. Mourning the death of A.Grigoropoulos of Kratzi, uploaded by user

‘‘Kratzi69,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjqR-8LK4HM
2. REVENGE!!! BEAT THE BASTARDS (ALEXIS R.I.P 6/12/2008),
uploaded by user ‘‘refuseResist7,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvMUXRvz7G8&feature=related
3. Alexis Grigoropoulos Official song, uploaded by user ‘‘linos1987,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jUJtiYTXyA&feature=related
4. ALEXIS GRIGOROPOULOS ANARCHY IN MEMORY, uploaded
by user ‘‘arxitekton1,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj_UI3VzqUM&feature=related
5. Alexis Grigoropoulos 06-12-08, uploaded by user ‘‘warezuser,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Is2UhcM3Q&feature=related
6. Alexis Grigoropoulos R.I.P., uploaded by user ‘‘mylekadapress,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVNfndo2KN4&feature=related
7. ena tragoudi grammeno gia ton Alexi(R.I.P.).mpg, uploaded by user
‘‘ktziavos,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xROwvt23CpA&feature=related
8. Goodbye Alex! (Aleksandros Grigoropoulos), uploaded by user
‘‘omlain2542,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUxD3OVD25Q&feature=related
9. Chris Geo-Greek Revolution/ Riots December 2008 – Alexandros
Grigoropoulos, uploaded by user ‘‘djchrisgeo,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VgQORvcP-A
10. 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos shot by greek police, riot in athens,
uploaded by user ‘‘fothnio,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LobOlhkJABU
11. Aby – To tragoudi tis monaxias (tribute to alex), uploaded by user
‘‘crystalpurple,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZaAODfreY8&feature=related
12. a song for Alex’ uploaded by user ‘‘AndreasLovely,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RFsRPBJE48&feature=related
13. ALEXANDROS GRIGOROPOULOS tribute: Candle in the wind,
uploaded by user ‘‘madmanishigh,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLC_pvVdBgY&feature=watch_
response
132 TINA ASKANIUS
14. Tribute to Alexandros Grigopoulos, uploaded by user ‘‘seank231,’’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=pF3
LFwGZLPc
15. A tribute to Alexandros and to everything that took place after his unfair
death. MUST WATCH, uploaded by user ‘‘mouloukos,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhzI35UeiaE&feature=related
16. (Channel taken down) Another world is possible – start the riots,
uploaded by user ‘‘westclub4’’ (archived 24 02 2009)
17. Alexandros 6-12-2008 – à sa me´moire, uploaded by user ‘‘xoroxronos,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFw3KgWZFpk&feature=related
18. Stin mnimi tou alexandrouy.by JaY uploaded by user ‘‘jaysonst,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65zL2i7sk9Y&feature=related
19. ermordung Carlo Giuliani uploaded by user ‘‘agitazioni,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeSFadH7m-s
20. 20 luglio 2001–Genova – l’omicidio di Carlo Giuliani, uploaded by user
‘‘susanna0608,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=sqKx
BV_YRZ0
21. Conflict – Carlo Giuliani, uploaded by user ‘‘meatman,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dbCeagk4NI
22. Carlo Giuliani / Los Muertos de Cristo, uploaded by user ‘‘videan99,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4hfpBLGUlg&feature=related
23. Javaspa – Carlo Giuliani, uploaded by user ‘‘GRAFFITARAS,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qC-Rx7PH5A&feature=related
24. carlo giuliani – sadness and sorrow, uploaded by user ‘‘SirioMc,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nts-glcNWe8&feature=related
25. dedicato a Carlo Giulianiyper non dimentiCARLO, uploaded by user
‘‘carlodagosto,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-bohKaXvcI&feature=related
26. Our First Martyr (Long Live Carlo G, Long Live Brad Will) uploaded
by user ‘‘crayrail’’ (Video taken down, archived 24-02-2009)
27. Italy: A history of Resistance. In memory of Carlo Giuliani (Channel
taken down, archived 24-02-2009)
28. A Carlo (Blob G8 2001), uploaded by user ‘‘Rumma01,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TlBZ5vY9OI&feature=related
29. Moving speech at Ian Tomlinson Memorial rally, uploaded by user
‘‘PostFactMedia,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRCsGiflflY
30. Please don’t forget Ian Tomlinson uploaded by user ‘‘Pantherand

politics,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhV2jJii5CE&feature=related
31. Ian Tomlinson RIP – Police Brutality, uploaded by user ‘‘G20melt-
down,’’
http://www.youtube.com/user/G20meltdown%23p/u/1/CfMQ33hnfUA
32. G20 Meltdown Death of Ian Tomlinson, uploaded by user ‘‘G20melt-
down,’’
http://www.youtube.com/user/G20meltdown%23p/u/5/ADd_6ISHLdg
33. Death of Ian Tomlinson – London G20 protest – ‘This is not a democracy’,
uploaded by user ‘‘bax109ma,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7ktQjIMuig
34. Interview with two Eyewitnesses of G20 Death, uploaded by ‘‘Post-
FactMedia,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTCwQt3zBq8&feature=feedf
35. Fight capitalism! Block G8!, uploaded by user ‘‘agitazioni,’’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVnGwQpLH-0&feature=related
36. Ian Tomlinson’s son speaks, uploaded by user ‘‘G20meltdown,’’
http://www.youtube.com/user/G20meltdown%23p/u/4/cMfnt7UZ33E
PART II
COMMENTS ON ADVANCES IN
THE VISUAL ANALYSIS OF
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
WHAT WE CAN DO WITH
VISUAL ANALYSIS IN SOCIAL
MOVEMENT STUDIES:
SOME (SELF) REFLECTIONS
Donatella della Porta
ABSTRACT
The chapter starts with some reflections on the different ways in which
scholars (implicitly, if not explicitly) perform visual analysis in their own
work. For social movement scholars, in fact, the choice of logos for
research centers, the selection of pictures for presentation slides, or the
designing of covers for books all signal not only esthetic tastes but also
specific conceptions of their object of studies. Moving from these
experiences to some empirical analysis of the images collected in the
place where young activist Carlo Giuliani was killed during a police
charge at the counter summit against the G8 in Genoa in 2001, the chapter
suggests some line of reflections on the production and use of images in
social movements.
Keywords: Social movement studies; protest; visual analysis

ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X(2013)0000035010
137
138 DONATELLA DELLA PORTA
Just a few hours before the editors of this special issue reminded me of my
promise to contribute a short comment on it, I had a (for me impressive)
chance to reflect on visual images. After we founded the Centre On Social
Movement Studies (Cosmos) at the European University Institute, the need
to find a logo that would testify – even more than any formal institutional
decision – to our existence emerged. I asked a Greek artist to design it for us.
When she delivered several (very beautiful) drafts, I spent the afternoon
looking at them all, again and again. After, I chose two, and met with her to
explain my choice. It only became clear to me then how much my esthetic
judgment had been influenced by the conception of social movements these
logos reproduced. The designs showed a sort of explosion of colors in all
directions, from the center out. This resonated very much with my current
vision of movements as nets of ‘‘explosive’’ streams. Even the detail of the
gradually merging colors at the borders seemed to resonate with my vision
of contemporary movements as characterized by the creation of multiple
identities in action. Moreover, the multicolored, ‘‘explosive’’ picture seemed
to reflect the cosmopolitanism of the consortium: the acronym ‘‘Cosmos’’
reflects not only the (increasing) cosmopolitanism of social movements (at
least, the ones we have studied most), but also the composition of the
consortium, with a few dozen social movement scholars from a few dozen
countries.
Apparently, then, my choice had been neither purely esthetic, nor
purely instrumental: visual images and visions of movements had simply
merged into each other. Without denying that all decisions referring to
symbols can be based on a different mix of instrumental and esthetic
reasons, my own experiences made me think that the two aspects are often
difficult to disentangle – as, others have argued, is the cognitive from the
affective.
My self-reflexive mood led me then to think about how often we as
scholars (implicitly, if not explicitly) perform visual analysis in our work.
Another example which came into my mind was the use of pictures about
social movements in presentation slides. While previous didactical instru-
ments, like overhead projectors, were somehow hostile to pictures, recent
techniques allow us to take advantage of the synthesizing power of images,
showing how much photos or drawing can communicate by capturing
attention and transmitting messages. That new technologies favor images
over words, as they blur the borders between producers and consumers
of information, is indeed another path of thinking that could be better
investigated. If the Web 2.0, with its opportunities and limits, does indeed
facilitate the spread of information transmitted via images even more than
What We Can Do with Visual Analysis in Social Movement Studies 139
words we can expect different styles of communication – especially in those

movements and among those movement activists that use new technologies
more.
A third observation drawn from personal experience: another (often very
rewarding) occasion during which even those of us with no special expertise
in the field do perform visual analysis is in the selection of cover images for a
forthcoming book. Especially when dealing with progressive social move-
ments, looking at potential candidates from movement and copyleft websites
is gratifying: one is often (positively) overwhelmed by the number of
pictures, but also their capacity to transmit messages one wants to
convey with the research: pleasure in action, commitment, hopes y It is
not difficult to find pictures of marches in the street or, more recently,
occupation of spaces that talks of all these themes. It was much more
difficult, however, to find an appropriate cover for my forthcoming book on
clandestine political violence. The links to various collections of photos the
press had sent did not provide what I was looking for. When searching under
‘‘political violence’’ the images which abounded were of guns, fire, blood,
but none hinted at what my analysis in the book was about – long lasting
processes, complex relations, conflicting motivations. This I fortunately
found later on not in a picture, but in a drawing that a social movement scholar
and artist kindly agreed to share with me and that indeed graphically
reproduced the multiplicity of conflicts from which violence emerges. The
more general reflection from this experience, beyond the already mentioned
mix of esthetic and instrumental reasoning, is the different degree of challenges
one faces when looking for an effective visual representation for different
messages. Once again, this seems a line of investigation that can easily be
expanded from the scholar-looking-for-cover-image field to how activists
address the challenges of transmitting some particular messages through
visual images.
Furthermore, and linked to this, even those of us who are not specialized
in visual analysis sometimes find a topic of research in which visual images
are so overwhelming that it is impossible not to consider them. This
happened to me, for instance, when I was approached by Italian colleagues
to write a short piece on the ‘‘Piazza Carlo Giuliani, ragazzo’’ in Genoa,
a square devoted to the memory of the young activist killed by a policeman
during the protest against the G8 in 2001 (della Porta, 2005). A sort of
memorial site quickly developed on the square where Carlo died, and some
activists took pictures of all the materials left by thousands of visitors
(or even sent to ‘‘Piazza Carlo Giuliani, ragazzo’’ and delivered there).
Those images, carefully reproduced and catalogued, offered I think a perfect
picture of the characteristic of the emerging movement, and of a new

generation that became socialized in it. In that collection of visual pieces –
which mixed different images and words – I found many insights into the
culture of the movement. This is what I wrote then:
Genoa, 19–21 July 2001. The G8 protest is remembered as the first moment of mass-
media visibility in Europe of a movement that emerged in the United States with the
protests against the WTO in Seattle in November 1999. y on 20 July a military police
(Carabinieri) charge against one of the processions authorized by the police marked the
beginning of hours of violent clashes between demonstrators and police forces during
which Carlo Giuliani, 23 years of age, died after being hit by a bullet fired by a military
policeman. In the square where Carlo was killed a place of remembrance was created,
a sort of secular shrine to Carlo, often called ‘‘a boy.’’ (della Porta, 2005, p. 148)
The creation of a sort of memorial on the site a protestor was killed is

certainly nothing new, particularly in Italy where so many demonstrators
have been killed by police officers or right-wing radicals. Their names –
Roberto Franceschi, Franco Serantini, Pietro Bruno, Francesco Lo Russo,
and Giorgiana Masi among them – are still recalled and their memory is
transmitted by books and songs. As I noted, ‘‘For many of them, the same
laments were composed and the same tears shed as those described in the
notes left in Carlo Giuliani Square (‘I didn’t know you, but I cried for you’);
we dedicated university lecture halls and social centers to them. In Genoa –
and in Carlo Giuliani Square – some characteristics specific to that
thousands-strong movement also emerge, in choices to remember Carlo, the
boy, in their own ways and forms that differ from those used in the 1970s to
remember Roberto and Franco, Francesco and Giorgiana. The moving and
poetic material gathered in Carlo Giuliani Square says much about this
movement, and the youth participation in it’’ (ibid.).
The many and varied things left in Piazza Carlo Giuliani are extremely
telling about some characteristics of the movement. First, they pay
testimony to a movement that does not celebrate violence: flowers and
hearts are the dominant symbols, guns are absent. Carlo is ‘‘Carletto,’’ or
even ‘‘Carlettino’’ (‘‘little’’ or ‘‘baby’’ Carlo); not ‘‘Comrade Carlo’’ but a
‘‘sweet child’’; not a soldier but ‘‘sweet,’’ ‘‘affectionate,’’ ‘‘tender’’; a ‘‘sweet
prince,’’ a ‘‘little prince’’ but not a warrior prince; he is a ‘‘little friend,’’ not
a great hero; a ‘‘very good guy,’’ not ‘‘cool’’; he is bid goodbye ‘‘with a kiss,’’
not with a clenched fist. The warrior is a Gundam warrior drawn with
a child’s hand. The memory of Carlo is ‘‘a memory of a normal person’’;
of ‘‘a guy like us.’’ The accompanying music is not military marches, but
ballads by singer-songwriters such as Fabrizio De André (‘‘it was not death
that killed you, but two bigoted guardsmen y’’) or Ligabue (‘‘Certain
nights seem like bad habits you don’t want to quit y’’); the 99Posse and
Guccini, generationally mixed. While the idea that a new world could come
from revolution and guerrilla tactics was widespread among the generation
of the 1970s, on Carlo’s railings ‘‘Do not place hope in our violence’’ was
written. While nonviolence prevails as an ethical or tactical choice in the
documents of movement organizations, in messages to Carlo, who died a
violent death, this comes through as an internalized value. Where someone
reminds us that ‘‘Carlo lives and fights alongside us,’’ those who fight are in
any case ‘‘a small people, in equality and solidarity.’’ No vendetta is sworn
for Carlo: he is wished to ‘‘be well, wherever you are,’’ and to ‘‘be at peace,’’
hugged ‘‘with all the other citizens of the world.’’
A visual analysis of the objects collected where Carlo died also show a
movement centered more around values than ideologies. Those who
mention the (then emerging) global justice movement do not present it
through references to big theoretical constructions, but rather by recalling
the founding values of justice and peace, dignity, and democracy. There
is the occasional circled anarchist A, but many more drawings of flowers.
If ‘‘a better world is possible,’’ it seems this will be the result of individuals’
constant and daily efforts rather than taking the palace (or the actions of the
‘‘8 shits’’). The values recalled are justice (and Carlo’s death ‘‘is not fair’’)
and peace, hope for a better world, life ‘‘is a dream’’ (not a mission).
‘‘Between easy things and difficult things I choose things that don’t yet
exist.’’ Dignity and justice are invoked more than socialism or anarchy.
‘‘Reclaim our right to dream a different, better world y’’; ‘‘They try to
make us believe that dreams, utopias, dignity, faith, hope, passion are
illnesses.’’ For this reason, the promise that ‘‘We won’t make a monument
to the memory of you y because you weren’t a paper hero.’’
In these images, spontaneous but harmonious, the movement represents
itself as a meeting of many individualities that wish to recognize but not
dissolve themselves in a collective. This attention to individuality, to
subjectivity, is reflected in the offering of words and symbols that recall the
everyday. Meetings are arranged with Carlo, and apologies offered for
tardiness (‘‘I’m here tonight, 6 days late’’); he is brought a note ‘‘between
one train and another.’’ Everyday objects are left for him – a greeting
scrawled on a CD, a train ticket, a flyer y The railings are visited to ‘‘leave
something,’’ even if that something will then be lost or covered up: ‘‘the hat
that I left on New Year’s Eve must have blown away, these lines will fade,
not even the GIR sticker is here anymore.’’ A faded rose is brought for
Carlo: ‘‘I’m writing these two lines, slipping on my shoes and bringing this
to you,’’ but also the symbols of the fragments of their own subjectivity:
‘‘my father’s certificate of participation in the Resistance,’’ a trade union

