Communication in progressive movement parties: against populism and beyond digitalism

ABSTRACT

In this article, I discuss the conceptualization of movement parties and bridge it with that of communication practices. In particular, I show how the analysis of communication practices within movement parties allows going beyond the technological determinism implicit in concepts such as online populism or digital parties. At different moments in history, social movements entered institutions by forming political parties. When this happened with progressive movements, movement parties were characterized by an appeal to broaden participation through the inclusion of new groups among the population within representative institutions. This general trend is to be kept in mind when addressing the latest wave of movement parties, in particular, the progressive ones, that build upon the history of left-wing party families. Based on these reflections, I critique analyses that, with a specific focus on the core subject of this special issue, have addressed communication strategies, depicting movement parties – including those on the Left – as online populist parties or digital parties. Considering alternative (less technological and more political) explanations, I suggest instead that the effects of the technology are filtered through activists’ agency, the movement parties’ evolution being influenced by movements’ dynamics and competition in the party system. In particular, the concept of communication practices, as developed in social movement studies, will be referred to in order to move beyond some stereotypes coming from either mass media or digital media studies, and so allowing for an historical account of the evolution of movement parties’ communication.

KEYWORDS:

• Movement parties
• digital communication
• social movements
• communication studies
• communicative practices

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In Downing’s definition (2001, p. 3), ‘radical alternative media constitute the most active form of the active audience and express oppositional strands, overt and covert, within popular cultures’. They are ‘media, generally small scale and in many different forms, that express an alternative vision to hegemonic policies, priorities and perspectives’ (2001, p. v).

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Notes on contributors

Donatella della Porta

Donatella Della Porta is professor of political science, dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences and Director of the PhD program in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, where she also leads the Center on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos). Among her very recent publications are: Social Movements: An introduction, 3rd edition (Blackwell, 2020); Can Social Movements Save Democracy? (Polity, 2020); Contesting Higher Education (Bristol University Press, 2020), w Discoursive Turns and Critical Junctures (Oxford University Press, 2020).