The Ladders Revolution: Material struggle, social media and news coverage

ABSTRACT

This article, which focuses on a strike and ocupation that took place in Barcelona in May 2015, is part of a larger enquiry that attempts to locate public expressions of dissent in their sociopolitical, discursive and spatiotemporal context. The methods used to conduct this study include the standard collection of observational and media data, but also encompass an attempt to investigate the control of space by public and private authorities. Discursive manifestations of dissent and the arguments posed by social actors are therefore considered in conjunction with the physical impact and material setting within which goals are pursued. The case study used in this article is the workers’ occupation, in 2015, of the Telefónica building, the famous landmark identified in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia as the epicentre of the internecine struggle that took place within the Republican camp in 1937.

KEYWORDS:

• Occupation
• protest
• Spain
• austerity
• space
• strike

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ruth Sanz Sabido (author to whom correspondence should be addressed) is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, and Chair of the MeCCSA Social Movements Network. She is co-editor of the book series ‘Protest, Media and Culture’ and convenes the Canterbury Media Discourse Group. She is co-editor of Sites of Protest (2016) and Contemporary Protest and the Legacy of Dissent (2015), and author of a number of chapters and journal articles on media discourse, protest, memory and conflict. E-mail: [email protected]

Stuart Price is Professor of Media and Political Discourse at De Montfort University, UK, and Head of Research for the Leicester Media School. He is the author of Worst-case Scenario? Governance, Mediation and the Security Regime (2011), Brute Reality: Power, Discourse and the Mediation of War (2010), and Discourse Power Address (2007). He is the editor, with Ruth Sanz Sabido, of Sites of Protest (2016) and Contemporary Protest and the Legacy of Dissent (2015). Between 1993 and 1998, he produced a number of textbooks on Media and Communication, including Communication Studies (1996). E-mail: [email protected]