membership card or that of a sport’s club.
Along with the visible subjectivity in all that is gathered in the square, the
diversity of a movement of many souls is also celebrated – ideological and
religious, generational and ethnic diversity. The diversity of ideological
references is demonstrated in the many membership cards and symbols of
belonging left on the railings (CGIL and Padre Pio, Young Communists and
Anarchists, football fan clubs, and religious communities). At movement
meetings and in campaigns, these diverse points of view speak to each other,
occasionally they agree, occasionally they part ways. Certainly different
from the past is the emphasis placed on heterogeneity, multiplicity, and
difference, considered a positive value. On the railings in Carlo Giuliani
Square, the multiplicity of references seems to pay testimony to contamina-
tion rather than appropriation.
Next to the celebration of ideological diversity is that of the meeting of
languages and territories. The movement presents itself as multilingual –
‘‘Wir sind alle Carlo Giuliani,’’ ‘‘Reclaim the World,’’ ‘‘El poder corrompe
las consciencias.’’ Those who write want to represent themselves in their
diverse subjectivities – ‘‘I am Buddhist and I will pray for your peace every
day’’; ‘‘In the name of Allah, the merciful, the clement’’; ‘‘courage, old red-
and-blue heart y ’’.1 Origins in many different territories are underlined:
‘‘I came from Florence,’’ ‘‘I came from Rome,’’ ‘‘I came from Ostuni;’’ there
are ‘‘greetings from a Macedonian Rom and all the Rom present all over the
world’’ and from ‘‘a Peruvian girl, who was lucky enough to study.’’ People
arrive in Piazza Carlo Giuliani from many places, and the square has
become a place to stop, a place and a temporary non-place – ‘‘I like to stop
here, in this city that may not be mine, but maybe is.’’
This illustration shows that visual images (and artifacts) offer precious
materials to understand cultural (and not only cultural) characteristics of
social movements: social movements are formidable producers of visual
symbols. As the interesting pieces included in this edited volume demon-
strate, one can learn a lot about social movements by analyzing the content
of their visual production.
As social movements need and praise visibility, visual products perform a
most important function. This has always been the case: symbols are
particularly important for movements as they need to build identities as well
as capture the attention of the media and the public. This is all the more so
the case now that new technologies have multiplied the chances of
producing images and, especially, for circulating them, as Olesen and
Askanius’ contributions in this volume underline. On the websites of social
movement organizations the logos of various campaigns testify to, but are
also an instrument of, networking.
Given their semantic openness (Doerr & Mattoni, 2013), visual symbols
are easier to agree upon than discourses, and are easier to synthesize
diversity in a common vision. As Luhtakallio’s chapter in this volume
illustrates so well, however, visuals are also somewhat vulnerable and open
to different interpretations. Some strong symbols – such as the statue of
liberty for the Chinese student movement in China – contribute to activists’
reflections about themselves, but may also then constrain them in their
actions (Calhoun, 1994). Also, as Doerr and Teune (2012) argue, a ‘‘logo-
centric’’ approach to visuals can distort both social movements’ actual
visual choices, and scholars’ interpretations of them.
Additionally, the different processes of production of visuals in different
social movements form an extremely relevant theme for investigation
(see, e.g., Doerr, 2010). As the Carlo Giuliani Square illustrates, more
and more symbols are a collective – choral – product. The ways in which the
different availabilities of specialized skills in different movements and
generations impact on this process of symbolic production, how it can
potentially create or diffuse power structures, are important topics for further
research. Also, as Kirsty McLaren’s chapter in this volume clearly illustrates,
esthetic preferences change along with social movements’ cultures.
The visual analysis of Carlo Giuliani Square also indicates the importance
of pluralistic methodological approaches. Not only, as for instance the piece
by Priska Daphi, Peter Ullrich, and Anja Le in this volume shows, is
understanding enhanced by the collaboration of sociologists with art
historians, or the bridging of social movement studies and semiotics (see
Tina Askanius’ chapter in this volume), but the visual and the written seem
to be strictly connected in social movements’ production of symbols – and
their combination contributes to the construction of meaning (see also
Doerr, 2010).
In conclusion, this volume shows the richness, but also the complexity of
visual analysis. It gives us clues about the how-to-do-it well question, even if
at the same time demonstrating the importance of acquiring specific
knowledge. Even if it will not make all its readers expert visual analysts, it is
extremely useful for stimulating a more conscious and self-reflective use of
visual products in our work.
NOTE
1. A reference to the colors of Genoa, the football team Carlo supported.
REFERENCES
Calhoun, C. (1994). Neither gods nor emperors: Students and the struggle for democracy in China.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
della Porta, D. (2005). Il Movimento in Piazza Carlo Giuliani. In F. Caffarena & C. Stiaccini
(Eds.), Fragili, resistenti. I messaggi di Piazza Alimonda e la nascita di un luogo di identità
collettiva, Milano, Terre di Mezzo (pp. 148–151).
Doerr, N. (2010). Politicizing precarity, producing visual dialogue on migration: Transnational
public spaces in social movements. Forum Qualitative Social Research, 11(2), Art.
30. Available at http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1485.
Accessed on 30 January, 2013.
Doerr, N., & Mattoni, A. (2013). Public spaces and alternative media networks in Europe: The
case of the Euro Mayday Parade against precarity. In R. Werenskjold, K. Fahlenbrach &
E. Sivertsen (Eds.), The revolution will not be televised? Media and protest movements.
New York, NY: Berghahn Books.
visual analysis of social movements. In K. Fahlenbrach, M. Klimke, J. Scharloth &
L. Wong (Eds.), The ‘Establishment’ responds: Power, politics and protest since 1945
(pp. 43–55). London: Palgrave.
PART III
GENERAL THEME: NARRATIVES
AND REPERTOIRES OF
CONTENTION
THE WORK STORIES DO: CHARLES
TILLY’S LEGACY ON THE
PROVISION OF REASONS,
STORYTELLING, AND TRUST IN
CONTENTIOUS PERFORMANCES
Marc W. Steinberg and Patricia Ewick
ABSTRACT
In his later works Charles Tilly extended his analysis of contention by

scrutinizing the dynamics of contentious performances and the enactment
of identities through them. Complementing these investigations he
analyzed the centrality of trust networks in sustained challenges to
authority. On a somewhat detached track Tilly developed an examination
of reason giving in social life and more particularly the ways in which
people do critical transactional work through stories, often with the
assessment of credit and blame. In this chapter, we quilt these various
pieces to offer an analysis of how storytelling is vital to the construction of
trust and blame in contentious performances, both in the face of threat
and opportunity. We explain how these later works on storytelling,
identities, and trust can be integrated fruitfully with his many writings on
contention to expand the analysis of its culture dimensions. We draw on

ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X(2013)0000035011
147
148 MARC W. STEINBERG AND PATRICIA EWICK
three years of field work with a chapter of the Voice of the Faithful, an
organization of Catholics that formed in the wake of the priest sexual
abuse crisis, to exemplify this integration of Tilly’s work. Using data from
field notes and interviews we demonstrate how chapter members engage in
the telling standard stories of origin, legacy and transformation, and trust
in their pursuit of change and in maintaining internal solidarity. We
conclude that our integration of Tilly’s later work can be added to other
perspectives on narrative to broaden the cultural analysis of contention.
Keywords: Charles Tilly; narrative; storytelling; trust;

collective identity
Sitting with Shirley in her well-appointed dining room, we listened to her

account of how she joined the St. Erasmus chapter of the Voice of the
Faithful (VOTF). The VOTF, which we discuss in more detail below, is an
organization of self-defined ‘‘faithful Catholics’’ that originated in the
Boston area in response to the priest sexual abuse crisis in 2002. Shirley was
particularly animated when she recounted her path to becoming one of
St. Erasmus’s more active members in the pursuit of institutional change.
Recalling her initial reactions to the stories in the Boston Globe in early 2002
that ignited the crisis she emphatically noted, ‘‘I believe anything that’s
going on that’s infecting my Church is an aberration. And it’s not the
Church. It’s not what I consider the Church. All of these things that
happened in the Church, I don’t consider it the Church.’’
In recounting her history of participation she drew a bright line between
what she saw as a corrupt hierarchy and faithful Catholics. Her story of her
path to participation was quite similar to the other autobiographical
accounts that we heard both through interviews and in our observations of
chapter meetings over three plus years of fieldwork. These accounts took the
form of what Charles Tilly termed a standard story, which he argued does a
great deal of interactional work in social life including drawing identity
boundaries.
Tilly’s theoretical frameworks on collective action and contention, from
his initial programmatic statement in From Mobilization to Revolution
(1978) to his artful refinements in his perspective on contentious repertoires
in Contentious Performances (2008a), have been a touchstone of collective
action research for decades. Scholars have drawn on his corpus particularly
to find insights into the complex material, structural, and organizational
The Work Stories Do: Charles Tilly’s Legacy 149
dynamics of contention. For all of its centrality scholars have been less
inclined to turn to Tilly’s work to understand the cultural dimensions of
contention; and some might well puzzle over our reference to his work in
discussing Shirley’s autobiographical account above. Indeed, a group of
critics have argued that Tilly paid insufficient attention to the cultural
processes of contention (cf. Goodwin & Jasper, 2004).
In this chapter, we present Tilly’s framework for a cultural analysis
of contention, though we find it in a series of writings that have little to do
with the subject. It is true that Tilly did not pursue extensively an analysis of
the cultural and symbolic work in contentious performances. However,
during his final highly fertile period of publishing he offered pieces of an
analytic framework in writing that did not focus on collective action.
Putting these pieces together can provide significant theoretical insights on
the cultural dynamics of contention. Tilly did not identify this latter work as
providing such pieces, and he might not readily recognize this extension in
the way we assemble them. In this later work he developed a number of
insights on the cultural and cognitive dimensions of political engagement
and social interaction more generally that can serve to expand his long-
standing research agenda on collective action. These analyses, such as those
that focus on storytelling and trust, were part of a larger program of
relational realism which he was creating in concert with other sociologists
(Mische, 2011).
We make the case that in a series of books and papers Tilly produced a
theoretical framework on cultural processes that can be braided with his
work on contentious politics to provide a fuller understanding of collective
action and social movements. To date, virtually no social scientists have
made the connections between this body of work and his writings on
contention, nor have they discerned how it offers a fuller cultural dimension
to Tilly’s program for the analysis of contentious politics. Our goals in this
chapter are to present how this work offers insights for the cultural analysis
of contention, as well as to extend some aspects of this framework into areas
not raised by Tilly himself. We focus on Tilly’s writings on storytelling and
trust networks and demonstrate how his discussions of political identities
serve as a bridge between this writing and his corpus on contention. To
fortify this framework we draw on the theoretical insights of other
sociologists who have taken a ‘‘narrative turn.’’ We illustrate these additions
through an analysis of ethnographic fieldwork on the St. Erasmus chapter of
the VOTF. In our analysis we demonstrate how Tilly’s work on identity
processes, storytelling, and trust shed light on the origins and continuing
dynamics of the chapter.
ADDING ONE TILLY TO ANOTHER1
As Tilly deepened and reworked his analysis of contentious politics he was

separately developing a largely new intellectual agenda in the analysis of
reason giving generally and the role of stories in social life more particularly.
His engagement with stories was both based in an epistemological critique
of the narrative turn in the social sciences, but also in an increasing interest
in the ways in which storytelling facilitates and constrains political action.
The construction of political identities, he observed, was accomplished
through storytelling by which, ‘‘political entrepreneurs draw together
credible stories from available cultural materials, y create we-they bound-
aries, activate both stories and boundaries as a function of current political
circumstances, and maneuver to suppress competing models’’ (2003, p. 612).
Political actors accomplish much of this interpretive work through standard
stories that draw on readily recognizable emplotments to organize people
and activities. Such stories, ‘‘embody ideas concerning what forms of action
and interaction are feasible, desirable, and efficacious, hence at least by
implication what forms of action and interaction would be impossible,
undesirable, or ineffectual. y political organizers spend a significant part
of their effort on the creation and broadcast of collective standard stories
that will facilitate communication, coordination, and commitment on the
part of participants, allies, bystanders, and even objects of collective claims’’
(2002, p. 9).
Stitched into networks standard stories clarify boundaries, aid in the
coordination of participants, and tend to create path-dependent models that
both enable and constrain contentious performances. By providing well-
formulated visions of what is justifiably possible and actionable standard
stories partly focus and direct challenges. Of course, throughout his
extensive analysis Tilly also argued that resources, internal organization,
opportunity/threat, and interaction with other actors also winnow and
channel. We see his discussion of standard stories as explicitly adding a
cultural dimension to such processes that he had not previously discussed.2
In our analysis below we map out and expand on Tilly’s framework.
We suggest that members of challenging groups, as well as the political
entrepreneurs who organize and coordinate them, are also involved in the
process of generating these stories.
The specifics of this framework are found outside of his work on
contention. Stories, Tilly informs us in Why? (2006), are one of four
rhetorical devices used to provide reasons, the other three being conven-
tions, codes, and technical explanations. Reason giving exerts important
effects on social relations through its capacity to confirm, negotiate, or

challenge, and repair these relations or in the creation of new ties (2006,
p. 15). Tilly provides several hints for why stories play an outsized role in
contentious action. Most generally he notes that, ‘‘When life gets
complicated, stories take over the bulk of relational work,’’ and contention
rarely concerns the simple and perfunctory (2006, p. 173). Stories also mark
a ‘‘membership in a shared community of belief’’ (2006, p. 27). More
specifically stories ‘‘include strong imputations of responsibility, and thus
lend themselves to moral evaluations’’ (2008b, p. 21). Through stories we
assign credit, and in the case of contention more importantly blame, by
assessing agency, competence, and responsibility in recognizable accounts.
Here discussions of political identities and blame fold into one another, as
Tilly notes in the latter case that stories of blame sharpen us/them
boundaries in the search for justice. A call for justice ‘‘concentrates on
knitting the offended community back together’’ (2008b, p. 109). Thus
storytelling, in Tilly’s conception, centrally involves the construction and
maintenance of a collective identity necessary for contention, the
importance of which he had discussed elsewhere in analyzing the dynamics
of political identities (1998, 2003).
This discussion of boundary work echoes in Tilly’s analyses of trust
networks which he published during the same period. His primary concern
in Trust and Rule (2005a) and Democracy (2007) was to map the
transactional politics between rulers and ruled, and more specifically the
dynamics of de/democratization. In these works contentious performances
and political identities are certainly broached, but their cultural dimensions
are not a focus. Their core concerns are the material, structural, and
interactional dynamics of state politics that are hallmarks of Tilly’s wide-
ranging analyses on this topic. Yet his analysis of trust networks resonates
with his inquiries into storytelling and the dynamics of collective identity.
All these in turn support his examination of contention performances in
unstated ways. Trust networks ‘‘consist of ramified interpersonal connec-
tions, consisting mainly of strong ties, within which people set valued,
consequential, long-term resources and enterprises at risk of malfeasance,
mistakes, or failures of others’’ (2005a, p. 12, emphasis in the original).
People develop and maintain these networks in part through transactional
commitments which are most successfully maintained when actors ‘‘mark,
maintain and monitor sharp boundaries between insiders and outsiders’’
(2005a, p. 57). While it is possible that actors accomplish some of this
boundary work through conventions and codes, it makes sense that the
critical identity work of commitment and the evaluation of risk is
accomplished through stories. As he notes elsewhere, ‘‘When people put a

political boundary in place, they also organize social relations on each side
of the boundary, relations across the boundary, and stories about the whole
ensemble’’ (2005b, p. 182).
Integrating and expanding on Tilly’s work we maintain that the
evaluative aspect of stories makes them an important vehicle for establish-
ing, repairing, and maintaining trust. Tilly’s focus on trust networks largely
started with the assumption of their existence among a delimited group
engaged in public politics with authorities. He was not concerned with their
etiology. His efforts focused on shifts in recurrent patterns of interaction to
explain variations in trust, emphasizing mostly the mechanisms that change
the scope and character of trust networks. Some, such as the sequestering of
resources, the enhanced connections with supply sources and the increase of
available resources, focus on material changes. Others, such as the
dissolution or insulation of dyads and cliques, concentrate on the changing
patterns of interaction. These represent analytic continuity with his prior
huge corpus. But a third group – including the sharpening of boundaries,
heightened mutual attraction, or the creation of a charismatic leader –
highlight shifts into the symbolic dynamics of recognition, and this brings to
the forefront perspectives that we are developing in his later writings (2005a,
pp. 59–60, 71–76). Tilly raised but did not systematically pursue these
cultural processes. His analyses do not detail how members of trust
networks communicate their sense of boundaries and mutual attraction,
that is, the reason giving they use to clarify and simplify the complex
interactions through which trust is maintained.
However, Tilly’s work on standard stories and storytelling provides
important keys to these cultural processes. As we have noted above shared
membership is about drawing boundaries, a matter of identity, and as he
argues identity is communicated through ‘‘a set of stories about the
boundary and the relations’’ that compose it (Tilly, 2003, p. 608). It also
involves how individuals and groups assess what he notes in many of his
works on contention is the balance between opportunity and threat as actors
chart the territory of contention. We see these processes operating both
internally in interactions among challengers and externally in their
interactions with powerholders. First, from Tilly’s discussion of contentious
politics, we can surmise that the viscosity of trust internally in part varies by
the standard stories challengers relate to themselves to demarcate clear
boundaries and a collective identity. Heightened trust requires the regular
sharing of standard stories, mitigating the sense of risk members may have
in joining with unfamiliar others and participating in a contentious group.
Second, Tilly explores the ways in which trust networks can be configured
within different political regimes based on coercion, capital, and commit-
ment. His attention is not on how challengers engage in collective action for
the purposes of re-establishing trust with powerholders on a new footing
(2005a, pp. 30–43). Yet many of his most significant conceptual and
empirical works, not the least of which is his classic Popular Contention in
Great Britain, 1758–1834 (1995), concern the rise of modern social
movements and the pursuit of reform (see Tilly, 2004 for an overview).
In these key works he details the development of new repertoires of
collective action through which mass challenges pursue reform politics and
inclusion in the polity. This in part is accomplished by generating new bases
for trust between challengers and powerholders. As we noted, his writing on
storytelling extended the analysis of repertoires of contentious performances
further into the cultural realm. It explained how storytelling facilitates
strategic interaction with powerholders. Standard stories provide a frame-
work to discern opportunity/threat in interactional politics with power-
holders. To the degree that the challengers’ goal is to recuperate relations
with powerholders – that is, engage in a reform agenda – storytelling can
signal opportunities for change as well as remind them of shared risks.
We also wish to extend this perspective on trust. While Tilly centered his
work on state politics (for which he was critiqued by other scholars), we
suggest that the construction of trust is a frequent concern of contention in
other aspects of associational life. This is the case in terms of creating
collective identities necessary for internal solidarity, in the assignment of
blame and the pursuit of justice, and in efforts to negotiate or repair
relations with powerholders.
This work on trust and storytelling thus provides the gateway for using
Tilly’s insights beyond the realm of state politics. As we explore in our
analysis below, challengers can attempt to recuperate and reconstitute
relations that were axiomatically constructed as benevolent. Under assumed
benevolence the risk of malfeasance is essentially unrecognized. The
recognition of risk activates an understanding of the possibilities for
betrayal, which in turn can motivate a recuperation of ties through the
establishment of trust.
By bringing together Tilly’s work on stories, reason giving, identities,
and trust networks, we show how this integration further extends cultural
analysis within his relational realist perspective on contention. As
Emirbayer and Goodwin (1994) have observed, a comprehensive analysis
of network dynamics requires an understanding of how cultural and social
structures interanimate network action, enabling and constraining relations
between actors (see also White, 2008). Codes, conventions, and perhaps
even technical explanations can also be part of transactional work giving
meaning to trust networks. However, it seems likely that from Tilly’s
perspective storytelling is often the main process linking the cultural
dynamics of reason giving and identity and boundary setting to the
dynamics of networks and contentious interaction.
PARALLELS BETWEEN TILLY’S WORK AND

