Alice Mattoni
Biographic Data
| ID | 211932 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alice Mattoni |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alice |
| FAMILY NAME | Mattoni |
| SIGNATURE | MATTONI A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bologna |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4809-0207 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 138 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 21 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Visual Memory in Grassroots Mobilizations
This chapter investigates the role of images in social movements in activating and nourishing collective memory as a process that has an instant recall value of the past in the present. Using the example of the India Against Corruption movement of 2011–2012, we unpack the role played by visuals as mnemonic devices to trigger and sustain protests and mass mobilizations. Our primary data shows how activists deployed images of Gandhi as well as Gand…
Platforms as Partners? Dissecting the Interplay Between Civil Society Organizing and Social Media Platforms
A few social media platforms have come to play a central role in civil society organizing, often functioning as organizing partners. But on whose terms? As organizing partners, commercial social media platforms shape the conditions under which civil society actors organize, also shaping organizational dynamics, visibility, and collective action. Far from being neutral partners, these platforms become battlegrounds where civil society actors and p…
Digital Media and Grassroots Anti-Corruption
This chapter seeks to contribute to research on anti-corruption technologies by delving into \nJanaagraha’s I Paid A Bribe tech platform; and, more specifically, by investigating \nthe role accorded to technology to enhance civic participation for the fight \nagainst corruption. In doing so, the chapter also contributes to corruption and \nanti-corruption research in a twofold manner: on the one hand by understanding \nthe contribution of civil s…
Digital Technologies and Anti-Corruption
This introduction examines the evolving landscape of digital technologies in the fight against corruption, exploring their potential as powerful levers for anti-corruption efforts and their far-reaching implications for the anti-corruption sector. The introduction argues that three key areas merit further exploration in the context of digital technologies and anti-corruption. First, the role of digital technologies, particularly social media and …
Addressing corruption through visual tools in India
In the past decades, several grassroots movement organizations across the world have tackled the issue of corruption with the aim of mobilizing knowledge on this widespread problem. In our paper, we look at three bottom-up civil society organisations and collective actors fighting for greater transparency and curbing of corruption in Indian society, highlighting how they employ visuals to debate on these issues and to communicate their mission to…
Unveiling the layers of data activism
Developed by tech-savvy citizens, Rosie is a bot that autonomously checks the public spending of elected representatives of the Brazilian Lower Chamber and uses Twitter to engage peoplein discussing suspicious findings. Rosie is the most visible face of Operação Serenata de Amor (Operation Love Serenade), a data-enabled activism initiative that revolves around the creation, use and dissemination of open data to hold politicians accountable and em…
Digital media, diasporic groups, and the transnational dimension of anti-regime movements
Drawing on the case of the Hirak movement born in Algeria in 2019, this article casts light on the mechanisms of transformation of the anti-regime movement when it comes to the transnational dimension. Based on a qualitative case-study research design, the article first unpacks the transformative dynamics of the movement when it bypasses the context of origins regarding the framing, organizational, and protesting dimensions. Then, the article loo…
Movement cultures and media in grassroots politics
In the past two decades, a rising number of studies have investigated the complex relationship between the media and social movements. Within this body of research, media technologies are considere
Environmental Movement Interventions in Tourism and Energy Development in the North Atlantic
This article compares environmental movement engagement in energy and tourism development in Norway and Iceland by bridging the social movement societies (SMSoc) and the players and arenas perspectives. Results are based on field observation and interviews, as well as web-based textual analysis and a preliminary online survey. Results show that Norway is an institutionalized and multi-level social movement society with a mix of professionalized a…
The grounded theory method to study data-enabled activism against corruption
Anti-corruption efforts from the grassroots that make use of digital media to hinder corrupt behaviors are flourishing worldwide. In many cases, these efforts see activists interact with big data along with other types of data. They do this in the framework of broader communicative infrastructure in which activists create, employ, and spread big data to support their struggles. As well, they do so differently, according to a diverse range of acti…
Comparing hybrid media systems in the digital age
The relationship between media and politics today is deeply entrenched in the wide use of information and communication technologies to the point that scholars speak about the emergence of hybrid media systems in which older and newer media logics combine. However, it is still unclear how the configuration of hybrid media systems changes across countries today, especially with regard to the interconnection between media and politics. In the artic…
