IPP Workshop Series: Applying Gramscian Analysis to Social Movements in the Digital Public Sphere (Ahmet Görgen)

This workshop will present the potential of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to mobilize social groups, especially those comprised of young people, through emerging cultures of broad participation. Over the past ten years, public spheres have been dramatically expanded by participatory web-based technologies. This course will focus on various arguments for and against this central claim by examining historical and present-day understandings of the public sphere, employing Antonio Gramsci’s conception of the public sphere and civil society. His theoretical conceptions will be explored through notions such as hegemony and counter-hegemony, passive revolution, the historical bloc, the war of positions and the war of maneuver. Therefore, the course will give the attendants the theoretical bases to apply Gramsci’s work to their own research interests.

The course will investigate the mobilizing potential of the internet, by examining the political participation of citizens. In theory, the internet contributes to public knowledge via social media platforms that allow for political participation, such as the organization of protests and social movements. Moreover, the workshop will employ specific cases related to the effects of social media on youth mobilization of protests and social movements (e.g., Gezi Protests in Turkey, Arab Spring) for practical application of Gramsci’s concepts.

If you are interested, please register via ipp@ggk.uni-giessen.de