OTHER NARRATIVE ANALYSTS
In his analysis of the decline of the Amsterdam squatters’ movement, Lynn

Owens suggests that Tilly’s work on reason giving dovetails with his own
perspective on how narrative is centrally involved with social movement
decline (2009, pp. 25–26). We agree and further suggest that the conceptual
framework offered by Tilly on storytelling, identity, and trust networks,
finds parallels with other work on narrative to expand the analysis of
contentious performances. Sociologists who analyze the role of narrative in
social life emphasize the degree to which the stories we tell are social
processes that are bounded both by social structures and cultural schema.
This resonates with Tilly’s conception of standard stories and their relational
bases. Ewick and Silbey in their work on narratives of resistance, for
example, note that ‘‘narratives exist and have meaning only within networks
of storytellers and audiences’’ (2003, p. 1342). In her analyses of narratives
and social movements, Francesca Polletta highlights the ways in which
activists are constrained by the social organization of storytelling, the
institutional rules that govern the process, and the stock of available
canonical emplotments through which activists can make sense of
contention (Polletta, 1998b, p. 424, 2002, p. 34, 2006, pp. 3, 8, 13, 22, 169;
see also Davis 2002, pp. 24–25; Loseke, 2007, p. 664; Owens, 2009, p. 31).
A growing number of scholars have focused on the ways identity
construction is accomplished through narrative. Margaret Somers, in her
discussion of ontological narrativity, argues that through the processual and
relational process of narrative, ‘‘people construct identities (however
multiple and changing) by locating themselves or being located within a
repertoire of emplotted stories’’ (1994, p. 614). Similarly, Polletta proposed
that through the emplotments in the stories activists create and sustain
continuity of collective identities (Polletta, 1998a, pp. 140–141, 2002, p. 35).3
Sharon Erikson Nepstad (2001, 2004b) has documented the ways in which
storytelling was a vehicle for transnational solidarity among Catholic peace
activists. In these and related arguments social scientists explore how

storytelling provides a framework for animating social networks and
structuring groupness, and signals boundaries through which collective
claims and decision making can be mapped (Davis, 2002, p. 26; Fine, 1995,
p. 133; Godart & White, 2010, p. 579; Loseke, 2007; Mische, 2003, p. 264;
Owens, 2009, pp. 28, 31).4
Drawing in part on the work of Hayden White, these sociologists also
emphasize that stories convey moral reasoning (Davis, 2002, p. 12; Ewick &
Silbey, 1995, p. 201, 2003, p. 1341; Poletta, 2002, p. 33; Somers, 1994, p. 617;
see also Fine, 1995, pp. 130, 133; Loseke, 2007, p. 666; Owens, 2009, pp. 25–
28). Stories in this sense, as Tilly argues, are vehicles for assigning credit, and
more importantly blame, that provide reasons for contention. Adding to his
framework we observe that these evaluative viewpoints have a temporal
progression that can align a past injustice with a prospective resolution.5
In Ann Mische’s (2009; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998) terms, storytelling
in contention involves projectivity, the social work groups do to imagine a
future.
Polletta notes that within specific institutional contexts the ‘‘gap between
story and reality is likely to be seen as a ground for mobilization’’ (2006,
p. 17). In these cases the perceived failings of powerholders’ canonical
institutional stories invite revision of these narratives, or the transposition
of external narratives to challenge or discredit the dominant storyline. In
these instances ‘‘hegemonic tales’’ can be reworked into ‘‘subversive stories’’
(Ewick & Silbey, 1995).
Finally, much as Tilly’s simile of contentious performance as improvisa-
tional jazz, storytelling as a transactional and contextual practice involves
retelling and sometimes reinterpretation. Through their ambiguity, their
invitation to participation and their recognition of the flow of time stories
call forth more tellings. Challengers’ stories are keyed to strategy,
opportunity, and threat, audiences and institutional settings, and the
boundaries of recognized emplotment that are found in standard stories.
‘‘Stories thus change in the course of interaction to reflect the experiences and
interpretations of others. Narrative change is ongoing because stories are
rarely told once or to only one audience’’ (Ewick & Silbey, 2003, p. 1343; see
also Davis, 2002, pp. 12–14; Polletta, 2006, pp. 19, 172–176). However, as
Owens observes, ‘‘narratives can only bend so far before they break’’ (2009,
p. 29). To be a coherent guide to contention they must have a stickiness that
anchors constructions of moral reasoning, boundaries, identities, etc.
Tilly’s insights on storytelling, reason giving, identity processes, and trust
share many of these ideas, and they can be combined in a framework that
offers additional insights into the cultural work of contention. To rework

Tilly’s consideration of standard stories and reason giving just a bit we can
envision many types of stories told during contention. We concentrate on a
few here. Generally there are what Owen terms origin stories, setting out a
standard account of the bases for the groups’ existence (2009, p. 44). These
are stories of trouble that prompt action. They are narratives of inequity or
injustice in which the identities of protagonists and antagonists are clearly
distinguished and morally marked concerning an issue that requires
resolution. Much of the contention that we study is understood through
such stories. They provide the seedbed for other stories during contentious
action, since they offer these foundational cultural components.6
Stories of legacy and transformation are the retrospective and projective
narratives which give emplotment to action into the future. They tie
narratives of the past and those of present troubles to an imagined
resolution.7 This is the process of projectivity we mentioned above. Some of
these stories involve a ‘‘history of the present’’ in which current efforts and
hopes for the future are embedded in an alternative history providing
legitimacy and continuity. One way of telling such stories is the
appropriation of standard institutional stories that function as ‘‘hegemonic
tales,’’ transforming them into ‘‘subversive stories’’ as we discussed.
There are many possible resolutions sought by challengers, one such
subset being the rebalancing and reparation of ties with powerholders noted
in our discussion of trust. In these cases challengers might tell stories of
trust, narratives of how relations with powerholders could be or are being
recuperated. Challengers can tell these stories to reorganize their interac-
tional politics with powerholders on a reformulated and reformed basis.
Their storytelling collectively projects a possible future in which betrayal has
been overcome.
Stories of origin, transformation and trust by no means exhaust the range
of narratives. Our point in this chapter is not to provide a comprehensive
typology of the possibilities. Rather, we suggest how Tilly’s later work can
be integrated into a coherent analytical framework and used to advance and
extend discussions of the dynamics of narrative in social movements in
fruitful ways.
TELLING STORIES
We pursue the cultural framework we have identified in Tilly’s work

through an analysis of the observations and stories that we have collected in
three plus years of fieldwork on a chapter of the Voice of the Faithful. As we

noted a number of Boston-area Catholics coalesced quickly in early 2002 in
response to the Globe series on serial priest abuse of children and the cover-
up by the archdiocese (Bruce, 2011; France, 2004; Investigative Staff of
the Boston Globe, 2002). The Globe coverage served as what James Jasper
(1997; Jasper & Poulsen, 1995) has termed a ‘‘moral shock’’; a public event
that be culturally condensed into readily interpretable account that calls for
change. In February informal discussion sessions, involving hundreds of area
Catholics, were started at St. John the Evangelist church in Wellesley. The
VOTF emerged quickly from these discussions, ‘‘born amidst an explosive
mixture of heartbreak and rage’’ as one of its founders, James Muller,
describes it (Muller & Kenney, 2004, p. 56). Within six weeks of its formation
the organization, whose motto became ‘‘Keep the Faith, Change the
Church,’’ had settled on three broad goals that have remained its corner-
stones, both of the national organization and the affiliate we are studying:
(a) to support survivors of abuse, (b) to aid priests of integrity (those who
spoke out against the abuses and cover-up and support reformers), and
(c) to pursue ‘‘structural change’’ within the Church (Muller & Kenney, 2004,
pp. 60–61). Affiliates began to proliferate around the region, and many
chapters emerged throughout New England and New York.8
In May the pastor of St. Erasmus, a parish in suburban Boston, sensed
the well of emotions among his parishioners.9 He responded to the requests
by several people who would become critical to the VOTF chapter, and
started a series of listening sessions for the laity to express their concerns.
These initial sessions drew perhaps 200 people, and were a somewhat stormy
forum for expression. The origin stories that we have heard concerning the
chapter emphasize the immediate emotional response to the Globe coverage.
As Victoria recounted to us ‘‘Basically people came and they vented. And
people ranted and cried y just terribly, terribly raw feelings.’’ In these
initial meetings long lists of concerns and grievances were compiled, but the
meetings coalesced into a VOTF affiliate and the group took on the three
planks as its focus. At the suggestion of the widely acknowledged leader of
the nascent group it met weekly, and a smaller group of 30–40 regular
participants stabilized (Patricia, Shirley, Sarah).10
According to the origin stories of the group, members’ initial reasons to
participate were based in a strong sense of moral violation. Shirley, at
another point in our interview with us, passionately observed, ‘‘And this
type of thing was just, it was an outrage. It was like a virus infecting your
home y I was so angry when all of this happened. It’s just something that
you can’t tolerate in an institution you want to claim.’’ Repeatedly we heard
other St. Erasmus VOTFers describe how they experienced a kind of gut-
punch that prompted action as much or more in the immediacy of the moral
emotions than the news provoked as reasoned response:11
‘‘Just you know, horror. Disgust that this kind of thing could go on you know, with
priests that you know, always were held in very high esteem.’’ (Loretta)
‘‘I just can’t tell you how outraged I was.’’ (Nancy)
‘‘Something should be done to change the church. y I mean I was really angry.’’
(Grace)
In these origin stories, the moral outrage of faithful Catholics became a

foundation on which they developed activist identities. Both VOTF leaders
and the chapter’s members produced a standard story that provided
boundaries for identity and justifiable reaction. From the Globe’s revelations
in early 2002 onward, St. Erasmus VOTFers confronted moral cleavages
and created origin stories that were previously unimaginable. As we quoted
Shirley at the beginning of this chapter (and as members have recounted
their participation to us and expressed themselves at the weekly meetings),
they drew clear boundaries between themselves and the corrupt priests and
hierarchy who violated the sanctity of ‘‘their Church.’’ Another member,
who during meetings recalled her motivation for involvement, characterized
herself as part of the ‘‘clean-up crew’’ and received nodding assents by
others in discussions (Meetings January 8, 2009; April 5, 2010). Several
members have articulated the moral impetus of the group and the
continuing purpose at its heart. These were to expose and prevent any
further violation of children by corrupt Church authorities and, in the
process, to save ‘‘their Church’’ that was central to their lives.
The origin stories that we have heard at the group’s meetings and in
interviews share several features. Most offer a storyline of a faithful and
quiescent Church member spurred to action by moral outrage and by the
sense that ‘‘something’’ must be done. Members are portrayed as being
motivated by a resolve, a simple injunction that ‘‘It must never happen
again’’ (Meetings June 2, November 10, 2008, January 12, 2009, May 9,
2011). Almost all of these stories highlight the ways in which previously
unconnected Church members coalesce first in the listening sessions, and
then in a nascent VOTF chapter broadly focused on the three planks in an
effort to repair the damage to their beloved institution. To the extent that
the large majority of members tell some version of this story, and that it is
also recounted by leaders past and present, it has become a standard story in
Tilly’s sense.
There are several facets of the social work that members accomplish
through these origin stories worth emphasizing. First, most St. Erasmus
members draw clear boundaries concerning their individual and collective
identities in at least two ways. They sharply distinguish between themselves
and their allies and those who perpetrated and concealed the abuse. In this
sense these origin stories articulate a ‘‘membership in a shared community of
belief’’ in Tilly’s terms. As we argue elsewhere (Steinberg & Ewick, 2011),
the divisions that St. Erasmus VOTFers draw between themselves and other
lay members is complex and shifts over time. However, through our three
plus years of observations they continually returned to their origin story to
draw a bright line between themselves and the corrupt authorities in the
Church who they hold responsible. This marked boundary has been fortified
over the years as new cases of abuse and cover-up have been revealed,
cementing the veracity of their origin story.
Additionally, in their reflections on their VOTF participation and their
Catholicity more generally, many offer a before-and-after representation of
themselves, with early 2002 representing a critical temporal demarcation. As
Phil noted during one meeting, ‘‘We still have all the prayers. We still have
all the rituals. We still have all the other things and that’s the key. That
being faithful Catholics I think. And part of our strength that we haven’t
given that up, okay? But we’ve reintegrated or transformed y a lot by the
tragedy. The tragedy pushed us’’ (Meeting, November 10, 2008). And at
various times (both during interviews and in meetings) these VOTFers
express this temporal division by noting that they previously had been
‘‘pay, pray, and obey’’ Catholics. As Nancy reflected on her transformation,
‘‘I was essentially a passive Catholic before. Then y you just did the pay,
pray and obey thing’’ (also Phil, Victoria; June 2, November 10, 2008,
February 2, 2009 Meetings). This standard story serves as a maker of
personal and collective transformation in what Somers terms an ontological
narrative.
In a similar vein most of these VOTFers note in their stories that they
made their initial forays into the listening sessions alone. They were not
well-connected with those who would eventually become their activist
community. A number emphasized that they did not have the inclination for
activism nor a personal history of it. In her narrative Sarah expressed such
sentiments, ‘‘I’m not a joiner. I’m definitely not.’’ Many members note a
shared history of parish participation at St. Erasmus, but not a shared
interpersonal history, despite the fact that many filled public roles in parish
life over the years. These comparable accounts of how the revelations
individually gave members impetus to join highlight both how the
institutional Church had pacified them through individuation prior to the