Comparing Digital Protest Media Imaginaries
This article presents findings from an empirical study of repertoires of contention and communication engaged during anti-austerity protests by the Indignados in Spain, the precarious generation in Italy, and the Aganaktismenoi in Greece. Drawing on 60 semistructured interviews with activists and independent media producers involved in the 2011 wave of contention, we bring together social movement and communications theoretical frameworks to pre…
A situated understanding of digital technologies in social movements. Media ecology and media practice approaches
The article tackles two main aspects related to the interaction between social movements and digital technologies. First, it reflects on the need to include and combine different theoretical approaches in social movement studies so as to construct more meaningful understanding of how social movement actors deals with digital technologies and with what outcomes in societies. In particular, the article argues that media ecology and media practice a…
Media ecologies and protest movements
Studies adopting the media ecology metaphor to investigate social movements form a promising strand of literature that has emerged in the last years to overcome the communicative reductionism permeating the study of the relation between social movements and communication technologies. However, contributions that apply ecological visions to protest are scattered, and only seldom connect their analyses to more general media ecological frameworks. T…
Media Practices and Protest Politics
How do precarious workers employed in call-centres, universities, the fashion industry and many other labour markets organise, struggle and communicate to become recognised, influential political subjects? "Media Practices and Protest Politics; How Precarious Workers Mobilise" reveals the process by which individuals at the margins of the labour market and excluded from the welfare state communicate and struggle outside the realm of institutional…
Media and Revolt
Mediation and Protest Movements
Visions of Protest. A Media‐Historic Perspective on Images in Social Movements
Social movements and the messages they wish to spread are essentially visual phenomena. Although this is both an obvious and momentous assertion, social movement research has been hesitant to integrate visual data. Until lately, most insights into the use of images in social movements originated from historical and media studies. This contribution presents the recent surge in literature devoted to the visual analysis of social movements. It focus…
Media Practices, Mediation Processes, and Mediatization in the Study of Social Movements
The aim of this article is to explore the use of 3 concepts of media studies—media practices, mediation, and mediatization—in order to build a conceptual framework to study social movements and the media. The article first provides a critical review of the literature about media and movements. Secondly, it offers an understanding of social movements as processes in which activists perform actions according to different temporalities and connect t…
Advances in the Visual Analysis of Social Movements
Electoral Campaigning 2.0—The Case of Italian Regional Elections
This article investigates the use of social media by the 53 candidates for governor at the last Italian regional elections in April 2010 and further explores the two hypotheses on the role of online technologies for political parties—the “politics as usual” and the “equalization” hypotheses—which begin from two different points of view: first, regional elections, and second, the candidate's appropriation, negotiation, or resistance to the converg…
ICTs in national and transnational mobilizations
This article deals with the use of ICTs in national and transnational mobilizations. The case study under investigation is the Euro Mayday Parade (EMP) against precarity, which occurred at both the national and transnational level. The articles focus on three aspects of social movement activities. First, organizational processes in which ICTs are used at both the national and transnational level of the EMP in combination with face-to-face interac…
Serpica Naro and the Others. The Media Sociali Experience in Italian Struggles Against Precarity
Social movements are also producers of symbolic resources, since they construct new collective identities and provide alternative system of meanings to societies. This was particularly significant with regard to recent struggles against work insecurity in Italy. There, in a discursive context dominated by the so-called ‘flexibility political mantra’, activists raised their voice in order to identify a novel social problem, precarity, and a novel …
Images within the Precarity Movement in Italy
The recent cycle of social struggles against precarity in Italy has been characterized by an extensive use of images representing precarious workers. This contribution explores this in the case of the Euro Mayday Parade (EMP) protest campaign. The subversion of existing popular culture traditions was the main objective of the activists' newly created icons such as San Precario, Serpica Naro and other visual tools. The visual work on gender in the…
Media Practices, Mediation Processes, and Mediatization in the Study of Social Movements
The aim of this article is to explore the use of 3 concepts of media studies—media practices, mediation, and mediatization—in order to build a conceptual framework to study social movements and the media. The article first provides a critical review of the literature about media and movements. Secondly, it offers an understanding of social movements as processes in which activists perform actions according to different temporalities and connect t…
