What role do communication rights play for social movements in the era of digital media? Some insights into the history and actuality of video activism and the use of social media by social movements.
Dr. Andrea Plöger (video activist/ documentary filmmaker with e.g. World Social Forum TV, Afrique-Europe-Interact and timecode e.V. and communication rights activist within the World Forum of Free Media, studied also visual anthropology and wrote her thesis on the World Social Forum Process and alternative media) with occasonial guest speakers from different areas and continents.
In the seminar we will retrace some of the history and some actual cases of video activism and indigenous cinema. We will watch filmic examples of the appropriation of the medium film/ video as Indigenous Cinema from which the later approaches for media reform in Latin America also stem and which play a vital role in the current struggles for indigenous rights. As „local" examples we will follow the history of video activism as in the New Social Movements in Europe in the 1980s and the globalization critical movements from the 1990s on.
We will then enter the actuality of the Arab Spring and global protest cycle from 2011 on and take a look at the use of social media by the protesters and its (attempted) repression by different regimes. This will lead us to discuss the role communication rights play in these recent uprisings and in the potential consolidation of a global civil society. And it will further lead us to the discussion of the „Snowden revelations“ and its significance for actual emancipatory movements.
The introduction into the use of video cameras and editing will be part of the class and students will be supported if they decide to start their own film project. Films - but also presentations of films, comprising a written analysis, will serve as examination for this course.
We will go on an excursion to watch a local video magazine and also come togehter for a presentation of students' films at the end of the semester.
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