revelations, and how they have since been pushed by the tragedy, as Phil
termed it, into a cohesive agentic group. Over the three years of our
fieldwork we have noted the strong ties between St. Erasmus members and
their external networks to both other locals and national activists. The
internal ties activists point to as part of their transformation and the reason
for their nine-year existence. Representatives from the national office and
other speakers to the group have noted that they are a model for all VOTF
chapters in this regard. We see these origin stories as a cultural process
through which this cohesion has been developed and maintained as Owens,
Nepstad, and others have argued in similar fashion. And as Tilly observed
standard stories are vital in establishing and maintaining networks.
Second, these stories provide, as Tilly suggests, the boundaries of what is
‘‘feasible, desirable, and efficacious’’ both in defining the group’s identity
and the concerns on which it is founded. They assign responsibility for the
crisis to a set of transgressors and delineate the moral reasoning through
which their actions are assessed. As importantly, the origin stories articulate
a moral and institutional efficacy for members as ‘‘faithful Catholics’’,
placing them squarely within the boundaries of mainstream Catholicism.
Third, the origins stories have consequences through their openness,
allowing for the improvisation that Tilly argues is part of repertoires of
contentious performances. Most members express no detailed plan in the
founding of the group beyond coalescing around the three planks of the
VOTF. The ambiguity in these origin stories facilitates ongoing participa-
tion and cohesiveness in a couple of respects. To start, within limits it offers
the opportunity of pursuing a changing agenda without transgressing the
principles of the group’s origins. As we saw over the three plus years of field
work, and as members have told us about the first six years of the group’s
existence, the content of the group activities has shifted over time and it
continues to do so. For the first several years, the group had a monthly
rotation of group activities focusing on working groups concerned with the
three planks, cultivating faith and spirituality, and current issues. By the
time that we arrived the working group meetings were on the wane, and
have since disappeared. There has been some shift in content toward issues
of governance and its transformation.
The open-endedness of the origin stories provides the group with latitude
for changes in their activity and even for its prospective accounts of its
mission and purpose. As Owens, Polletta, Ewick, Silbey, and other narrative
analysts argue, the stories are flexible enough to bend with the changing
context, but remain a strong channel through which to envision the
justifiable and the feasible. During our interviews we asked members what
they saw as the future or the VOTF and what they anticipated that their
chapter would be doing in five years. Only one member offered a temporal
horizon for the group (she hoped that its work would be finished five years
hence) and none provided us with a specific agenda or set of future activities.
It is possible to argue that the origin stories offer members a level of
ambiguity that both creates an indeterminate horizon and militates against
the perceived need for a specific enduring agenda beyond the three planks.
The openness of the origin stories provides some leeway to navigate
internal differences within the group, which we heard occasionally discussed
informally or in steering committee meetings. These focus principally on the
balance of emphases between the three planks and the substantive meaning
of ‘‘structural change.’’ At various points some St. Erasmus VOTfers have
noted unease among those core activists who are most centrally concerned
with assisting the survivors and those who gravitate toward the other
planks (particularly structural change) (Grace, Thomas, Shirley; Meeting,
March 12, 2008). They depicted subterranean tensions that never actually
surface in the weekly meetings. These have never become public divisions or
seriously tested the cohesion of the group. We suggest that the ways in
which individual and collective identities are constructed through the
standard story of the group’s origin allows members room for accommoda-
tion and maneuver. As Thomas suggested to us in his account of the group:
‘‘We shine light on the truth. And not well and we don’t know how to
respond to it, you know? The appropriate and adequate response doesn’t
exist yet. But we still say it’s a situation that has to be addressed. And we
come together as a group of people. Probably no two of whom agree on what
it is we need to do. But {we} come every Monday.’’ By returning to the origin
story and the group’s purpose to ‘‘shine the light on truth’’ they outwardly
reaffirm common goals as they informally navigate their differences.
In her analysis of the VOTF as an intrainstitutional movement, Tricia
Bruce (2011) argues that members seek a delicate balance between
portraying themselves at the same time as change agents and ‘‘faithful
Catholics.’’ The substantial majority of St. Erasmus VOTFers we have
heard or interviewed are deeply committed to this individual and collective
identity. One way in which this identity can be articulated is through the
retelling of Church history. In so doing they produce legacy stories that are
congruent with their stated mission and actions. During the three years we
observed their weekly meetings a number were devoted to retelling Church
history – including the origins of Christianity, the history of the American
Church, and the history of Vatican II – to establish a narrative continuity
that knit together the Church’s past, the members’ present, and their desired
future into a whole cloth. Legacy stories marked members’ efforts as
congruent with an institutional history and the recent scandal as an
aberration. In this sense the gap between official history and stories of recent
events opened possibilities for alternate interpretations of institutional
standard stories of Church history. These stories are partly appropriated
and refashioned as legacy stories that legitimize challengers’ activities. The
meetings provided a number of different types of programs to this end.
The history of Vatican II was invoked through this process. A majority of
the St. Erasmus VOTFers we interviewed told us that while they were
generally aware of Vatican II, they had not been particularly caught up in
the transformation (also Meeting July 16, 2007). Many were young mothers
whose foremost concern at the time was childrearing. For these members the
history of the Council became a ‘‘history of the present,’’ a means of linking
their activism with a legitimate institutional past. A number of members
highlighted such ‘‘educational’’ events as highly valuable to them. In the fall
of 2007, for example, a former priest and VOTF activist led a series of three
meetings to view pieces of a documentary ‘‘The Faith Revolution,’’ which
partly focused on the transformations emanating from Vatican II (Meetings
September 17, October 1, November 26, 2007). Discussions included the
refashioning of the doctrine of Ecumenism, the Constitution of the Role of
the Laity in the Modern World, and the Dogmatic Constitution of the
Church. They highlighted the ways in which the Council had defined all
within the Church as the ‘‘People of God’’ and noted their responsibility to
exercise informed, independent judgment. Over the course of three years of
fieldwork we heard members at meetings regularly invoke these aspects of
Vatican II to define their actions and identities as mainstream given this
recent past. Typically they raised Vatican II to observe that they follow their
mission in the Church as baptized, adult responsible laity. In doing so they
also constructed a history, sometimes implicit, in which the passive
obedience to the hierarchy expected in their early years was indeed a thing
of the past (Meetings October 29, 2007, August 19, September 15, 2008,
January 5, February 2, 2009, April 5, 2010, May 9, 2011).12
A number of core St. Erasmus activists had been members of the parish
from its inception in the 1960s during the tenure of its first pastor,
Monsignor Valance. Retelling this history was another means by which the
participatory vision and practice of Vatican II justified their actions. Legacy
stories of these ‘‘golden years’’ are told by these long-time parishioners to
mark a historical congruency with their present activities. During one
meeting Grace warmly remembered the participatory community fostered
by the first pastor. There were ‘‘dialogue homilies’’ during which

parishioners could rise and engage the priest, and ‘‘home masses’’ which
involved considerable lay participation. Several other parishioners recalled
these masses with fondness. At that same meeting Joe recalled how another
parish priest had invited parishioners to a seminar on Humanae Vitae and
allowed them to engage in a discussion of ‘‘heretical positions’’ on the issue
of birth control (Meeting October 1, 2007). Noting the particular history of
St. Erasmus as being a reason for the activism in her group Shirley (who was
not a parish member) conveyed to us the legacy story she had heard about
the opening of the parish: ‘‘They said Monsignor Valance stood in front of
the community and said, ‘This is my first parish that I’m pastor of and we
have a lot of leeway. Let’s talk about how it’s going to be done.’ And he
involved the whole community.’’ During our interviews a number of other
members referenced this history as their understanding of parish participa-
tion, even some who had not been parishioners during that era (Ann, Barb,
Grace, Joe, Sarah). This parish history, shared by parish members and
nonmembers alike, was a usable past through which these activists
established the continuity of their current activism and quest for voice.
As we noted, Polletta argues that a gap between a story and perceived
reality can lead activists to create alternative stories. The St. Eramus chapter
participated in the construction of an alternative legacy story of the
American Church that was motivated by the gap between the institutional
history with which they were long familiar and the institutional crisis to
which they were responding. In this case Polletta’s, Owen’s, Ewick, and
Silbey’s work provide insights into how standard institutional stories can be
appropriated for challenge. On at least two occasions a church historian
from a local college provided an overview of the history of the American
Church and its democratic origins (Meetings June 12, 2007, June 23, 2008).
He highlighted the beginnings of American Catholicism in lay control
because of the scarcity of priests, and noted that the early establishment of
the Church’s institutional infrastructure was predicated in the idea that
bishops should be elected.13 These lectures normalized the VOTF’s quest for
greater lay voice in Church governance within a long arc of institutional
history. In this case Church history is reworked to create a legacy story at
variance with the dominant concept of hierarchy in the institutional Church.
Finally, we consider two dimensions of storytelling and trust. Here we
extend Tilly’s framework on trust in state politics into another institutional
realm. First, there is the issue of how trust developed internally between
members of the group. As we noted, most members arrived to the nascent
formation of the group individually, not through extant networks which
they could activate readily to challenge authorities. Sarah echoed the

sentiments of others in remembering her initial reaction in the first sessions
that, ‘‘I recognize some faces, but I had no dealing with any of these
people.’’ Many experienced emotional and at times acrimonious listening
sessions. As several members told us, they carried some uncertainty and
apprehension concerning their commitment to the organization generally,
and to others in the room who they knew at best only formally from parish
participation. As Grace recollected, ‘‘I remember going home from those
listening sessions saying I wish I hadn’t known what people were thinking
about. I was happier when it was quiet. When you could kneel down next to
somebody in church and didn’t know what they were thinking. Now I’m
always going to be thinking, oh my gosh, that person said such and such.’’
These VOTFers saw their relative unfamiliarity and the newly charged
atmosphere as a potential impediment to continued participation. In contrast
to their placid parish existence prior to the revelations they found themselves
in an uncertain territory. In addition, as we mentioned, periodically there was
perception of tension between those members whose primary focus was
supporting survivors and those more focused on other issues.
When we asked members to explain the remarkable endurance of this
group and their weekly meetings we typically received a couple of responses.
One focused on the presence of a strong leader during the first five years of
the group, who put tremendous energy into the chapter. A second response
focused on the regularity of meetings themselves as inducing commitment
over time. To these we add a repertoire of storytelling, including the origin
and legacy stories we have analyzed. This repertoire provided members with
a transactional process of sharing and solidifying their activist identities and
the boundaries around them, and cementing confidence in one another.14
In sharing accounts of the origins of their participation, parish life, their
Catholic biographies and participating in the accumulation of a useable
past St. Erasmus VOTFers engaged in important transactional work that
engendered trust to overcome their uncertainty. In Tilly’s terms they
heightened and equaled mutual attraction that increased the long-term
viability of the group.
A second dimension concerns storytelling for purposes of reconstituting
ties with powerholders, in this case trust stories that envision transforma-
tion. As we noted previously, though St. Erasmus VOTFers sought change,
the pursuit of voice for almost all was anchored in their understanding of
themselves as ‘‘faithful’’ and ‘‘mainstream’’ Catholics. As we heard repeated
in meetings and interviews, most understood structural change as a process
by which the laity could have a ‘‘seat at the table’’ (August 6, September 15,
2008 Meetings). As Shirley, a key member involved in issues regarding

structural change, noted at one anniversary meeting, VOTFers ‘‘struggle to
be an active part of the Church they love,’’ and this required dialogue so
their voices can be heard (May 12, 2009).
It was therefore quite important for many members that they had a story
to tell of some progress in re-establishing trust between themselves and the
institutional Church, which they perceive regards the VOTF with a great
deal of suspicion. Two stories circulated in many meetings and interviews
that hallmarked increasing trust between the group and powerholders.
Through these stories St. Erasmus VOTFers constructed a shared sense of
an opening. In Tilly’s terms they represented a shift in opportunity/threat
that suggested cause for further reformist action; though in themselves they
did not signal the dissolution of the division of the ‘‘faithful’’ and the
‘‘corrupt.’’ One critical story was of a series of three meetings with an
auxiliary bishop, Bishop Ferrer, who was an administrator of the region
encompassing St. Erasmus (Meetings November 19, 2007, September 15,
December 1, 2008, January 12, 2009). As the story is told, Sister Brigette, a
core member, was able to put out an invitation to the bishop for a dinner
with six members of the chapter. The arrangements were made with the
assistance Fr. Francis, the parish pastor, who had a long-standing
relationship with the bishop. The members arranged a potluck for the
meeting, which transpired in the St. Erasmus rectory. There was
nervousness and tentativeness on all sides, until the then recognized leader
of the group steered the discussion toward a dialogue on substantive issues.
As Shirley recounted:
And I think it was Peter, one of the people at the table said you know, we were really
nervous to talk this meeting to talk with you. And he says, well I have news for you.
I was really nervous, too. He said I really didn’t want to be here. He said, in all my years
as a Bishop, I never felt before like I was wearing a target on my chest. He said I just felt
like everybody was aiming at me. I never felt like I was so evil that everyone wanted to
get me. So he was defensive y So Peter says, well that’s why you should be talking to us,
to find out what’s going on. And I said I know you hear a lot of things about Voice of
the Faithful. Well tell us what you hear. We’re not going to be able to talk to each other
unless we know what’s bothering you and you know what’s bothering us. As Shirley
recounted, at the end of the first meeting, ‘‘he said you know I’d love to meet with you
again. This was a really good meeting y The last meeting he said he’d be willing to talk
to [one of the Cardinal’s key administrators].
Grace told us that at the end of the first meeting, ‘‘he said, well I wasn’t
looking forward to this evening. But I have to say that I think you’re good
people and I think you’re sincere. I’d like to hear what it is you want from
me.’’ She also recollected of their final meeting, ‘‘It was amazing. And by the
third meeting he was really genuinely glad to see us again. It was just
extraordinary.’’ Toward the end of this session she recalled Bishop Ferrer
reflecting on the life of Archbishop Romero of El Salvador, since it was the
anniversary of his assassination, and commenting, ‘‘I pray that I have the
courage to step out and to put myself in an uncomfortable position and
consider things that I should be considering.’’
Closer to home many members discuss the growing bond between their
chapter and Fr. Francis. He was installed after the establishment of the
affiliate, though he had a lesser presence for some years prior. Several
members expressed to us that they had some concerns over the conser-
vative drift of the parish after the first priest, Monsignor Valance, departed
and were unsure as to how they would be received by their new pastor.
One member noted during an interview that he at first seemed somewhat
wary of their activities. However, as Shirley recounted one of a number of
versions of the story, there was a significant warming of relations over
time:
So we said, how does he know we’re not a threat to him? My suggestion was, let’s get on
this Parish Council. Put your names in for the Parish Council. We got seven of our
members on Parish Council. We had a church that was going to be joining with us. And
some of the members of that church said to Father Francis, we really don’t want to be in
your church because you’ve got those people from Voice of the Faithful there. So Father
Francis said, those people from Voice of the Faithful are filling my pews. They’re doing
my lectors. They’re serving Communion. They’re taking care of my church. I’m not
getting rid of them.’’ And she observed that with accumulation of interactions ‘‘He fell in
love with us.’’15
Telling these stories is one means through which members can speak to
themselves (and perhaps outsiders) concerning a path of reparation that can
be pursued. They are stories of trust and transformation, projective
emplotments in which risk-taking – in terms of their activism and its
impact on their standing in the Church as ‘‘mainstream’’ Catholics –
generates increased trust and openness with authority. These stories
certainly are important for the group to signal its legitimacy vis-à-vis
authority over its history, but they also stretch into the future. For many
(though not all) members they provide a horizon in which the capacity to
reach out leads to a possible growing rapprochement and confidence
between Church authority and VOTFers, moving beyond the betrayal that
they experienced. These stories narrate a possible path of conciliation which
facilitates the ‘‘voice’’ so vital to many of the group. Drawing on Grace’s
account of Bishop Ferrer’s reflections, finding the ‘‘courage’’ to put
themselves in ‘‘an uncomfortable position’’ will have its rewards. These

stories thus illustrate how Tilly’s work on storytelling and trust can be used
with and further develop his insights on opportunity/threat, demonstrating
how activists create shared cognitions of risk and opening as they pursue a
path of institutional engagement and reform.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
We have argued that Charles Tilly’s later works on storytelling, identities,

and trust can be integrated fruitfully with his many writings on contention
to create an expanded analytic framework. In this work we found a program
for a fuller cultural analysis to complement and extend Tilly’s substantial
corpus on the dynamics of contention. It provides for the analysis of reason
giving, boundary making and the development and maintenance of trust
that are all vital to the collective action, and their development of and
improvisation within repertoires of contention. More particularly, Tilly
proposed a focus on standard stories that activists create and retell as
cultural workhorses behind some of these transactional dynamics. This later
work is congruent with other sociological work on resistance, social
movements, and the role of narrative. We have drawn on these perspectives
to refine and extend Tilly’s arguments on the work stories do in contention.
We have focused on the openness of narratives as a means of negotiating
group ties, how they can offer a ‘‘history of the present’’ and a projective
capacity, and the ways in which standard institutional stories can be
appropriated for transformative ends.
We have sought to broaden this integrated perspective in two ways. First,
we observed that Tilly’s focus on trust networks should be extended beyond
political regimes to other aspects of associational life where we find
contention. Relatedly, we suggested that this writing, in conjunction with
the work on identities and stories, can be used to analyze how activists
projectively reconstruct relations with powerholders as they envision and
pursue reform. Second, we elaborated on Tilly’s concept of standard stories
to think through distinctive types of transactional work accomplished
through them. We see stories of origin, legacy, and transformation and trust
as conceptually separate (if sometimes empirically overlapping), addressing
particular aspects of the cultural work activists seek to accomplish through
storytelling. We offer these not as a complete typology, but as a basis for
and an invitation to others to further consider the types of standard stories
activists deploy.
In our analysis of VOTF activists we illustrated this integration and our

extensions. The staying power of and sense of community in the St. Erasmus
chapter over 10 years are found in a complex processes that involve far more
than their stories. We have highlighted how storytelling was important
interactional work within the regular performances of the group. By the
time we began our fieldwork the St. Erasmus VOTF had developed a
repertoire of standard stories. Through them they articulated their moral
reasoning by which credit and blame can be assessed and recuperation
pursued, and a cohesive collective identity constructed through boundary
making. Origin stories figure prominently in this ongoing interactional
work. Legacy and transformation stories offer members both a temporal
continuity and ‘‘history of the present’’ and a projective component that
provides for an envisioned future. Through their weekly meetings members
circulate these stories, creating a repertoire that slowly changes as the
context of action changes, which as Tilly argued is characteristic of
repertories of contention. Through various programs the affiliate has also
constructed a history of the present through which their claims and actions
are normalized. By selectively appropriating the institutional Church
history, and by telling the story of their own parish, their activism becomes
embedded in a much longer flow of what they construct as a ‘‘mainstream’’
history that accords with their activism.
In addition, the circulation of these stories involves trust in two respects.
First, by retelling these stories over the years members have solidified ties of
trust internally. Second, stories of trust with the bishop and the pastor are
also stories of transformation, since they provide a template for engaging
authority and the future possibility of powerholders listening to their voice.
In both cases we observed that storytelling is a way of navigating and
imaginatively negotiating opportunity and threat, which Tilly argued are
central aspects of contentious action.
There are also some cautionary tales about storytelling dynamics in this
analysis, perhaps revealing its dialectics. Members have bemoaned their
inability to attract younger parishioners. There are many reasons for this
mobilization problem, but perhaps one is that the stories they tell do not
resonate with younger people. Many have a particular historicity that
speaks to members’ generational experiences and understanding of Church
life, and perhaps not to younger parishioners who they claim have a
different orientation to the Church. It is possible that these stories, while
providing for members’ continued cohesion, dampen such recruitment. This
raises the question of the extent to which ‘‘idiocultures’’ (Fine, 1995, 2010)
or ‘‘group styles’’ (Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003) of a particular activist
group, as practiced through stories, can be a limiting factor on recruitment