Visions of Protest. A Media‐Historic Perspective on Images in Social Movements
Social movements and the messages they wish to spread are essentially visual phenomena. Although this is both an obvious and momentous assertion, social movement research has been hesitant to integrate visual data. Until lately, most insights into the use of images in social movements originated from historical and media studies. This contribution presents the recent surge in literature devoted to the visual analysis of social movements. It focus…
A situated understanding of digital technologies in social movements. Media ecology and media practice approaches
The article tackles two main aspects related to the interaction between social movements and digital technologies. First, it reflects on the need to include and combine different theoretical approaches in social movement studies so as to construct more meaningful understanding of how social movement actors deals with digital technologies and with what outcomes in societies. In particular, the article argues that media ecology and media practice a…
The grounded theory method to study data-enabled activism against corruption
Anti-corruption efforts from the grassroots that make use of digital media to hinder corrupt behaviors are flourishing worldwide. In many cases, these efforts see activists interact with big data along with other types of data. They do this in the framework of broader communicative infrastructure in which activists create, employ, and spread big data to support their struggles. As well, they do so differently, according to a diverse range of acti…
Comparing hybrid media systems in the digital age
The relationship between media and politics today is deeply entrenched in the wide use of information and communication technologies to the point that scholars speak about the emergence of hybrid media systems in which older and newer media logics combine. However, it is still unclear how the configuration of hybrid media systems changes across countries today, especially with regard to the interconnection between media and politics. In the artic…
Electoral Campaigning 2.0—The Case of Italian Regional Elections
This article investigates the use of social media by the 53 candidates for governor at the last Italian regional elections in April 2010 and further explores the two hypotheses on the role of online technologies for political parties—the “politics as usual” and the “equalization” hypotheses—which begin from two different points of view: first, regional elections, and second, the candidate's appropriation, negotiation, or resistance to the converg…
Images within the Precarity Movement in Italy
The recent cycle of social struggles against precarity in Italy has been characterized by an extensive use of images representing precarious workers. This contribution explores this in the case of the Euro Mayday Parade (EMP) protest campaign. The subversion of existing popular culture traditions was the main objective of the activists' newly created icons such as San Precario, Serpica Naro and other visual tools. The visual work on gender in the…
Unveiling the layers of data activism
Developed by tech-savvy citizens, Rosie is a bot that autonomously checks the public spending of elected representatives of the Brazilian Lower Chamber and uses Twitter to engage peoplein discussing suspicious findings. Rosie is the most visible face of Operação Serenata de Amor (Operation Love Serenade), a data-enabled activism initiative that revolves around the creation, use and dissemination of open data to hold politicians accountable and em…
Serpica Naro and the Others. The Media Sociali Experience in Italian Struggles Against Precarity
Social movements are also producers of symbolic resources, since they construct new collective identities and provide alternative system of meanings to societies. This was particularly significant with regard to recent struggles against work insecurity in Italy. There, in a discursive context dominated by the so-called ‘flexibility political mantra’, activists raised their voice in order to identify a novel social problem, precarity, and a novel …
Media Practices and Protest Politics
How do precarious workers employed in call-centres, universities, the fashion industry and many other labour markets organise, struggle and communicate to become recognised, influential political subjects? "Media Practices and Protest Politics; How Precarious Workers Mobilise" reveals the process by which individuals at the margins of the labour market and excluded from the welfare state communicate and struggle outside the realm of institutional…
Platforms as Partners? Dissecting the Interplay Between Civil Society Organizing and Social Media Platforms
A few social media platforms have come to play a central role in civil society organizing, often functioning as organizing partners. But on whose terms? As organizing partners, commercial social media platforms shape the conditions under which civil society actors organize, also shaping organizational dynamics, visibility, and collective action. Far from being neutral partners, these platforms become battlegrounds where civil society actors and p…
Digital Technologies and Anti-Corruption
This introduction examines the evolving landscape of digital technologies in the fight against corruption, exploring their potential as powerful levers for anti-corruption efforts and their far-reaching implications for the anti-corruption sector. The introduction argues that three key areas merit further exploration in the context of digital technologies and anti-corruption. First, the role of digital technologies, particularly social media and …
