Public Interest Media Advocacy and Activism as a Social Movement

Abstract

This chapter reviews the literature on public interest media advocacy and activism. In so doing, it organizes the literature according to the three primary theoretical perspectives on social movements—framing processes, political opportunities, and mobilizing structures, to reflect the increased tendency in recent years for scholars to conceptualize public interest media advocacy and activism as a social movement. As this review indicates, public interest media advocacy and activism encompasses a movement that has employed a number of distinct, though overlapping, frames. It comprises a movement with political opportunities that are strongly tied to technological developments and to the conceptualization of policy problems within the policy-making sector. It constitutes a movement that, from a structural standpoint, has both emerged from—and can potentially serve the interests of—a wide range of other social movements, including civil rights and democratization movements, the consumer movement, and the anti-globalization movement. This review considers the implications of these and other characteristics of public interest media advocacy and activism as a social movement in an effort to develop strategic recommendations for the movement as well as recommendations for future research.