or establishing exterior ties.
In addition, the openness of their origin stories – while providing a
capaciousness to negotiate differences among members – might have a cost.
Throughout our fieldwork and interviews we have heard many members
express a sense of ambiguity concerning structural change and its pursuit.
As we noted, Bruce argues that VOTFers walk a fine line trying to maintain
their identities as ‘‘faithful Catholics’’ as they seek changes in the
institutional Church. The openness of their origin stories has positive
benefits in this regard, but the projective capacity of these stories is also
diminished by this quality. One possible question this case raises, then, is
whether there is an inverse relationship between concrete, actionable
planning and the openness of stories.16
Finally, the telling of stories is embedded in the larger temporality of a
group’s history and ongoing activities. The stories of trust told concerning
Church authority are in a sense date-stamped, and their effective shelf life is
not clear. This case raises the issue of whether stories of trust must have a
particular temporality to tie trust networks to authorities. How long can a
trust story be told before its projection of possible progress toward reform
wanes in the eyes of activists, and are there particular types of stories that
have greater tenacity? These are some of the fruitful questions we believe
that our integration of Tilly’s work raises.
We hope that others will further pursue possibilities for consolidation of
Charles Tilly’s extraordinary range of scholarship and consider these and
other questions as well. We have presented what we see as the foundation
for an integration of Tilly’s distinct projects that offers to extend his work
on contention. We invite others to explore further additional possibilities.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Jeff Goodwin, Ann Mische, Francesca Polletta, Mayer Zald, and
the anonymous reviewers for their comments. We also thank the members
of the St. Erasmus VOTF for their generous and ongoing cooperation
without which this research would not be possible.
NOTES
1. That Tilly had distinctive research agendas that were not fully connected is not
a new observation. Sidney Tarrow (1996) observed that Tilly’s work on nation-state
formation and that on collective action were what he termed ‘‘Two Tillys’’ because of
their lack of integration.
2. In Dynamics of Contention McAdam, Tilly and Tarrow note in a discussion of
culture and identity in contention, ‘‘y contentious politics always involves the social
construction of politically relevant categories, such as indigenous peoples or
feminists y’’ (2001, p. 58). Elsewhere Tilly (1998) makes a strong case for analyzing
the importance of analyzing the social construction of political identities. We view
his analysis of standard stories and storytelling as providing additional insights as to
how these processes work in the cultural realm.
3. Relatedly Ewick and Silbey observe that, ‘‘stories people tell about themselves
and their lives constitute and interpret those lives; stories are media through which
identities are negotiated’’ (2003, p. 1341).
4. We find parallels between this narrative approach to identity and other
discussions of how social ties are activated culturally for contention. In refining
Tilly’s early work on catnets, Brubaker and Cooper argued that a feeling of
togetherness is necessary to make groupness actionable (2000, p. 20). Roger
Gould, in his signal work on networks and insurgency, maintained that ideolo-
gical schematics need to be overlain on social networks to make them recognizable
as cleavage lines on which contention occurs (1995, pp. 15–18). The logic of
narrativity can be substituted in both cases while maintaining the substance of these
arguments.
5. As Ewick and Silbey (2003) emphasize acts of resistance are extended
temporally and spatially when they inhere in stories.
6. Owens also suggests that activists sometimes stick with such narratives even as
they face concrete challenges to them, since abandoning a narrative can undermine
the reason giving that has given collective action its purpose (2009, pp. 91–92).
7. It would be worth exploring the extent to which the time frames of origin stories
determine the temporality of stories of transformation, that is, whether stories of
long-enduring problems lead to prospective stories of the long haul for change
ahead.
8. For a thorough analysis of the origins of the VOTF as an intrainstitutional
social movement, see Tricia Bruce’s The Faithful Revolution (2011).
9. All identifications are pseudonyms.
10. The collective profile of the St. Erasmus members is similar to that established
by a national survey national membership by William D’Antonio and Anthony
Pogerelc in 2004 (2007). Characteristically they are college-educated (many having
been educated within the Catholic educational system), have had professional
careers, attend mass regularly, are active participants in their parishes and express a
deep faith in and commitment to the Catholicism. Most of the St. Erasmus members
are retirees, and a number have been members of the parish since its opening in the
mid-1960s. We discuss the significance of this below.
11. In their work on narratives and social movements both Owens (2009) and
Polletta (2006) note that origin stories often present initial participation by activists
as a feeling of being swept up in larger forces.
12. In our interview with Phil he noted parallels between the formation of the
VOTF and the course of Vatican II: ‘‘These were all people talking together and
sharing ideas, which is the same thing that happened at Vatican II. You had all of
these people and nobody knew exactly where it was going to go. By getting
everybody in the room, bingo.’’
13. He observed that the more familiar hierarchal institution emerged later in the
nineteenth century with the mass immigration of Catholics from Ireland and
southern Europe.
14. This is perhaps similar to the dynamic that Nepstad (2004a) finds in the use of
rituals by Catholic peace activists to maintain solidarity and persist in the face of
political stasis.
15. Importantly from the perspective of Tilly’s analysis of transactional politics, Fr.
Francis noted to us the centrality of the VOTF members in the parish. He did so during
an interview, and publicly at their meetings had pronounced them the vital members
and the conscience of the parish (May 12, 2008, May 11, 2009, April 25, 2011.)
16. Bruce also observes that ‘‘Goal three stifled the movement’s efforts to
consolidate its voice, gain legitimacy among church leaders, and move toward
fruitful outcomes’’ (2011, p. 130). We see the way it was constructed through the
origin story as part of the reason behind this.
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REPERTOIRES OF CONTENTION
AND TACTICAL CHOICE IN
LATIN AMERICA, 1981–1995
James C. Franklin
ABSTRACT
This study uses Tilly’s concept of repertoires of contention as a lens to

examine the utilization of eight distinct contentious tactics, ranging from
nonviolent demonstrations to rebellion. Using an original dataset on Latin
America, I develop a measure of tactical fractionalization of 62 con-
tentious campaigns in Latin America, and I find that, consistent with
theory, the range of tactics within campaigns is limited, compared to the
range of tactics found in the country or region as a whole. Second, an
examination of the sample shows that the eight contentious tactics tend to
coincide into three separate repertoires of contention: protest, strikes, and
rebellion. Finally, I analyze two conflicting theories on the selection of
contentious tactics: Tilly’s regime theory and Lichbach’s substitution
model. The prevalence of the three repertoires depends a great deal on the
regime type in place, the level of primary school enrollment (measuring
state capacity), and the generalized level of repression. These variables
were all suggested by Tilly’s regime theory. Contentious challengers show

ISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X(2013)0000035012
175
176 JAMES C. FRANKLIN
no sign of shifting tactics in response to repression of that tactic in the

past, which contradicts the substitution model.
Keywords: Contentious politics; social movements; repertoires of

contention; Latin America
INTRODUCTION
Ennis (1987) argued that tactics ‘‘are the essence of collective action’’
(p. 520). Each contentious action takes a particular tactical form out of a
broad range of possibilities, and scholars of nonviolent action (see Sharp,
1973) and practitioners of guerrilla warfare, such as Che Guevara (1998),
place a great deal of importance on the tactical choices facing challengers to
the status quo. However, contentious tactics are still not well understood by
social scientists. Charles Tilly (1977) offered the most-cited concept for
understanding the types of tactics used by contentious challengers –
repertoires of contention. This concept is based on Tilly’s observations that
contentious actions within any particular time and place tend to focus on a
few particular forms that are quite limited compared to the wide range of
actions that are theoretically possible. This idea gained traction, yet in the
preface of his last book, Contentious Performances (2008), he lamented that
‘‘[d]espite my repeated calls for empirical verification, modification, or
falsification of the repertoire idea, no one responded with evidence in hand.’’
One contribution of this paper is to develop a general, systematic method to
assess Tilly’s claims. This method is applied to an original dataset on
contentious challenges in Latin America. Studying eight forms of conten-
tion, I find that challenging groups do tend to specialize in particular tactics,
relative to the range of tactics used in the country or region. An examination
of the timing and location of the different contentious tactics shows
that they tend to coincide in three distinct repertoires: protest, strikes, and
rebellion.
Furthermore, even if we can conclude that tactics of contention are
constrained into strong repertoires there is still the question of why
particular tactics are used in different times and places and how this changes
over time. This study moves beyond previous efforts in two ways. First,
I begin with an assessment of the repertoires of tactics so that we
can concentrate the analysis on the most fundamental tactical choices
(in this case protest vs. strikes vs. rebellion). Second, I analyze two conflicting
Repertoires of Contention and Tactical Choice in Latin America 177
theoretical accounts for this variety. Tilly (2006, 2008) developed a theory
that the patterns in tactics are shaped by regimes. Lichbach (1987) argued
that groups shift away from tactics that have been repressed. Testing both
theories, the results largely support Tilly’s regime theory and clearly
contradict Lichbach’s substitution theory.
TACTICS AND REPERTOIRES OF CONTENTION
Broken down to its essence, this study is about contentious collective action,
which encompasses social movements, protest, rebellions, riots, strike
waves, and revolutions (Tarrow, 2011). Thus, it can take a wide variety of
forms, and when scholars refer to a contentious tactic, they typically are
referring to the form of contentious collective action that is being applied in
a particular event, such as demonstration, strike, occupation, armed attack,
etc. (Ennis, 1987; Lichbach, 1987; McAdam, 1983; McCammon, 2003;
Olzak & Uhrig, 2001; Smithey, 2009; Soule, 1997). The study of tactics has
been secondary to other topics, particularly mobilization, within the conten-
tious politics literature (Smithey, 2009). There are numerous studies that
examine tactics as factors that explain overall levels of protest (McAdam,
1983; Olzak & Uhrig, 2001) or protest outcomes (Colby, 1982; Franklin,
2009; Gamson, 1990; Kowalewski & Schumaker, 1981; McAdam & Su,
2002; O’Keefe & Schumaker, 1983; Schock, 2005; Shin, 1983; Shorter &
Tilly, 1971; Snyder & Kelly, 1976; Stephan & Chenoweth, 2008).
The objective of this study is to trace which contentious tactics are used in
different situations and explain these patterns. Among explanations for the
contentious forms or tactics used, there is a central conflict between those
that emphasize structural factors and those that emphasize agency (Jasper,
2004). Jasper argues that the dominant paradigm in social movement theory
has essentially been structural, so much so that ‘‘[p]articipants in social
movements make many choices, but you would never know this from
the scholarly literature’’ (p. 2). Jasper asserts that game theory is the only
theoretical approach to address strategy directly and consistently, but he is
skeptical of the assumptions underlying this approach and calls for a new
approach focusing on strategic dilemmas. Lichbach (1998) makes a similar
division in the literature between a structuralist political opportunity
approach and the rational-choice approach of the collective action research
program. Lichbach, of course, does not share Jasper’s discomfort with
formal modeling, and the best known theory of contentious tactics that
focuses on the choices of contentious groups is his substitution model
(Lichbach, 1987), which holds that opposition groups change tactics in

response to governmental repression. This theory will be discussed further,
and tested, below. Smithey (2009) also identifies these two approaches,
which he calls the structural paradigm and interactive conflict paradigm.
Smithey also adds a cultural paradigm, and from this he particularly calls
for studying the reciprocal relationships between collective identity and
tactics. Jasper (2004) recognizes cultural approaches, but asserts that they
can be just as constraining of agency as structural factors.
The best known approach to understanding contentious tactics is
repertoires of contention, proposed by Charles Tilly. Tilly (1977, 1978,
2006, 2008) argued that contentious actors choose tactics from among a
relatively limited and familiar repertoire of contention that varies from place
to place, time to time, and actor to actor. Tilly (2008) distinguished four
levels of constraint on contentious tactics. At one end of the continuum is a
rigid repertoire in which participants repeat the same routines over and over.
At the other end is no repertoire, in which one performance does not predict
the next, either because challengers pick the most efficient tactic or because
they simply follow the emotions of the moment. In between these two are
weak repertoires and strong repertoires, with the latter being theoretically
the most important, as Tilly hypothesizes that ‘‘overwhelmingly public
collective contention involves strong repertoires’’ (p. 15). Tilly identifies
seven criteria of strong repertoires. First, particular tactics are preferred in
particular times and places. Second, certain tactics that are within the
technical reach of groups never occur. Third, these patterns are consistent
over time, with only gradual change. Fourth, contentious actors show that
they are conscious of the choice of tactics. Fifth, ‘‘within a set of connected
actors, each significant pair of actors has its own repertoire’’ (p. 60). Sixth,
‘‘the more connected the histories of actors outside of contention, the more
similar their repertoires’’ (p. 60). Finally, new types of tactics arise from
innovation of previously familiar types.
As mentioned above, while the term ‘‘repertoire of contention’’ is often
cited, Tilly (2008) lamented the lack of close empirical analysis. This is not
to say that scholars have completely neglected contentious tactics. There
are studies that examine the incidence of different forms of contentious
challenges, measured at the country-level, over time, and sometimes cross-
nationally (Aminzade, 1984; Beissinger, 1998; Brockett, 2005; Ekiert &
Kubik, 1998; Lopez-Maya, 2002; Tarrow, 1989; 1995; and Tilly, 1995, 2006,
2008). These help us to understand how and why preferences for contentious
tactics vary and change, but they do not allow us to directly determine to
what degree contentious actors utilize distinct strong repertoires, nor what
tactics tend to go together in repertoires. There are more focused studies

that examine the introduction and diffusion of particular tactics, such as
barricades in France (Traugott, 1995), suffrage parades in the U.S. women’s
suffrage movement (McCammon, 2003), sit-ins and other innovations in the
civil rights movement (McAdam, 1983), and shantytown protests in the U.S.
student divestment movement (Soule, 1997). These are useful for under-
standing the innovation and specialization involved in repertoires, but,
again, they do not answer the larger question of whether it is the norm for
contentious groups to specialize or what the primary repertoires are.
This research moves beyond previous research to determine whether the
patterns of contentious tactics in seven Latin American countries are
consistent with Tilly’s expectations regarding strong repertoires of conten-
tion. I will, first, examine systematically whether particular contentious
groups in particular places specialize in particular forms of contention. This
will also allow the determination of which tactics tend to be combined in
contentious repertoires for these countries.
I will, then, analyze why particular repertoires prevail in certain times and
places. The country-level studies of tactics cited above trace the preference
for different tactics over time, but they are not based on an assessment of
which tactics combine to form repertoires for contentious actors. Ennis
(1987) cites this systematic interrelation of tactics as an important but
largely unexamined topic. Second, the analysis presented here moves beyond
previous studies by considering competing theories for how groups choose
contentious tactics. Tilly’s concept of strong repertoires represent something
of a compromise between structural and strategic choice perspectives. Rigid
repertoires imply that tactics are completely determined by structural
characteristics, while the lack of a repertoire would allow full sway for
strategic choice in the selection of contentious tactics. Still, Tilly’s (2006,
2008) explanation for why certain repertoires of tactics tend to prevail in
particular times and places is structural, emphasizing the type of regime in
place in a country. Lichbach (1987) developed a formal model of contention
that assumes a single opposition group that rationally chooses between two
tactics: nonviolent protest and political violence. His model suggests that
opposition groups will shift away from a tactic that has been repressed,
substituting the other contentious tactic. This clearly represents what
Smithey (2009) calls the interactive conflict paradigm. While it is possible to
combine these overarching paradigms, the Lichbach theory, as presented,
offers conflicting expectations in regard to the choice of contentious
tactics. These theories and the corresponding analysis will be further
discussed below.
CONTENTIOUS POLITICAL CHALLENGES

IN LATIN AMERICA
This investigation of tactics and repertoires uses an original dataset of

contentious political challenges that occurred in seven Latin American
countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, and
Venezuela – between 1981 and 1995. The countries were randomly chosen to
allow a variety of contexts and avoid relying only on high-conflict cases.1
Indeed, this sample offers great diversity in regime types, economic
conditions, and a variety of contentious campaigns including civil wars,
pro-democracy protests, and waves of strikes. This variety in regimes both
within and across countries is especially favorable for testing Tilly’s regime
theory, as described below.
The focus of this study, contentious political challenges refer to collective,
unconventional actions taken by inhabitants of a country against their
government, its policies or personnel, or making demands that require
government action. Collective acts involve at least two people. Unconven-
tional acts take place outside of the commonly institutionalized methods of
policy making and conflict resolution, such as campaigning for elections and
contacting representatives or officials. The term challenge used here is akin
to a contentious ‘‘event’’ (Olzak, 1989) or ‘‘contentious gathering’’ or
‘‘contentious performance’’ (Tilly, 2008). A particular contentious political
challenge was identified here as having the same basic demands, organizers,
and form of contention, and for as long as this remains the same (without at
least a 24-hour break) it is considered the continuation of the same
challenge. Naturally, separating challenges in this way depends on how they
are described in news reports.
Each of these contentious challenges will take on a particular tactical
form, as defined below. Thus, we can assess the presence and content of
repertoires by examining the tactics used across multiple contentious
challenges. An innovation in this dataset is the gathering of data on
individual challenges, while also coding multi-challenge campaigns that
share similar challengers and demands. The concept of repertoires of
contention assumes a more constrained variety of contentious tactics at a
more specific unit of analysis, such as a campaign, versus a country or
region as a whole. This allows us to determine whether the variety of tactics
used in contentious challenges within a campaign are actually limited
compared to the country as a whole. Therefore, the data analyzed here allow
a more direct assessment of repertoires of contention than other datasets on
contentious politics.
Information on contentious challenges was gathered primarily from

several full-text news wire services indexed on LexisNexis. I also used two
news archives, Facts on File and Keesing’s Record of World Events.
Reading every relevant news story that could be found in these sources,
I found 1,319 contentious political challenges that were reported with
enough information on actors, tactics, demands and specific government
responses to allow analysis in this and other empirical studies. There were
many reports in my media sources of additional protests, strikes, or attacks,
which were reported in only the vaguest manner. In some cases, weekly
or monthly totals of such events were reported, but this was highly
inconsistent. Brockett (2005) reports similar problems in his study of
Guatemala and Nicaragua using domestic news sources. Including these
cases would have produced a larger sample but it would not necessarily have
been more representative of the true frequencies of different types of
contentious challenges, and in any case these cases would have been omitted
from the analysis anyway due to missing data on key variables. As with all
such datasets based on media sources, it does not indicate the true number
of contentious events, but echoing Koopmans’ (1998) argument, I believe
that it does sample enough events in a consistent way to permit comparison
of trends and differences across the sample.
DEFINING FORMS OF CONTENTION
Before we can study patterns in the use of contentious tactics we must define
the different forms of contention to be analyzed. There is no single accepted
typology. On the parsimonious side, some scholars analyze violence versus
nonviolence (e.g., Beissinger, 1998; Lichbach, 1987), whereas Sharp (1973)
identifies 198 distinct forms of nonviolent action. For this project,
I developed an initial typology of eight different forms of contention. This
was based in part on distinctions made in the literature on contentious
politics and in part on my attempt to capture the variety of contentious
forms found in the news accounts. Helping to guide this is Jasper’s (2004)
identification of the two main dilemmas concerning contentious tactics:
‘‘naughty or nice?’’ and stealth versus publicity. The most fundamental
distinction in terms of ‘‘naughty or nice?’’ is between violence and
nonviolence. Among violent contentious actions, there is a fundamental
distinction, related in part to the stealth versus publicity dilemma, between
violent protests and violent attacks. Violent protests tend to use nonmilitary
style weaponry, such as rocks and Molotov cocktails, and are public,
meaning that challengers gather in public places in full view of onlookers