Addressing corruption through visual tools in India
In the past decades, several grassroots movement organizations across the world have tackled the issue of corruption with the aim of mobilizing knowledge on this widespread problem. In our paper, we look at three bottom-up civil society organisations and collective actors fighting for greater transparency and curbing of corruption in Indian society, highlighting how they employ visuals to debate on these issues and to communicate their mission to…
Images within the Precarity Movement in Italy
The recent cycle of social struggles against precarity in Italy has been characterized by an extensive use of images representing precarious workers. This contribution explores this in the case of the Euro Mayday Parade (EMP) protest campaign. The subversion of existing popular culture traditions was the main objective of the activists' newly created icons such as San Precario, Serpica Naro and other visual tools. The visual work on gender in the…
ICTs in national and transnational mobilizations
This article deals with the use of ICTs in national and transnational mobilizations. The case study under investigation is the Euro Mayday Parade (EMP) against precarity, which occurred at both the national and transnational level. The articles focus on three aspects of social movement activities. First, organizational processes in which ICTs are used at both the national and transnational level of the EMP in combination with face-to-face interac…
Serpica Naro and the Others. The Media Sociali Experience in Italian Struggles Against Precarity
Social movements are also producers of symbolic resources, since they construct new collective identities and provide alternative system of meanings to societies. This was particularly significant with regard to recent struggles against work insecurity in Italy. There, in a discursive context dominated by the so-called ‘flexibility political mantra’, activists raised their voice in order to identify a novel social problem, precarity, and a novel …
Electoral Campaigning 2.0—The Case of Italian Regional Elections
This article investigates the use of social media by the 53 candidates for governor at the last Italian regional elections in April 2010 and further explores the two hypotheses on the role of online technologies for political parties—the “politics as usual” and the “equalization” hypotheses—which begin from two different points of view: first, regional elections, and second, the candidate's appropriation, negotiation, or resistance to the converg…
Advances in the Visual Analysis of Social Movements
Media and Revolt
Mediation and Protest Movements
Visions of Protest. A Media‐Historic Perspective on Images in Social Movements
Social movements and the messages they wish to spread are essentially visual phenomena. Although this is both an obvious and momentous assertion, social movement research has been hesitant to integrate visual data. Until lately, most insights into the use of images in social movements originated from historical and media studies. This contribution presents the recent surge in literature devoted to the visual analysis of social movements. It focus…
Media Practices, Mediation Processes, and Mediatization in the Study of Social Movements
The aim of this article is to explore the use of 3 concepts of media studies—media practices, mediation, and mediatization—in order to build a conceptual framework to study social movements and the media. The article first provides a critical review of the literature about media and movements. Secondly, it offers an understanding of social movements as processes in which activists perform actions according to different temporalities and connect t…
Media ecologies and protest movements
Studies adopting the media ecology metaphor to investigate social movements form a promising strand of literature that has emerged in the last years to overcome the communicative reductionism permeating the study of the relation between social movements and communication technologies. However, contributions that apply ecological visions to protest are scattered, and only seldom connect their analyses to more general media ecological frameworks. T…
Media Practices and Protest Politics
How do precarious workers employed in call-centres, universities, the fashion industry and many other labour markets organise, struggle and communicate to become recognised, influential political subjects? "Media Practices and Protest Politics; How Precarious Workers Mobilise" reveals the process by which individuals at the margins of the labour market and excluded from the welfare state communicate and struggle outside the realm of institutional…
Comparing Digital Protest Media Imaginaries
This article presents findings from an empirical study of repertoires of contention and communication engaged during anti-austerity protests by the Indignados in Spain, the precarious generation in Italy, and the Aganaktismenoi in Greece. Drawing on 60 semistructured interviews with activists and independent media producers involved in the 2011 wave of contention, we bring together social movement and communications theoretical frameworks to pre…
A situated understanding of digital technologies in social movements. Media ecology and media practice approaches
The article tackles two main aspects related to the interaction between social movements and digital technologies. First, it reflects on the need to include and combine different theoretical approaches in social movement studies so as to construct more meaningful understanding of how social movement actors deals with digital technologies and with what outcomes in societies. In particular, the article argues that media ecology and media practice a…
