Social movements, protests and types of communication
Since the foundation of the first society, its members had created the certain hierarchy, which implies to the distribution of roles and responsibilities. During the several past ages the evolution of that hierarchy started being called “social classes”. Generally, it is a division of people into different groups, those main distinctions are based on gender, ethnicity and age. In the real world, the existence of the social classes makes the lives of people extremely different. The inequality that follows the division leads to unequal chances in the majority of instances: environment, prosperity and even life expectancy. However, the society keeps trying to align the inequality through a variety of methods, one of them is the concept of democracy and all the aspects included in it: gender, class, age, ethnicity. In democratic countries, people have the same rights and are responsible before the law equally. The electoral democracy also provides every citizen a right to choose how they want to live their life, what government they want to run the country and so on. In spite of this, sometimes there are significant differences in opinions of the public and the ruling party, which may lead to significant changes in a governmental system or a radical change of the whole system. In some cases, public dissatisfaction outgrows into the massive demonstrations, protests and at the end revolution. “Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death”. (Robespierre. M., 1790). This is the quote from the Great French Revolution, which is a great example of public dissatisfaction and opinion expression. Nowadays, the revolution attempts are extremely rare event in the developed countries with electoral democracy, also the government creates more approaches for maintaining normal relation with citizens. Nevertheless, we still have protest and a variety of social movements for controversial topics on which the two sides did not reach an agreement or were not heard. Horizontal and vertical types of communication are frequently met in a different spheres of society organization, and each type has its own significant advantage over the other. However, in some cases the use of a particular form of communication may generate a variety of social movements or public protests in a society.
Communication plays a vital role in almost every aspect of human life. It helps people to develop relationships, share information and gain essential resources for surviving. The article Horizontal and vertical communication as determinants of professional and organizational identification” by Jos Bartels discusses the two types of communication applied to the job, the professional environment. Communication is separated for two sides: vertical and horizontal. Vertical communication can be understood as a communication between the superiors and subordinates of the organization. As a rule, vertical communication is work-related and travels top-down and bottom-up within the organization’s hierarchy (Downs and Adrian, 2004; Goldhaber, 1993). Top-down communication mainly is comprised of information regarding the organization’s strategy. This includes dimensions of communication climate such as “adequate information provision”, “support of top management” and “reliability of top management”. Bottom-up communication is the information sent from the work floor to management level and encompasses, for example, employee opportunities to participate in decision-making. (Bartels, J., Peters, O., De Jong, M., Pruyn, A., & Van Der Molen, M. (2010). Horizontal and vertical communication as determinants of professional and organisational identification. Personnel Review, 39(2), 210-226.). Vertical communication is necessary to communicate the distinguishing characteristics of an organization, which may then contribute to employees’ organizational identification. (Smidts et al., 2001), Likewise, there is a tendency, the more positively an employee accepts the vertical communication, the more strongly they will identify with their organization. On the other side, horizontal communication is both task-related and informal and occurs between people on an equal footing in the hierarchy (Postmes, 2003). Task-related communication is the exchange of task information, such as that regarding the fine-tuning of activities. Informal contact includes conversations between employees about more private matters not particularly vital for task performance (Postmes et al., 2001). The type has a has a tendency as well as the previous one, where the more an employee accepts the horizontal communication, the more strongly they will identify with their profession. Here, I would like to note that it also relates and can be interpreted from the perspective of the relationship between the government and its citizens, and citizens with each other.