and authorities, often announcing grievances or demands. News accounts
typically describe these as riots or protests with clashes. In violent attacks,
participants use military-style weapons, at least for these countries, and
they typically act clandestinely, attacking a target and then attempting to
escape. There are some contentious actions which combine elements of
violent protest and violent attacks, but the vast majority of cases could be
clearly distinguished, and the factor analysis, discussed below, supports this
division.
To further break down the ‘‘naughty or nice?’’ continuum, some challenges
fall short of being violent, in terms of actually causing physical harm to
people, but instead threaten to use violence. These are called forceful
seizures, which refer to the seizure by armed challengers of a building and/or
hostages without causing any reported physical harm to anyone. To fit this
category, any hostages taken are eventually released. If people are injured
or killed during these sorts of actions, they are coded as violent attacks.
Some challenges do not physically harm people but deliberately destroy
property. In the challenges studied here, the property destruction occurs
in two different contexts. First, there are destructive protests that involve
destruction of property (typically setting cars or buses on fire) or looting. In
the case of looting, to be considered a contentious political challenge, the
action must accompany some type of political complaints or demands, such
as calling for government relief from rising food prices. The second form of
destructive challenge is sabotage, in which small groups, often linked to
militant organizations, use explosives to destroy buildings or infrastructure,
without hurting any people. Acts of sabotage are clandestine as opposed to
the more open, public destructive protests.
The remaining challenges are nonviolent, but there are still varying levels
of disruption, which is relevant again to the ‘‘naughty or nice?’’ continuum.
Sharp (1973) distinguished three main types of nonviolent action. First, in
what Sharp calls noncooperation, but which I refer to as strikes and
boycotts, challengers impose sanctions on the targets of their protest by
deliberately withdrawing their labor or patronage. Since the focus of the
dataset was contentious political challenges, this only includes strikes that
focus on government policy or demand some type of government action.
For example, strikes by public employees automatically qualify, or strikes
by employees at private firms that demand an end to austerity policies or
an increase in the legal minimum wage.2 While this category includes
boycotts, they are vastly outnumbered by strikes. Thus at times, for the sake
of brevity, these actions will be referred to simply as strikes. Second, in

nonviolent intervention, challengers impose sanctions by intervening in some
type of established pattern or institution. This includes sit-ins, nonviolent
occupations of public buildings, and blockades of roads. While hunger
strikes are not as directly disruptive, Sharp considers them to be a method
of psychological intervention, so I include them under the category of
nonviolent intervention. Sharp’s third type of nonviolent action is non-
violent protest and persuasion, which does not impose any direct sanctions
against the target, but is rather more symbolic in nature. I refer to these with
the more common term demonstrations.
Therefore, each contentious challenge was defined as using predominantly
one of these eight tactics, and the distribution is displayed in Table 1. One
important question was what to do with challenges that fit more than one
category. If the information in news stories allowed a clear distinction, such
cases were divided into separate challenges. This was especially the case for
strikes that were accompanied by one or more demonstrations. Here, as
long as the news story gave sufficient information on the participation in
and government response to the strike versus demonstration, they were
coded as separate events. Where there was not enough information,
challenges were coded according to the most disruptive category of
contention that applied. The vertical location of tactics in Table 1 is
assumed to indicate the relative disruptiveness of actions, with violent
attacks being most disruptive and demonstrations being the least. Thus,
nonviolent occupations often follow a march and feature some elements of
demonstrations, but are coded as the more intense category of nonviolent
intervention. If participants in any protest engage in violence, it is
considered a violent protest. Furthermore, if armed militants take hostages
(without reports of injuries or deaths), the challenge is coded as a forceful
seizure. If armed militants hurt or kill people, the challenge is considered a
violent attack.
DO CHALLENGERS SPECIALIZE?
Tilly’s first, second, and fifth criteria of strong repertoires suggest that a
relatively limited range of contentious tactics will be used in particular
settings and by particular groups. We can assess this by using the
Herfindahl–Hirschman concentration index that is commonly used to
measure ethno-linguistic fractionalization (e.g., Fearon & Laitin, 2003;
Table 1. Distribution of Contentious Tactics by Country, 1981–1995.

Contentious Tactic Arg Brz Chile Guat Mex Nic Ven Total
Violent attacks 12 4 29 185 3 204 3 440

9.5% 3.3% 18.8% 70.9% 1.1% 66.9% 4.3% 33.4%
Violent protest 12 12 39 7 25 10 28 133
9.5% 9.8% 25.3% 2.7% 8.9% 3.3% 40.0% 10.1%
Forceful seizures 0 1 2 12 2 4 1 22
0.0% 0.8% 1.3% 4.6% 0.7% 1.3% 1.4% 1.7%
Sabotage 1 0 6 24 1 27 0 59
0.8% 0.0% 3.9% 9.2% 0.4% 8.9% 0.0% 4.5%
Destructive protest 1 2 0 0 8 0 0 11
0.8% 1.6% 0.0% 0.0% 2.9% 0.0% 0.0% 0.8%
Nonviolent 10 5 20 6 71 15 5 132
intervention 7.9% 4.1% 13.0% 2.3% 25.3% 4.9% 7.1% 10.0%
Strikes and 32 41 13 6 38 9 12 151
boycotts 25.4% 33.6% 8.4% 2.3% 13.5% 3.0% 17.1% 11.5%
Demonstrations 58 57 45 21 133 36 21 371
46.0% 46.7% 29.2% 8.1% 47.3% 11.8% 30.0% 28.1%
Total 126 122 154 261 281 305 70 1319
100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Tactical 0.70 0.66 0.79 0.48 0.69 0.53 0.71 0.77
fractionalization
Note: Data gathered by author from multiple media sources.
Sambanis, 2001) and the distribution of votes or seats among political

parties (Taagepera & Shugart, 1989). The formula is as follows:
X
k
12 p2k
k¼1
where challengers choose among k tactics, and pk indicates the share of

tactic k within a particular unit of analysis, such as a particular contentious
campaign, country, or set of countries. Here, we can call this a tactical
fractionalization index, and it has the advantage of familiarity and an
intuitive interpretation, as it measures the probability that two randomly
selected challenges use different forms of contention.
Table 1, discussed above, also displays the tactical fractionalization scores
for each country and for the entire sample. Here we see that the tactical
fractionalization for the entire sample is 0.77, showing that if we randomly
selected two of the 1,319 contentious challenges, there is a 77% probability
that they would use different forms of contention. Looking at the patterns
for countries, we see that the main distinction is the far lower tactical
fractionalization for the two countries experiencing civil war: Guatemala
and Nicaragua. This shows that civil war tends to ‘‘crowd out’’ the wide
variety of public protest tactics, leading to a more limited repertoire. The
other five countries are relatively high in terms of tactical fractionalization,
but we can still see different patterns in which types of contentious
tactics were most common. Argentina and Brazil showed a higher relative
prevalence of strikes. Violent protest was more common in Chile and
Venezuela, while nonviolent intervention was especially likely in Mexico.
While this examination of the distribution of tactics across countries and
the entire sample provides a necessary baseline, to truly assess the presence
of strong repertoires, we need to examine whether particular contentious
groups in particular settings consistently favor certain contentious tactics,
while different groups in different settings will specialize in a different
repertoire of actions. Coding the groups involved in contentious challenges is
difficult since there may be multiple organizations involved in particular
contentious actions, or sometimes no formal organizations are mentioned
at all in descriptions of challenges. Therefore, I focus here on particular
contentious campaigns. Tilly (2008) defines a campaign as a ‘‘sustained,
coordinated series of episodes involving similar claims on similar or identical
targets’’ (p. 121). Building upon this, I identified a contentious challenge as
being part of a campaign if it was one of at least three challenges focused on
the same demand type, including at least some continuity in the groups
involved.3 Furthermore, campaigns must cover more than a single day, and a
period of at least 12 months with no challenges marks the end of a campaign.
Following these definitions resulted in the identification of 62 separate
campaigns, listed in the appendix.
Tilly’s strong repertoire framework predicts that tactical fractionalization
would be far lower for specific campaigns than for all of the challenges in a
particular country or certainly the whole sample. This would show that
particular actors in particular places and times tend to prefer a limited range
of tactics, relative to what we see across the entire region for the entire time
period studied. It would also strongly suggest that groups avoid certain
tactics that are within their technical reach.
Indeed, the evidence strongly indicates that groups specialize in limited
repertoires of contentious tactics. The mean tactical fractionalization across
all campaigns is 0.41, which is significantly below the 0.77 figure for the
entire sample of challenges or any of the country-level tactical fractionaliza-
tion scores.4 Furthermore, every one of the 62 campaigns has a tactical
fractionalization less than 0.77. We get similar results if we compare tactical

fractionalization among campaigns with the country that they occur in.
Only 3 of the 62 campaigns had tactical fractionalization higher than the
corresponding country fractionalization. Ten of the campaigns have a
tactical fractionalization score of 0, indicating that all the associated
challenges fit into the same tactical category. This includes campaigns that
exclusively used demonstrations, strikes, or nonviolent intervention.
Another characteristic of strong repertoires mentioned by Tilly (2008) is
that for a particular set of actors and issues, the tactics used will change
relatively little over time. We can examine this by analyzing the relationship
between the duration (in years) and tactical fractionalization of contentious
campaigns. If contentious campaigns have strong repertoires, then we
would not expect tactical fractionalization to increase substantially with the
duration of the campaign. Once again, the evidence supports the presence of
strong repertoires, as duration of a contentious campaign is weakly
negatively correlated with tactical fractionalization of the campaign with a
Pearson’s r of 0.03.
WHICH TACTICS GO TOGETHER?
There is very little research on which tactics go together to make up

repertoires. Ennis’ (1987) study of a nuclear disarmament campaign in
Massachusetts remains one of the only examinations of this issue.
I conducted a factor analysis of the eight forms of contentious challenges,
using a dataset listing the number of each of the eight forms of contention
that occurred in a particular country in a particular year.5 This, then, allows
us to observe which forms of contention tend to occur in the same time and
place. Virtually all the variance in the distribution of tactics is accounted for
by two factors. The first factor appears to indicate tactics of rebellion, as
violent attacks, sabotage, and forceful seizures all load highly, whereas all
the other factors have negative loadings. The second underlying factor is
public protest, since violent protest, destructive protest, nonviolent
intervention, and demonstrations load at 0.3 or greater.6 This leaves strikes
and boycotts in their own separate category, since they load negatively on
both factors. Fig. 1 clearly displays the three separate groups of tactics. This
supports the notion that the patterns of contentious actions shown in these
seven countries can be grouped into three repertoires: a rebellious repertoire,
a public protest repertoire, and a strike repertoire.7
0.8
nonviolent
0.7 intervention destructive protests
0.6
0.5
0.4 demonstrations
0.3 violent protest

factor 2
0.2
0.1
0 sabotage
–0.1 forceful seizures violent attacks
strikes &
–0.2 boycotts
–0.3
–0.4 –0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
factor 1
Fig. 1. Factor Loadings for Contentious Tactics.
We can gain additional insight on which tactics go together by looking

specifically at the 62 contentious campaigns. Table 2 shows how often tactics
coincide within campaigns. For instance, among the 49 campaigns that
include demonstrations, 53% of those include nonviolent intervention and
only 4% include violent attacks. This table largely reinforces the findings of
the factor analysis, as the various protest tactics, on the one hand, and the
rebellious tactics of armed attacks, forceful seizures, and sabotage, on the
other, tend to coincide within campaigns. One distinct finding here, though,
is that demonstrations are usually part of campaigns that feature strikes.
However, due to the much higher incidence of demonstrations, only 39% of
campaigns that include demonstrations also include strikes.
Examination of campaigns reinforces the sharp division between
rebellious tactics and the rest. Indeed, of the 62 campaigns, only 5 combined
both rebellious and nonrebellious forms of contention. One of these attests
to the difficulty of coding differing forms of violence by prison inmates
protesting overcrowding in Brazil.8 Another mixed campaign involved
Argentine military officers that demonstrated publicly against human rights
trials before certain military factions carried out mutinies focused on the
same issue. The three campaigns that most deliberately crossed this line
Table 2. Coincidence of Contentious Tactics within Campaigns.

Tactic and Percentage of Campaigns that also Include Following Tactic
Incidence
dem strike nvint destprot vioprot sabotage seiz vioattack
dem 49 39 53 6 47 2 0 4
strike 22 86 36 0 41 0 0 0
nvint 29 90 36 10 52 3 3 7
destprot 3 100 0 100 67 0 0 0
vioprot 28 82 32 54 7 0 4 11
sabotage 5 20 0 20 0 0 40 100
seiz 3 0 0 33 0 33 67 100
vioattack 10 20 0 20 0 30 50 30
Note: Incidence refers to the number of the 62 campaigns that include that tactic.
involved the Zapatista Army of National Liberation [Ejército Zapatista de

Liberación Nacional] (EZLN) of Mexico and two campaigns by former
contras of Nicaragua. The EZLN is well known for beginning their
campaign with armed seizure of cities and towns across Chiapas, and then
shifting to ‘‘armed nonviolence’’ in which they kept their weapons but
focused more on issuing declarations, holding mass rallies, and taking part
in other nonviolent contentious activities (Bob, 2005). Likewise, the contras
of Nicaragua began as a group using armed violence to oust the Sandinista
government, but after a peace deal, former contras who felt that they had
not received the promised benefits mixed familiar violent attacks on military
troops or farming cooperatives with violent protests and nonviolent
occupations.
In sum, the data presented so far indicate three primary contentious
repertoires in Latin America from 1981 to 1995. First is the public protest
repertoire that includes most prominently demonstrations, as well as
nonviolent intervention, violent protests, and occasionally destructive
protests. The latter three forms can easily spin off of demonstrations, as
demonstrators may set fire to cars, clash with police, or occupy a public
space. In addition, there is a distinct strike repertoire that typically couples
strikes by workers with demonstrations supporting their demands. While
there is overlap here between demonstrations and strikes, the factor analysis
shows that strike waves have often occurred in different times and places
than prominent protest waves in these countries. Furthermore, any group
can stage protests, but strikes tend to be organized by workers, and strikes
do not so easily or organically spin-off from demonstrations. Finally, there
is a rebellion repertoire that includes mostly violent attacks by armed rebels,

but also includes acts of sabotage and forceful seizures, such as taking
hostages.
WHY DO CHALLENGERS USE A PARTICULAR

