Autonomous Movements and Their Media

Abstract

Social movements respond and adapt to the social and historical environment, and global connections have allowed activists to envision an array of alternatives. This has led present-day movements toward autonomous practices, such as non-hierarchical leadership, prefigurative politics, and decentralizing Western perspectives. Autonomous movements’ communication and media projects are formed by these political ideals and epistemologies, dependent upon their contextual situation. Such movements see change as inevitable and rigidity and dogmatism as stifling to the political imagination. Despite criticisms leveled against autonomous practices from other leftist political paradigms, these prefigured alternatives create change in the small and ephemeral ways available to them. This research outlines the political parameters of many current social movements, offering a framework by which to study grassroots media endeavors.