Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-2014
Keywords
Social movements, media practices, capitalism, class formation, social media
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444813481199
Abstract
Understanding class as a process of self-making in relation to a particular, historical form of capitalism, in this article we argue that media and communication (from face-to-face and old mediums such as radio to internet-powered tools) must be conceptualized as an emerging structural dimension for class formation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on the Media Mobilizing Project in Philadelphia, a community-based media and communications infrastructure and a network of organizations across the region, we develop a conceptual approach we call concentric practices, which provides us with a framework of how contemporary class formation is occurring through the use of media and communications. Concentric practices we understand and analyze along three overlapping processes, which establish a “common” among the different fragments of the working class: communicative spaces, narrative practices and shared struggles. Analytically, these concentric practices describe a process of thickening and converging of the atomized and fractured neoliberal working class. This model can be employed as a heuristic framework for a host of similarly situated dynamics, aiding in teasing out and better understanding processes of class formation under neoliberal capitalism.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
New Media & Society, v. 16, no. 3, p. 363-380.
This is the author's accepted version of the article.
Scholar Commons Citation
Wolfson, Todd and Funke, Peter N., "Communication, Class and Concentric Media Practices: Developing a Contemporary Rubric" (2014). Government and International Affairs Faculty Publications. 121.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/gia_facpub/121