SET OF TACTICS?
Another important issue is why particular sets of tactics are used and how
this changes over time. As mentioned above, there are previous studies that
trace changes in tactics over time and sometimes cross-nationally for a
variety of countries (Aminzade, 1984; Beissinger, 1998; Brockett, 2005;
Ekiert & Kubik, 1998; Lopez-Maya, 2002; Tarrow, 1989, 1995; Tilly, 1995,
2006, 2008). What is missing from these studies is, first, an empirical basis to
determine which tactics to study. There are so many potential tactical forms
of contention, an important first step is to examine the most fundamental
tactical choices. Since we know that challengers in the countries studied here
tend to specialize in certain repertoires of contentious tactics, the most
fundamental tactical choices are between these repertoires. Following the
above analysis, I will focus on the choice of tactics from the three primary
repertoires identified above: protest, rebellion, and strikes.
Second, prior studies mentioned above do not provide an analysis of
competing theories that explain the use of different repertoires. Indeed, the
literature offers a prominent theoretical contrast between Tilly’s regime
theory explaining repertoires of contention and Lichbach’s (1987) substitu-
tion model of tactical change. Tilly’s theory corresponds with what Smithey
(2009) called the structural paradigm and Lichbach corresponds with the
interactive conflict paradigm. The logic of these theories could be combined
to give greater insight into tactical choice, but as presented they offer
sharply divergent predictions based on different theoretical assumptions.
Tilly’s Regime Theory
Tilly (2008) argued that ‘‘repertoires tend to become uniform within

regimes’’ (p. 149). Tilly (2006, 2008) asserted that different types of regimes
show different patterns in the types of tactics that they repress, tolerate, and
facilitate. This is largely captured by a democracy versus nondemocracy
continuum. Regimes also show different state capacities, which affect their
ability to repress or facilitate opposition tactics. This suggests that the
contentious tactics used in a country should be strongly related to the extent

of democracy and state capacity.
Tilly (2006, 2008) also offered more specific predictions based on four
fundamental types of regimes. He asserted that low capacity nondemocratic
regimes are most likely to experience civil wars. High capacity nondemo-
cratic regimes can better repress contention, but when it does occur it takes
the form of ‘‘covert use of tolerated performances such as public ceremonies
or by deliberate adoption of forbidden performances such as armed attacks’’
(2006, p. 76) though the magnitude of violence should be lower than in low
capacity nondemocratic regimes. Tilly expected that high capacity demo-
cratic regimes would experience the nonviolent tactics typical of social
movements. Low capacity democracies would experience a wide variety of
tactics, including higher levels of violence than high capacity democracies.
This suggests the following hypotheses:9
H1: Countries with democratic regimes are more likely to experience

protest and strikes, while countries with nondemocratic regimes are more
likely to experience rebellion.
H2: Countries with high state capacity are less likely to experience
rebellion than countries with low state capacity.
The Polity index is often used to measure democracy in quantitative
studies, but Vreeland (2008) warns that it partially measures political
violence, making it unsuitable for this study. I measure democracy here
using Smith’s (2005) annual classifications of Latin American countries as
electoral democracy, electoral semi-democracy, or nondemocracy. This
indicator shows strong, positive correlations with the Polity index and the
Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheibub, and Limongi (2000) scheme for measuring
regime type. Since Tilly (2006, 2008) asserts that repression is a critical part
of the effect of regimes, I also analyze the Political Terror Scale (PTS),
which measures the degree of political imprisonment, torture, and murder
within a country on a five-point scale, with five indicating the worst abuses
(Gibney, Cornett, & Wood, 2011). The PTS ratings used here were coded
from Amnesty International country reports and measured for the prior
year relative to the other variables.10 I will refer to this aspect of political
repression as macro-repression to distinguish it from the micro-level
repression considered by Lichbach (1987) and discussed below.
State capacity is a complex concept. Tilly (2006, 2008) assigns countries to
high capacity or low capacity categories without formally measuring
the concept. Soifer and vom Hau (2008) argue for using Michael Mann’s
concept of state infrastructural power. Mann (1988) defined infrastructural

power as ‘‘the capacity of the state to actually penetrate civil society, and to
implement logistically political decisions throughout the realm’’ (p. 5).
Goodwin (2001) operationalized this with military expenditures, size of
armed forces, extent of road network, military aircraft, and government
revenue. However, these indicators may actually be higher in states
responding to an insurgency than in high capacity states that do not face
such a challenge. Indeed, as described in Franklin (2013), I found that these
indicators are positively correlated with the number of armed attacks in
the country. It would be useful, then, to have an indicator of state
infrastructural power that is likely to be less affected by civil war. Some
authors, such as Fearon and Laitin (2003) use GDP per capita to measure
state capacity, but Soifer (2008) criticizes this for being a vague and indirect
indicator. I have chosen primary school gross enrollment ratio to measure
state infrastructural power. This indicates a country’s total enrollment in
primary education, regardless of age, divided by the population of the
corresponding age group. This indicates, then, the capability of the state to
provide what is virtually a universal duty of modern states, and one that is
not closely tied to the state’s response to rebellion. Furthermore, Soifer
(2008) argues for assessing the territorial reach of the state, and primary
enrollment ratio does this by assessing how much of the total school age
population is reached by public schools. Soifer (2006), indeed, uses primary
school enrollment to measure state strength in Latin America.
Substitution Model
Lichbach (1987) presents a theory that posits far more frequent shifts in
contentious tactics, based on a careful assessment of government responses
to previous challenges. Assuming a single opposition confronting a regime,
he develops a formal model of contentious tactics. He assumes that groups
choose between two tactics: nonviolent protest and political violence.
Lichbach cites terrorism and military operations by guerrilla movements as
examples of political violence, indicating that this category of tactics
corresponds with what I refer to as rebellion. Most notably for this study,
Lichbach hypothesizes that when governments increase repression on
nonviolent protest, the opposition will substitute political violence, and
vice versa. Moore (1998), in a study of Peru and Sri Lanka, found support
for Lichbach’s substitution hypothesis. Furthermore Mason and Krane
(1989) and Goodwin (2001) argue that repression of nonviolent tactics
encourages oppositions to opt for armed rebellion. Furthermore, Moore

(2000) turned Lichbach’s substitution model around, arguing that govern-
ments choose between repression and accommodation based on how
challengers responded to their previous action. More broadly, there is ample
evidence that governments often calibrate their responses to the types of
tactics used by contentious challengers (Franklin, 2009; Kowalewski &
Schumaker, 1981; O’Keefe & Schumaker, 1983; Shin, 1983), so it stands to
reason that challengers will consider this in their choice of tactics.
Lichbach (1987) is the most prominent alternative to Tilly’s regime
theory. In contrast to macro-repression, discussed above in connection to
Tilly’s regime theory, Lichbach is referring to repression used in response
to specific contentious actions. This is micro-repression, which fluctuates
greatly across contentious actions and over time, whereas the macro-
repression indicators summarize the level of repression for an entire
year and change much more gradually. The making of tactical adjust-
ments in response to government repression is not necessarily incom-
patible with Tilly’s regime theory. However, in this case, Lichbach’s
theory proposes rapid shifts between tactics that I have found to repre-
sent different repertoires, which is in clear contrast to the predictions
from Tilly.
H3: Challengers will take part in protest when a previous act of rebellion
was repressed.
H4: Challengers will take part in rebellion when a previous protest was
repressed.
While Lichbach, like Tilly, does not specifically discuss strikes, the same
logic could apply, as previous repression of strikes should cause challengers
to switch to either protest or rebellion. To test these hypotheses, I coded
three dummy variables. Previous rebellion repressed indicates whether the
previous challenge in the country was a rebellious attack that was repressed.
If this was the case (coded as 1), the substitution hypothesis suggests that the
subsequent challenge would be a protest (or perhaps a strike). Previous
protest repressed indicates whether the previous challenge was a form of
protest that was repressed. In this case, the expectation is that the
subsequent challenge would be a rebellious challenge (or perhaps a strike).
Previous strike repressed indicates whether the previous challenge was a
strike that was repressed. Here, we would expect that the subsequent
challenge would be a protest or act of rebellion.
Analysis
The analysis examines the choice between the three main types of tactics
emphasized earlier in the analysis: protest, rebellion, and strikes. Since there
are three categories of this nominal dependent variable, multinomial logit
regression is the appropriate technique.11 Since the dataset has multiple
challenges per country, the standard errors were adjusted for country-level
clustering. The regression coefficients are shown in Table 3. To facilitate
interpretation of the relationships, Table 4 displays changes in predicted
probabilities of choosing the three tactics for each independent variable,
controlling for the others.
The tactics of contention used do seem to be shaped in part by the type of
regime and the capacity of the state, as measured by the primary school
enrollment ratio.12 Democracy somewhat increases the probability that
challengers will use protest, but the effect is not statistically significant.
Thus, we have at best partial support for hypothesis 1. Indeed, 45% of
protests in the sample took place in high capacity authoritarian regimes in
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, which, as mentioned above, were the
setting of major protest campaigns demanding greater democracy. These
Table 3. Multinomial Logit Regression Results for Choice of

Contentious Tactics.
Contentious Tactic, with Protest as Baseline Category
Variable Strikes Rebellion
Primary School Enrollment 0.00 (0.01) 0.14 (0.02)

Democracy 0.35 (.09) 0.62 (0.26)
Political Terror Scale t–1 0.21 (0.16) 0.90 (0.19)
Previous protest repressed 1.30 (0.57) 2.94 (0.75)
Previous strike repressed 0.96 (0.70) 34.07 (0.83)
Previous rebellion repressed 28.95 (1.07) 5.33 (1.21)
Constant 0.88 17.32
% correctly predicted 73.4
% error reduction 51.7
n 1,319
Note: Number on top in each row is the multinomial logit coefficient and number in parentheses
is the robust standard error, adjusted for country-level clustering.
po0.05, two-tailed.
po0.01, two-tailed.
Table 4. Changes in Predicted Probabilities for Contentious Tactics.

Variable (Range) Change in Predicted Probability of Contentious Tactic Resulting
from Shifting Independent Variable from Minimum to Maximum
Value
Protest (%) Strikes (%) Rebellion (%)
Primary school enrolment 75.4 18.5 93.9

Democracy 13.0 13.4 26.4
Political terror scale t–1 45.3 3.6 49.0
Previous protest repressed 33.2 8.4 24.8
Previous strike repression 2.2 24.9 27.1
Previous rebellion repressed 57.3 14.6 71.9
Note: These probabilities are calculated holding all other independent variables either at their
mean or at 0 for dummy variables.
The 95% confidence interval for the estimate excludes 0.
campaigns peaked under authoritarian regimes and then fell sharply after
democratization.
The results for rebellion are more clearly supportive of Hypothesis 1. The
results in Table 4 show that rebellion is 26.4% less likely in democracies,
relatively to nondemocracies. The transition to semi-democratic regimes in
Guatemala in 1985 and Nicaragua in 1984 coincided with a decline in
rebellion and an increase in protest tactics. However, it would be overly
simplistic to say that a regime opening causes challengers to change tactics.
In Guatemala, extremely high levels of repression succeeded in lowering the
level of rebellion more than two years before elections were held. Schirmer
(1998) asserted that due to the brutal massacres of 1982, the ‘‘subsistence
and surveillance base for the guerrilla was destroyed, obligating both the
guerrilla and the population to flee to the mountains (or to Mexico)’’ (p. 61).
Both Schirmer and Jonas (1991) see the elections of 1985 as part of the
Guatemalan military’s strategy for defeating the insurgency, first, through
repression, and then by placing a more legitimate government nominally in
charge. The military retained significant power, but the move to semi-
democracy did open new opportunities for protest, which rose as rebellion
waned. In Nicaragua, rebellion mostly declined, and protest increased, with
the establishment of democracy. However, the trends in rebellion in
Nicaragua were also very much shaped by actions in Washington DC as
President Reagan and Congressional Democrats clashed over funding
for the contra rebels (Walker & Wade, 2011).
The results for primary school enrollment are strongly supportive of

Hypothesis 2. Table 4 shows that protest is 75% more likely, and rebellion
almost 94% less likely in countries at the highest level of primary school
enrollment ratio, relative to the lowest level. Most of the rebellious
challenges in the sample studied here occurred in Guatemala and Nicaragua,
and, indeed, Guatemala had by far the lowest mean primary school
enrollment ratio (73.6) in the sample and Nicaragua was also generally
below the sample mean (100.09).
Strikes tend to occur in high capacity democracies. This is supported by
Table 4, which shows that, controlling for other factors, strikes are 13% more
likely in democracies than in nondemocracies and over 18% more likely in
high capacity states. This finding is novel, since Tilly did not make specific
predictions about strikes as distinct from other forms. Especially large
strike waves in Argentina and Brazil occurred in the mid-1980s, mostly after
the end of authoritarian regimes. This period also saw highly fluctuating
GDP growth rates and high inflation in these countries. However, Chile
experienced lower rates of strikes in the mid-1980s under an authoritarian
regime, and did not experience a surge in strikes after democratization
in 1989, since economic conditions were much better during this period.
Lichbach (1987) offered a contrasting model that holds that dissidents will
shift tactics more frequently than the concept of strong repertoires would
lead us to expect. Here the focus is on micro-repression: repression
responding to particular contentious challenges. The results clearly contra-
dict Hypotheses 3 and 4, which predict that repression a particular tactic will
impel challengers to change to the other tactic. The findings, in contrast,
show that challengers are highly likely to stick with the same tactic despite
previous targeting of government repression. Indeed, repression of a
previous protest increases the likelihood that challengers will choose protest
tactics by 33%, and previous repression of rebellion increases the
probability that challengers take part in rebellion by 72%. Lichbach did
not theorize a third tactic, such as strikes, but the basic logic suggests that
challengers will switch tactics away from strikes after a strike has been
repressed. However, results point, again, to continuity of strikes despite
previous repression.
Finally, the harsher the repression faced by the country in the previous
year, measured by the political terror scale, the more likely that challengers
will take part in protest and less likely they will use rebellion. The finding
that challengers adjust their tactics to the generalized level of macro-
repression, as opposed to responding to fluctuations in micro-repression,
also supports the strong repertoire concept.
CONCLUSIONS
This study offers a preliminary analysis of the tactics that contentious

challengers in seven Latin America countries used between 1981 and 1995.
I began by specifying eight distinct forms of contention: violent attacks,
sabotage, forceful seizures, demonstrations, strikes, nonviolent intervention,
violent protests, and destructive protests. Tilly’s concept of strong reper-
toires suggests that groups in particular times and places should specialize
in certain forms of contention, relative to what is available. I test this by
calculating the tactical fractionalization for 62 contentious campaigns that
took place in the countries and years studied here. This reveals that the
range of contentious tactics used in particular campaigns is, indeed, quite
limited relative to the range of contentious tactics seen in the country or
sample as a whole.
The second issue addressed is which tactics tend to coincide in particular
times and places to make repertoires. A factor analysis gives clear evidence
of three distinct repertoires: protest (including demonstrations, nonviolent
intervention, destructive protests, and violent protests), strikes, and
rebellion (including violent attacks, sabotage, and forceful seizures).
The next task of this chapter was to explain why groups use particular
contentious tactics in particular situations. This analysis focuses on the most
fundamental tactical differences the different prevalence of the three
repertoires found above. Tilly (2006, 2008) sees shifting of regimes as a
major factor in gradual shifting of repertoires. Lichbach (1987) introduced a
substitution model which posited that repression of protest will lead a group
to switch to political violence and repression of political violence will cause
a group to switch to protest. The analysis here is largely though not
completely in support of Tilly’s theory. The prevalence of the three
repertoires depends a great deal on the regime type in place, the level of
primary school enrollment (measuring state capacity), and the generalized
level of macro-repression. These variables were all suggested by Tilly’s
regime theory. Following Lichbach’s substitution model, I also examined
the effect of repression of particular previous contentious tactics, and the
results clearly contradict the hypotheses. Contentious challengers show no
sign of shifting tactics in response to repression of that tactic in the past. To
the contrary, challengers tend to stay within the same repertoire even when
those tactics have been repressed.
This research has established interesting and theoretically sensible
patterns in the use of contentious tactics, but further research is necessary.
First, the methods used here should be extended to other datasets covering
different countries and regions. This would help to determine the broader
applicability of the methods and the generalizability of the results. Second,
more focused studies of contentious groups would illuminate more subtle
differences in contentious tactics or aspects of tactical decision making that
cannot be analyzed in a study of hundreds of contentious groups and
challenges. This could also further consider the relationship between identity
and tactics (see Smithey, 2009). Finally, and most importantly, further
theorizing is necessary to fully understand the choice of contentious tactics.
Tilly (2006, 2008) and Lichbach (1987) offered contrasting theories, and
Tilly’s theory was more consistent with the data. However, Tilly’s theory is
incomplete. Jasper (2004), Lichbach (1998), and Smithey (2009) all noted
limitations with structural models of contentious politics. Indeed, the
concept of repertoires of contention assumes that tactical choice is
structured, but there is still variance within a repertoire. For example, how
do groups decide on a tactic within the protest repertoire? Lichbach (1987)
presented his theory as determining the choice between nonviolent protest
and rebellion. There appears to be too great a gulf between these tactics to
make them realistic substitutes. However, Lichbach’s substitution model
could help explain choices within a repertoire. Alternatively, as Jasper (2004)
asserts, there might be some other choice-centered theory that better
explains tactics. An additional consideration in future research is to what
extent organizers can determine tactics within the protest repertoire, since
the actions of police, pro-government thugs, or a radical fringe of protesters
can quickly turn a demonstration into a violent melee. Knowledge of the
repertoires and their structural factors provides a basis for the next steps in
research on contentious tactics and repertoires.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Sidney Tarrow, Joseph Young, Whitney Franklin, and
the anonymous reviewers for RSMCC for their helpful and insightful
comments on earlier manuscripts.
NOTES
1. At the outset of the project, I used Stata to choose a global random sample of
countries. As the immensity of the data collection project became apparent, I focused
on the region I am most familiar with, gathering data on the seven Latin American
countries chosen in this process. Random selection avoids the fairly common
practice of choosing cases based on values of the dependent variable, which produces
a biased sample (King, Keohane, & Verba, 1994). Before proceeding with data
collection, I was satisfied that the seven-country sample produced great variation in
terms of regime, population, level of development, and presence of civil war, thus
providing a relatively unbiased sample for the region.
2. The vast majority of strikes described in any detail were political, as defined
here. Brockett (2005) noted similar patterns in media strike coverage for Guatemala.
The main exception was strikes by workers at foreign-owned car factories in Brazil
demanding wage increases. These occurred at the same time period as an upsurge in
strikes that were defined here as political.
3. The nine demand types are anticorruption, economic benefits, economic policy,
education policy reform, environmental protection, human rights reform, pro-
democracy, revolution, and social reform. ‘‘Groups’’ here could mean specific
organizations, or similar social groups, such as peasants or students.
4. For the mean tactical fractionalization at the contentious campaign-level, the
upper 95% confidence interval is 0.47.
5. I used the principal factors method, with orthogonal varimax rotation.
6. Factor loadings of 0.3 or greater are typically seen as significant (Kline,
1994).
7. This separation between protest and rebellion was also found in an earlier study
(Bwy, 1968) in an analysis of 65 provincial units spread across Brazil, Cuba, the
Dominican Republic, and Panama, though Bwy used the terms ‘‘turmoil’’ and
‘‘internal war.’’
8. Prisoners staged a violent, deadly protest, and then followed it up by murdering
two inmates in a ‘‘death lottery’’ to protest the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions.
The death lotteries were coded as violent attacks (analogous to assassinations),
though in this case it could alternatively be seen as a violent public protest.
9. One could also test these effects as interactions between democracy and state
capacity. Models with interactive effects were tested using a multiplicative term and
using dummy variables, but both had estimation problems that prevented the
estimation of standard errors for certain variables. Since this prevented testing of the
competing theories, the analysis was limited to additive models.
10. I thank Mark Gibney for making the data available at www.politicalterrors
cale.org.
11. The multinomial logit model assumes the independence of irrelevant
alternatives. Hausman and Small-Hsiao tests show no signs that this assumption
has been violated.
12. The choice of indicator for state capacity is highly consequential for the
results. If GDP per capita is used instead of primary school enrollment, democracy is
no longer a significant factor in explaining rebellion over protest. This is probably
due to the greater intercorrelation of democracy and GDP per capita. If we use tax
revenue as a percent of GDP in place of primary school enrollment, democracy,
again, has a negative, statistically significant relationship with rebellion, but we find
that rebellion is actually somewhat more likely in countries with a higher tax
revenue, which suggests it is not actually measuring state capacity. While this
suggests further testing, these results show additional problems with alternative
measures for state capacity, as discussed above.
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APPENDIX: CONTENTIOUS CAMPAIGNS
Country Actors Goals/Demands Tactical