In the modern world, media is and irreplaceable and an essential tool in the public communication. It provides the society with news, alerts and a lot of other information. Most people are tended to use the mainstream media, which are usually a profit seeking organizations and may provide the only information in which the government or the other individual is interested in. Because of that obstacle, public created the alternative media, that does not depend on the state and commercial offers and gives a more realistic perspective on cases by involving as much public participation as it can. So, it means that public has a whole control over the type of distributed information and government is not able to affect it. The great example of the usefulness of the alternative media is Egypt political revolution 2011. Using a variety of social media platforms – in particular, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr – pro-democracy activists (especially youth) in Egypt were able to mobilize mass participation in a popular uprising against the regime of Hosni Mabarak. (Straw, W., Gabrielle, S., & Wagman, I. (2011). Chapter 11/ Alternative Media. Intersections of Media and Communication. Concepts and Critical Frameworks (pp. 197-213)). During the Egyptian uprising, many observers, including some journalists and analysts, mocked the idea that alternative and social media might played an important role in the demonstrations. (Straw, W., Gabrielle, S., & Wagman, I. (2011). Chapter 11/ Alternative Media. Intersections of Media and Communication. Concepts and Critical Frameworks (pp. 197-213).
Probably, one of the most spread appearance of the democracy is social movement. Generally, it is a grouping of people which focus on social or political issues. It is usually created to make changes or carry the existing things in a society, and is done by a like-minded people. A great example of public unity and dissatisfaction is Occupy movement – international protest movement in which tens of thousands took over the public squares and streets and participated in offline and online actions. For example, several hundred people took over Zacotti Park near the New York Stock Exchange on the Wall Street. (Kidd, D. (2015). Occupy and Social Movement Communication. (pp.457-468)). In 951 cities in 82 countries. Inspired by the uprisings in Egypt, Greece, Spain and Mexico, occupy was far from spontaneous; it converged many singular struggles of students, artists, trade unionists, anti-poverty groups, media activists and hackers. (Kidd, D. (2015). Occupy and Social Movement Communication. (pp.457-468)). The main idea is to inward, prefigure direct grassroots democracy through cultivation of democratic communications. (Kidd, D. (2015). Occupy and Social Movement Communication. (pp.457-468)). Moreover, the occupy movement has significantly changed the news ecology. Rather than focusing on a media-friendly protests, participants documented protests, reported on individuals’ stories and provided the analysis themselves. They by-passed the residual media gate-keepers by circulating their news on a number of different media platforms. For example, “Occupy Wall Street Journal” or live video stream “Global Revolution”, also YouTube video reports. (Kidd, D. (2015). Occupy and Social Movement Communication. (pp.457-468)). Here, it is clear that occupy represents itself as a movement without any hierarchy – horizontal organization.
The misunderstanding between the government and the citizens may generate a mass public protests. Public protest is a certain way of expression of the disagreement with government in a public way. It may be performed by a single individual with less chances to change the situation, or by the thousands of people who fill the whole square with a lot more chances to make changes. Africa is the poorest in the economic sense continent on the planet with a big population and extremely low living standards. Over the last decades, people are keep trying to maintain a stable situation in a majority of regions, and also develop the economy and educational systems. An excellent example is the fail attempt of the neo-liberal local government to make a structural adjustment policies for building and making functional markets. These policies have failed to promote development, exacerbated gender inequalities, and deepened entanglement within imperialist economic relations. (Samson, M. (2007). Developmental Local Government in Post-Apartheid Africa. A Feminist Rethinking of the State and Development in the Context of Neo-liberalism. Africa Development (pp.26-57)). Another tremendous issue was that local government was not respective towards the citizens. White South Africans were enfranchised to participate in whites-only elected local government, and received services comparable to those in the First World. By contrast, during apartheid colored, Indian and African South Africans received substandard services or did not receive at all. (Samson, M. (2007). Developmental Local Government in Post-Apartheid Africa. A Feminist Rethinking of the State and Development in the Context of Neo-liberalism. Africa Development (pp.26-57)). So, this system is unrepresentative, undemocratic. Here, the racial and class inequalities integrated from the early ages of colonization. The consequence is the public protest and rent boycotts targeting the Black Local Authorities in the 1980s, that became the starting point for the anti-apartheid struggle. Militant civic movements, largely falling under the umbrella of the United Democratic Front demanded an end to racially based local government and upgrading affordable services. (Chaskalson et al., 1987; Shubane 1991; Tomlinson et al., 2003). All these provided a strong base for the radical change in the ruling party and the system in general. Likewise, the active role of women within the civic movement also foregrounded the importance of addressing gender issues within a new democratic local government dispensation. (Samson, M. (2007). Developmental Local Government in Post-Apartheid Africa. A Feminist Rethinking of the State and Development in the Context of Neo-liberalism. Africa Development (pp.26-57)). I think that struggles with gender and race in a post-slavery Africa may be a consequence of the establishment of the critical paradigm. Which has moved from an exclusive concern with working-class subordination to a wider view of other kinds of domination, especially in relation to youth, alternative subcultures, gender and ethnicity. (McQuail, D. (n.d.) Concepts and Models for Mass Communication. McQuail's Mass Communication Theory (6th ed.)).
