Paper at the Nordmedia 2013 conference, Oslo August 8.-10.

1. Mobile media challenging
status quo: smartphones,
social media and the Occupy
movement
Nordmedia 2013
Kjetil Sandvik, MA, PHD, Associate Professor
Dept. of Media, Cognition and Communication
University of Copenhagen

2. The big question
• The impacts and potentials of uses of
various media and uses across media
• Not limited to a solely media
optimistic/utopian og pessimistic/dystopian
approach.

3. What’s going on?
The use of mobile devices and social media
challenging established regimes…
Revolution:
• Rebelling against (the Arab Spring)
• weaponization of social media (e.g. use
of Twitter in the ongoing Gaza conflict)
Evolution (slow changing, long-tailed…):
• Destabilizing and/or distorting: setting new
agendas (Occupy)

4. Agenda
• Occupy Wall Street as an example on how
social media with its democratic potential
and its modes of communication through
network structure, both enables and
shapes the protests against the financial
powers of the world and their role in the
global financial crisis.
• The main characteristics of social media
are the same as the ones defining
Occupy.

5. Mobilizing through media

6. Mobile/networked media
characteristics
• Speed (the quality of networked
communication)
• Availability (the quality of online-ness)
• Usability (the quality of non-expert
systems)
• Mobility (the quality of navavigation and
positioning)

10. Role of the media: from
rebelling to destabilizing
• From centralized gate keeping to open
access and new online democratic voices
• Broadcast media are no longer setting the
agenda without competition
• Information can not be controlled as
before (open access (p2p), file sharing,
hacking, leaking…)

11. Role of the media
• Occupy is defined and shaped by social
media: open, networked, user-driven
• Collaborative, participatory, co-creative
• Dynamic, long-tailed, perpetual beta-
structured…
• Beyond the utopian/dystopian dichotomy
 sub-activist…?

12. Launched through Twitter

13. Driven by networked/networking
users

14. Right here, right now: constant updates

15. Networked communication

16. Any time, any place…

17. Sense of community – without a clear
cut case and a common language

18. Mashed-up communication

19. Summing up
• Creating new democratic modes of debating, discussing,
protesting – through (amongst others) innovative use of mobile
and social media
• Openness, agenda-suggesting and agenda-making rather than
agenda-fulfilling: you do not need to have an answer before
you act!
•  Occupy is not necessarily revolutionary, but it represents a
will to debate and criticize the established power system, its
institutions and logics: occupying discourse!
• And it does so by applying the modes of communication
embedded in social media: collaboration, participation and co-
creation.
• The effect may be long-termed, it may come in the shape of
new democratic initiatives focused on e.g. crowd sourcing,
collective intelligence etc.