Alternative Media and Social Justice Movements: The Development of a Resistance Performance...

Some media scholars, such as Abercrombie and Longhurst (1998), claim that audiences perform against a media-saturated backdrop, making spectacle and narcissism integral to the social construction of reality for audiences; this vision of audience constitutes the spectacle/performance paradigm (SPP). However, the SPP does not account for those audiences who use media actively to resist consumer-oriented spectacle and narcissism within mainstream audience performances. The question thus arises of

how communication scholars can conceptualize audiences whose relationship to mainstream media is predominately resistance rather than spectacle. The purpose of this research was to establish a resistance performance paradigm (RPP) that can be used to conceptualize such resistant audiences. To accomplish this task, we engaged in an empirical study of alternative media and alternative media audiences who are activists in social justice movements-movements that work to advocate for people who are economically, socially, or politically marginalized in local communities and global society (see Frey, 1998; Frey, Pearce, Pollock, Artz, & Murphy, 1996; Ryan, Carragee, & Schwerner, 1998). Social justice activists who are audiences of alternative media represent an important illustration of performances of resistance through the use of media (Atkinson, 2005a; Huesca, 2001). For the purposes of this essay, we defined alternative media as any media that are produced by noncommercial sources and that attempt to transform existing social roles and practices by critiquing and challenging power structures (see Alton, 2002; Downing, 2003; Downing, Ford, Gil, & Stein, 2001; Hebdige, 1979; Jakubowicz, 1991).