As it was said before, popular protest often lead to important changes in the personal composition and policies of elites, which considerably affect the structure and operation of authoritarian regimes, and at times produce regime change. The previous examples are about the democratic countries, where people are given a variety of freedoms and rights. On a contrast, there is the other side – non-democratic country or authoritarian. Egypt is not the most clear and bright example of authoritarian regime, but post-soviet countries are. In authoritarian regime, ordinary people normally cannot seriously oppose the government, because they are largely outside the political process and almost do not have an access to the organizational, financial, media and other resources. The public protests are not frequent in these regimes. However, there are some regimes that are less strict than totalitarianism and sultanism, they provide some space and resources for the organization and action of opposition forces. (Vladisavljević, N. (2014). Popular protest in authoritarian regimes: Evidence from communist and post-communist states. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 14(2), (pp.139-157)). In Ukraine, a competitive authoritarian regime emerged after the Soviet Union’s break-up, that is under Kravchuk, and consolidated after Kuchma was elected president in 1994. Authoritarian rule unfolded within a formally democratic framework and involved intense competition within and outside the center of political power surrounding the president. Authorities harassed opposition candidates, but the opposition was not banned. In addition to authoritarian institutions, the president relied on the oligarchs – often former communist and youth officials and state enterprise managers, who became rich through close ties with government and gained great privileges in privatization and energy trade, acquired state subsidies and monopolies, and avoided paying taxes. (Vladisavljević, N. (2014). Popular protest in authoritarian regimes: Evidence from communist and post-communist states. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 14(2), (pp.139-157)). The oligarchs controlled large business conglomerates, huge financial resources, influential electronic and print media, and strongly influenced government, even the security services. Because of weak state institutions and political parties and of regionally concentrated oligarchic interests, the president served more as an arbiter among the oligarchs and less as the commander-in-chief. (Vladisavljević, N. (2014). Popular protest in authoritarian regimes: Evidence from communist and post-communist states. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 14(2), (pp.139-157)). There were no significant popular protests in the 1990s, despite a severe economic crisis. Large protests broke out in February 2001, 20,000–30,000 people lasted for days, and a tent city appeared in the center of Kiev. Under the slogan of ‘Ukraine without Kuchma’, protesters demanded his resignation but failed to get broader popular support. (Vladisavljević, N. (2014). Popular protest in authoritarian regimes: Evidence from communist and post-communist states. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 14(2), (pp.139-157)). In the 2004 election campaign, opposition parties formed a large coalition and worked together with civic associations, social movements and NGOs, partly following the example of successful anti-regime mobilization in Serbia and Georgia. Massive demonstrations produced divisions within the ruling party, led the agreement to do the elections and introduce the constitutional reform that would reduce the president’s power and strengthen parliament. Vladisavljević, N. (2014). Popular protest in authoritarian regimes: Evidence from communist and post-communist states. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 14(2), (pp.139-157)).
In conclusion, the provided examples of public protests and social movements in different regimes showed that not only sustained, and occasionally massive, public protest is possible, but also showed that it may strongly influence political development. As it was mentioned at the beginning, there are different types of communications, but the most essential point is to find a right way approach it in the existing situation.