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of activist media, with a focus on the entanglement of practices with the features and the dynamics of media technology. It builds on recent and current
empirical work on (media) activism as it meets social media (‘cloud protesting’), and data analysis software (‘data activism’). It positions activist media at
the crossroads of a sociological process (organizing and taking action), a cognitive activity (making sense of social reality), and a sociotechnical practice
(because infrastructure, platforms and algorithms increasingly occupy a crucial spot). It argues that to really make the best of this‘turn to practice’we ought
to be willing and able to look within media technology and to focus our attention on the interplay between technology and the social of social action. In
doing so, it evokes concepts and approaches typical of science and technology studies, as they improve our understanding of media practices.
PP 328
Media Practices in Contemporary Feminist Movements in and Across Europe: Mapping Feminist Activism in Spain and Sweden
T. Askanius
1
, E. Espinar
2
1
Lund University, Communication and Media, Lund, Sweden
2
University of Alicante, Sociology II, Alicante, Spain
This paper presents the results of a pilot study prepared for a larger research project entitled ‘Media practices in contemporary feminist movements in and
across Europe’ which examines how feminist groups and networks in Northern Europe (Sweden, Denmark) and Southern Europe (Spain and Portugal) are
engaging online media in their struggle for gender equality and transformative social change. As part of the effort to understand how feminist movements
are shaped by different socio-economic and political contexts across Europe, this paper details the preliminary analytical steps of identifying and mapping
organisations, groups and networks in Sweden and Spain to be selected for further analysis. In the analysis, we consider different types of social movement
organizations and actors in the two countries to examine commonalities and differences in the ‘repertoires of communication’from which activists choose
and then engage in different sets of contentious media practices (Mattoni 2013). The results of this mapping exercise thus form a crucial part of the pur‑
posive sampling process of the larger project, just as the pilot study work to test and detect possible barriers related to a research design that provides us
with a balanced understanding of the cultural specificities and historical contexts of social-movement media practices in specific national contexts while at
the same time allowing for meaningful international comparisons of different empirical case studies. Such a comparative case approach to studying social
movements (Snow and Trom 2002) is premised on the belief that ‘if we want to explore how web technologies are transforming political participation,
we have to explore how different political groups, which are grounded on different political cultures, understand internet technologies according to con‑
text-specific political imaginations’(Barassi 2015). References Barassi,V. (2015) Activism on theWeb: Everyday Struggles against Digital Capitalism. London
and New York: Routledge. Mattoni, A. (2013) ‘Repertoires of communication in social movement processes’, in B. Cammaerts, A. Mattoni and P. McCurdy
(eds.), Mediation and Protest Movements. Chicago: Intellect, The University of Chicago Press. (pp. 39–56) Snow,D. A. and Trom, D. (2002) 'The case study
of social movements' in B. Klandermans and S. Staggenborg (eds.), Methods of Social Movement Research, Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press.