Fractionalization
Argentina Mother of the Protesting 0.28

Plaza de Mayo, disappearances,
other human demanding
rights groups information
Argentina Labor unions, Protesting 0.59
sometimes CGT economic
conditions
Argentina Political parties; Democracy, end of 0.38
especially UCR military rule
and/or Peronists
Argentina CGT Protesting austerity 0.54
policies,
demanding wage
increases
Argentina Mothers, other Justice for those 0
HR groups responsible for
HR abuses
Argentina Military Opposition to 0.18
HR trials
Argentina HR groups, youth Against pardons 0
for HR abusers
Argentina State employees Higher salaries 0.67
Brazil Workers, Opposition to IMF 0.38
sometimes PT and austerity
measures
Brazil Opposition parties End of military 0.12
rule, call for
direct
presidential
elections
Brazil Prison inmates Protesting prison 0.44
conditions and
mistreatment
Appendix (Continued )

Fractionalization
Brazil Labor Opposition to 0.44

confederations economic
policies
Brazil Public employees Pay increase 0.5
Brazil Port workers Pay increase 0
Brazil Opposition parties, Impeachment of 0
students, President Collor
workers de Mello
Brazil Workers, unions, Opposition to 0.64
leftist parties economic
policies,
particularly
privatization
Brazil Oil workers’ union Pay increase 0
Chile Opposition parties End of military 0.54
(including rule
centrists), often
Democratic
Alliance, copper
miners’ union
Chile Unions Release of union 0.71
leaders,
protesting
repression
against unions
Chile Leftist rebels; MIR Anti-government 0.41
often named at
first, from 1984
on it is mostly
Manuel
Rodriguez
Patriotic Front
Chile Leftist opposition End of military 0.49
parties, often rule
including

Fractionalization
Popular
Democratic
Movement
(MDP) alliance,
but without
centrist support
Chile Various Protesting murder 0.41
of 3 PCCh
members
Chile Women Denouncing 0.56
repression
Chile Workers Economic reforms 0.64
confederation and anti-
CNT Pinochet
Chile Leftist rebels Anti-military 0
Chile Political prisoners Demanding 0.44
and their release,
supporters protesting their
trials
Guatemala Leftist guerrillas Revolution 0.28
Guatemala Mutual Support Information on 0.44
Group for the disappeared
Appearance
Alive of Our
Relatives
(GAM)
Guatemala Teachers and Pay increase, 0.69
students replacement of
Education
Minister
Mexico Peasants, workers, Protesting austerity 0.57
independent policies
Workers’ Union
Mexico Teachers, students, Pay increases, 0.6
university staff, protesting

Fractionalization
National planned closure

Education of teachers’
Workers’ college
Coordinator
Mexico Workers at Pay increase, 0.67
government- opposition to
owned uranium plans to shut
company down company
Mexico COCEI, Coalition Struggle with PRI 0.64
of Workers, over who will
Peasants and govern town of
Students of the Juchitan
Tehuantepec
Isthmus
Mexico Students, leftists Commemorating 0.63
1968 massacre,
protesting
repression
Mexico PAN Protesting 0.61
fraudulent local
and state
elections
Mexico Various groups Demanding relief 0
and
investigations
following
earthquake
Mexico Students at Opposition to 0.32
National reforms to
Autonomous increase fees and
University use standardized
admissions tests
Mexico Farmers, Protesting low 0.38
Chihuahua food prices
Peasant offered by

Fractionalization
Organizations government food

Front company
Mexico Opposition parties Protesting validity 0.36
of 1988
presidential
election
Mexico Leftist parties Protesting 0.64
fraudulent local
and state
elections
Mexico Oil workers’ union Protesting arrest of 0.44
union leaders
Mexico Teachers, dissident Pay increase, 0.5
teachers’ union dismissal of
(CNTE) leadership of
official teachers’
union
Mexico PAN Protesting 0
fraudulent local
and state
elections
Mexico PRD Protesting 0.67
fraudulent
elections, calling
for electoral
reforms
Mexico Teachers Opposition to new 0.63
policies that cut
pensions and
delay retirements
Mexico EZLN and its Social and electoral 0.58
supporters reform, anti-
NAFTA

Fractionalization
Mexico Ranchers, farmers Upset about 0.44

peasant uprising
and land
invasions
Mexico El Barzon debtors’ Lower interest 0
movement rates
Mexico Power workers and Wage increase 0.44
sympathizers
Nicaragua Contra rebels, Overthrow of 0.2
FDN, or ARDE Sandinista
government
Nicaragua Miskito opposition Overthrow of 0.44
groups Sandinista
government
Nicaragua Opposition parties, Anti-government, 0.13
Democratic protesting
Coordinator, repression,
including Social censorship,
Christian Party constitution
Nicaragua Families of Opposition to draft 0.64
draftees,
opposition
parties
Nicaragua Construction Higher wages, 0.67
workers, auto improved
mechanics, and working
their supporters conditions
Nicaragua Sandinista-backed Maintaining 0.57
union Sandinista
economic
reforms;
opposition to
new economic
policies; wage
increase

Fractionalization
Nicaragua Former contras Demanding 0.32

(sometimes benefits
including former promised in
Sandinistas) peace deal
Nicaragua Former contras Demanding 0.52
(sometimes benefits
including former promised in
Sandinistas) peace deal
Nicaragua Former Sandinista Demanding 0
soldiers benefits
promised in
peace deal
Venezuela University students Protesting 0.61
transport fare
increases and
repression of
earlier student
protests
Venezuela Variety of citizen Opposition to 0.61
groups austerity
measures
announced on
2/27/89
Venezuela Students, teachers, Opposition to 0.42
opposition economic
parties policies and
repression;
resignation of
President Perez
Venezuela Supporters of coup Share their 0.38
plotters criticism of
government;
demand their
release from
prison or better
conditions
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Tina Askanius is a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Commu-

nication and Media at Lund University, Sweden. Her research concerns
social movement media practices with a particular focus on contemporary
forms of video activism in online environments. Her recent work within
this area has been published in international journals such as Journal of
E-politics, Journal of Electronic Governance, and Interface: a journal for and
about social movements.
Priska Daphi has an MSc in political sociology from the London School of
Economics and Political Science and a BA summa cum laude from the
University College Maastricht in the Netherlands. Currently, she is a PhD
candidate at the Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences (Humboldt
University of Berlin, Germany) and holds a scholarship by the German
National Academic Foundation. Her research addresses processes of
cooperation and collective identity construction across geographical distance
and socio-cultural difference, particularly in social movements. Her recent
publications include: (2013), Collective Identity Across Borders: Bridging
Local and Transnational Memories in the Italian and German Global Justice
Movements. In: Laurence Cox & Cristina Flesher Fominaya (Eds.),
Understanding European Movements: New Social Movements, Global Justice
Struggles, Anti-Austerity Protest. London/New York: Routledge; (2011)
Soziale Bewegungen und Kollektive Identität. Forschungsstand und
Forschungslücken (Social Movements and Collective Identity: State and
Gaps of Research). In Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen, 24(4).
Donatella della Porta is professor of sociology in the Department of Political
and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. Among her recent
publications are: (with M. Caiani), Social movements and Europeanization,
Oxford University Press, 2009; (Ed.) Another Europe, Routledge, 2009; (Ed.)
Democracy in Social Movements, Palgrave, 2009; Approaches and methodol-
ogies in the social sciences (with Michael Keating), Cambridge University
Press; (with Gianni Piazza), Voices from the valley; Voices from the Streat
Berghan, 2008; The global justice movement, Paradigm, 2007; (with
Massimiliano Andretta, Lorenzo Mosca and Herbert Reiter), Globalization
209
210 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
from below, The University of Minnesota Press; (with Abby Peterson and
Herbert Reiter), The policing transnational protest, Ashgate 2006; (with
Mario Diani), Social movements: An introduction, 2nd edition, Blackwell,
2006; (with Sidney Tarrow), Transnational protest and global activism,
Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.
Nicole Doerr is currently assistant professor of international relations at
Mount Holyoke College. She was previously a democracy fellow at the Ash
Centre for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard University.
She has also been a Marie Curie Postdoctoral fellow at the University of
California, Irvine and did her PhD at the European University Institute in
Florence. Doerr’s work focuses on democracy and political translation in
social movements, and on discourse and visual analysis in multilingual,
culturally heterogeneous public spaces. Her writings have appeared in
Mobilization, Social Movement Studies, European Political Science Review,
Feminist Review, Journal of International Women’s Studies, FQS, Berliner
Debatte Initial, and Partecipazione e Conflitto.
Patricia Ewick is professor of sociology at Clark University. Her principal
research areas include deviance, law, and social control. She has published
extensively on legal consciousness among ordinary American citizens in
order to identify how, when, and why people come to define their everyday
disputes and troubles as potentially legal matters. Among her writings in
these areas include the books, The common place of law, Social science,
Social policy and law, and Law, ideology and consciousness.
James C. Franklin is associate professor of politics and government at Ohio
Wesleyan University. His primary areas of research include contentious
politics, political repression, and democratization, with regional interest in
Latin America. He has published articles in various journals, including
Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, and Political
Research Quarterly. One of these publications was named the best article in
PRQ for 2009.
Anja Lê, MA, has studied art history, gender studies, and educational
sciences at the Universities of Hamburg (Germany) and Vienna (Austria).
Her main research interests are modes of representation in modern
and contemporary arts, interactions between the (natural) sciences and
art, 19th century photography, and social control in early public housing.
Most recent publication: Bilder der Überwachungskritik. Kriminologisches
Journal, 43, 112–130 (with P. Ullrich).
About the Contributors 211
Eeva Luhtakallio, PhD, sociologist and research fellow at the University of

Helsinki, Finland, is the author of Practicing democracy: Local activism and
politics in France and Finland (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) that analyzes the
local politicization processes in two cultural contexts. She is specialized in
research, methods, and theorizing of comparative, political, and cultural
sociology.
Alice Mattoni is a research fellow in the Center on Social Movement Studies
(COSMOS) at the European University Institute. Before joining COSMOS,
she has been a postdoctoral associate fellow in the Department of Sociology
at the University of Pittsburgh. Alice obtained her Master of Research and
PhD in political and social sciences at the European University Institute.
She is a co-convenor of the standing group ‘‘Forms of Participation and
Mobilization’’ of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR)
and a co-editor of Interface: a journal for and about social movements.
Among her recent publications are: Media practices and protest politics. How
precarious workers mobilise (Ashgate, 2012); Alla Ricerca Dell’Onda. Nuovi
Conflitti nell’Istruzione Superiore, co-edited with Loris Caruso, Alberta
Giorgi, and Gianni Piazza (Franco Angeli, 2010).
Kirsty McLaren is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University.
She is also a research associate with the research project Mapping the
Australian Women’s Movement. Her MPhil was titled ‘‘Imperative
Images: The Use of Images of the Foetus in the Australian Abortion
Debate, 1998–2009.’’
Thomas Olesen is associate professor at the Department of Political Science
and Government, Aarhus University, Denmark. His current research
focuses on activism, solidarity, and symbols. Recent publications include:
Thomas Olesen (2012) ‘‘Televised Media Performance for HIV/AIDS
Sufferers in Africa: Distance Reduction and National Community in Two
Danish Fundraising Shows,’’ Communication, Culture, and Critique, 5(1),
99–119; Thomas Olesen (2011) ‘‘The Transnational Complexity of Domestic
Solidarity Campaigns: A Cross-Time Comparison of Burma Debates in
Denmark, 1988 & 2007,’’ Acta Sociologica, 54(2), 139–159; Thomas Olesen
(2011) ‘‘Transnational Injustice Symbols and Communities: The Case of
al-Qaeda and the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp,’’ Current Sociology,
59(6), 717–734.
Marc W. Steinberg teaches sociology at Smith College. His previous work
focused on class struggle in 19th-century England. His book Fighting words
212 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
concentrates on collective action, historical class formation, language,

and ideology, in early 19th-century English working-class history. He is
currently finishing Law, labor and England’s great transformation in which
he analyzes the role of law in labor control in Victorian England.
Simon Teune is a sociologist based in Berlin, Germany. He works at the
Social Science Research Center and is part of an initiative to establish an
Institute for Protest and Social Movement Studies (www.protestinsitut.eu).
Teune’s recently finished PhD dissertation focuses on the public channelling
of action repertoires during the anti-G8 protests in Germany 2007. He is co-
editor of Nur Clowns und Chaoten? (Campus, 2008), a book that unpacks the
media event of the Heiligendamm protests, and editor of The transnational
condition. Protest in an entangled Europe (Berghahn, 2010).
Peter Ullrich, Dr. phil. Dr. rer. med., is visiting researcher at the Social
Science Research Center Berlin. He studied cultural sciences, sociology, and
German language and literature. His main fields of research are social
movements (discursive, cultural, and governmentality approaches), surveil-
lance studies, qualitative methods, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and
anti-Semitism. He is a founding member of the research network ‘‘New
perspectives on social movements and protest’’ of the German Research
Council. He is the author of several books, among them: Begrenzter
Universalismus [Bounded universalism], Berlin 2007; Die Linke, Israel und
Palästina. Nahostdiskurse in GroXbritannien und Deutschland [The Left,
Israel and Palestine. Middle East discourses in Great Britain and Germany],
Berlin 2008; Gegner der Globalisierung? Mobilisierung zum G8-Gipfel in
Genua [Opponents of globalisation? The mobilisation to the G8 summit in
Genoa], Leipzig 2003. He co-edited several volumes, most recently: Prevent
and tame. Protest under (self)control, Berlin 2010.

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ADVANCES IN THE VISUAL

Volume 23: Political Opportunities, Social Movements and

United Kingdom – North America – Japan

First edition 2013

Copyright r 2013 Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Reprints and permission service

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Certificate Number 1985

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS vii

TOWARD A VISUAL ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL

PART I: SPECIAL TOPIC: ADVANCES IN THE VISUAL

‘‘WE ARE ALL KHALED SAID’’: VISUAL

BODIES KEYING POLITICS: A VISUAL FRAME

IMAGES OF SURVEILLANCE: THE CONTESTED

THE EMOTIONAL IMPERATIVE OF THE VISUAL:

PROTEST MOVEMENTS AND SPECTACLES OF

PART II: COMMENTS ON ADVANCES IN THE VISUAL

WHAT WE CAN DO WITH VISUAL ANALYSIS IN

PART III: GENERAL THEME: NARRATIVES AND

THE WORK STORIES DO: CHARLES TILLY’S

REPERTOIRES OF CONTENTION AND TACTICAL

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 209

Tina Askanius Department of Communication and Media,

Thomas Olesen Department of Political Science and

Like any established and mature body of scholarship, social movements

The news of recent mobilizations in Arab, European, and North-American

THREE AREAS IN VISUAL RESEARCH ON

This volume seeks to contribute to the growing body of knowledge on

Visual Expressions of Social Movements

Visual Representations of Social Movements

The second area of research focuses on representations of social movements

DeLuca, 1999; Delicath & DeLuca, 2003). Media-savvy image creation is

Visuals and Visibility for Social Movements

The third area of research focuses on the analytical question of visibility

sections of society, others are ﬁltered out by hegemonic discourse routines.

THE CONTRIBUTIONS IN THIS SPECIAL ISSUE:

All three areas of research – social movement expression, representation,

surveillance in Germany were contested among liberal and left currents in

protesters through ‘‘sweet’’ and ‘‘childlike’’ representations of femininity.

major themes represented in pro-life images: the wonder of life, the

CONCLUDING REMARKS: ADVANCING SOCIAL

as a relativization of Nazi atrocities. Images calling upon powerful

(emotional and visual) resonance with similar events, interpreted widely as

section explore the mechanisms of contentious political processes, showing

This chapter offers a symbolic perspective on the Egyptian Revolution. It

Advances in the Visual Analysis of Social Movements

infused with injustice meanings by activists. Providing the ﬁrst systematic

Keywords: Symbols; visuality; photography; activism; Egypt;

Photographs, ﬁlm, and images have received relatively limited systematic

The relationship is dialectical. Visual injustice symbols are typically

injustice symbol with universalized meanings cannot be explained only by

VISUAL INJUSTICE SYMBOLS

Photography and Society

Photographs, according to Barthes (1977, pp. 17–20), are paradoxical. The

sociological process involving a dialogue, as it were, between the photograph

is: ‘‘[ y ] an interpretation of what is happening that supports the

Generally, visual injustice symbols are based on documentary photographs

documentary status. If questions are raised regarding its authenticity it

‘‘WE ARE ALL KHALED SAID’’

The following main section analyses core elements in Khaled Said’s

Three Levels of Agency

Said’s web publication of footage showing a shadowy deal between police

referred to in the preceding section).12 One of those who encountered the