Comparing hybrid media systems in the digital age
The relationship between media and politics today is deeply entrenched in the wide use of information and communication technologies to the point that scholars speak about the emergence of hybrid media systems in which older and newer media logics combine. However, it is still unclear how the configuration of hybrid media systems changes across countries today, especially with regard to the interconnection between media and politics. In the artic…
Movement cultures and media in grassroots politics
In the past two decades, a rising number of studies have investigated the complex relationship between the media and social movements. Within this body of research, media technologies are considere
Environmental Movement Interventions in Tourism and Energy Development in the North Atlantic
This article compares environmental movement engagement in energy and tourism development in Norway and Iceland by bridging the social movement societies (SMSoc) and the players and arenas perspectives. Results are based on field observation and interviews, as well as web-based textual analysis and a preliminary online survey. Results show that Norway is an institutionalized and multi-level social movement society with a mix of professionalized a…
The grounded theory method to study data-enabled activism against corruption
Anti-corruption efforts from the grassroots that make use of digital media to hinder corrupt behaviors are flourishing worldwide. In many cases, these efforts see activists interact with big data along with other types of data. They do this in the framework of broader communicative infrastructure in which activists create, employ, and spread big data to support their struggles. As well, they do so differently, according to a diverse range of acti…
Digital media, diasporic groups, and the transnational dimension of anti-regime movements
Drawing on the case of the Hirak movement born in Algeria in 2019, this article casts light on the mechanisms of transformation of the anti-regime movement when it comes to the transnational dimension. Based on a qualitative case-study research design, the article first unpacks the transformative dynamics of the movement when it bypasses the context of origins regarding the framing, organizational, and protesting dimensions. Then, the article loo…
Addressing corruption through visual tools in India
In the past decades, several grassroots movement organizations across the world have tackled the issue of corruption with the aim of mobilizing knowledge on this widespread problem. In our paper, we look at three bottom-up civil society organisations and collective actors fighting for greater transparency and curbing of corruption in Indian society, highlighting how they employ visuals to debate on these issues and to communicate their mission to…
Unveiling the layers of data activism
Developed by tech-savvy citizens, Rosie is a bot that autonomously checks the public spending of elected representatives of the Brazilian Lower Chamber and uses Twitter to engage peoplein discussing suspicious findings. Rosie is the most visible face of Operação Serenata de Amor (Operation Love Serenade), a data-enabled activism initiative that revolves around the creation, use and dissemination of open data to hold politicians accountable and em…
Digital Media and Grassroots Anti-Corruption
This chapter seeks to contribute to research on anti-corruption technologies by delving into \nJanaagraha’s I Paid A Bribe tech platform; and, more specifically, by investigating \nthe role accorded to technology to enhance civic participation for the fight \nagainst corruption. In doing so, the chapter also contributes to corruption and \nanti-corruption research in a twofold manner: on the one hand by understanding \nthe contribution of civil s…
Digital Technologies and Anti-Corruption
This introduction examines the evolving landscape of digital technologies in the fight against corruption, exploring their potential as powerful levers for anti-corruption efforts and their far-reaching implications for the anti-corruption sector. The introduction argues that three key areas merit further exploration in the context of digital technologies and anti-corruption. First, the role of digital technologies, particularly social media and …
Visual Memory in Grassroots Mobilizations
This chapter investigates the role of images in social movements in activating and nourishing collective memory as a process that has an instant recall value of the past in the present. Using the example of the India Against Corruption movement of 2011–2012, we unpack the role played by visuals as mnemonic devices to trigger and sustain protests and mass mobilizations. Our primary data shows how activists deployed images of Gandhi as well as Gand…
Platforms as Partners? Dissecting the Interplay Between Civil Society Organizing and Social Media Platforms
A few social media platforms have come to play a central role in civil society organizing, often functioning as organizing partners. But on whose terms? As organizing partners, commercial social media platforms shape the conditions under which civil society actors organize, also shaping organizational dynamics, visibility, and collective action. Far from being neutral partners, these platforms become battlegrounds where civil society actors and p…
Political science (23 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Law (17 works) · Politics (14 works) · Media studies (13 works) · Social media (11 works) · Social Media and Politics (11 works) · Grassroots (9 works) · Public relations (9 works) · Social movement (9 works)