56. Alice Mattoni on the potential of digital media for social movements against corruption

KickBack - The Global Anticorruption Podcast

We welcome Alice Mattoni (@AliceEmme) to the podcast. Alice’s project webpage: https://site.unibo.it/bit-act/en AntiCorrp: https://anticorrp.eu/ Alice’s work with Donatella della Porta on social movements: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/9781118541555.wbiepc010 Fridays for future: https://fridaysforfuture.org/ Black Lives Matter: https://blacklivesmatter.com/ The Tunisian street seller Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi who lit himself on fire, which became a catalyst of the Arab spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi Paper Safety valve or pressure cooker? https://academic.oup.com/joc/article/62/2/212/4085784?login=true Connective action: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661 Pick of the podcast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_(2019_film) Previous Kickback interviews with Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalists: Frederik Obermaier I: https://soundcloud.com/kickback-gap/6-episode-frederik-obermaier Frederik Obermaier II: https://soundcloud.com/kickback-gap/39-frederik-obermaier-on-the-fincen-files-revealing-global-money-laundering-systems David Barboza: https://soundcloud.com/kickback-gap/19-david-barboza-on-investigating-the-hidden-wealth-of-chinese-elites Further reading: Social Movement Outcomes: Bosi, Lorenzo, Marco Giugni, and Katrin Uba, eds. 2016. The Consequences of Social Movements. New York: Cambridge University Press. Protest diffusion: Porta, Donatella della, and Alice Mattoni. 2014. Spreading Protest: Social Movements in Times of Crisis. Colchester, UK: ECPR Press. Political translation: Doerr, Nicole. 2018. Political Translation: How Social Movement Democracies Survive. Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Collective action: Bennett, W. Lance, and Alexandra Segerberg. 2013. The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics. Cambridge University Press. Time stamps: 01:57: Alice on her background in research on social movement, her work on the ANTICORRP project and how collective action is the red thread throughout her work 8:06 What anti-corruption activists and scholars can learn from research on social movements, why it makes more sense to speak of outcomes rather than successes of social movements and the importance of framing behaviors as problematic issues 17:44: on whether a global movement against corruption is feasible 23:34: on the importance of making the negative consequences of corruption visible to spur social movements against it 28:21: on to deal with the dangers that come with conducting research on corruption on the ground and the ethics and safety protocols that Alice developed for her research and why some people do not want to be named an “anti-corruption” activist 35:07: on whether Kickback is an anti-corruption digital media 41:00: on the criticism that protest online is a mere form of slacktivism and the importance of connective actions 50:37: Alice’s pick of the podcast and the importance of investigative journalists in the fight against corruption