Week 12 blog contribution

 

Week 12 blog contribution

Mass Media and the Diffusion of Collective Action in Authoritarian Regimes: The June 1953 East German Uprising

Charles Crabtree, Holger L Kern, Steven Pfaff

International Studies Quarterly, Volume 62, Issue 2, June 2018, Pages 301–314, https://doi-org.helicon.vuw.ac.nz/10.1093/isq/sqy007

This article uses the cases study of the q953 uprising in east Germany to demonstrate the link between ‘collective mobilisation against authoritarian regimes to foreign media broadcasts’

The East German uprising was a protest the working conditions the government placed on the people. Some political scientists attribute the catalysts of the uprising to west Germany formal alignment with the resort and the reaction this revived from east Germany and the soviets. I learnt this from this website: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/east-germanuprising#:~:text=NOTE%20TO%20READERS-,The%20East%20German%20Uprising%2C%201953,East%20German%20cities%20and%20towns.

So the issue of the case study is the rigorous demands and working conditions placed on those in east Germany. The article analysed this through the concepts of broadcast media and the diffusion of collective action. The authors attribute the effect of media exposure caused the uprising because of the information diffusion of Radio in the American Sector RIAS broadcasts.

Information diffusion is described by Tarrow (2010, 209) as the “emulation of new forms of contention on the part of actors who learn, through impersonal means such as the media, of the actions of those who initiated those forms.”

The media piece analyses data collected to determine the influence of RIAS on the uprising.

In the author's conclusion of their data analysis of the case study East Germany uprising 1953 it was found that the true catalyst of the uprising itself was the usage  ‘of media-driven diffusion of rebellious collective action’ within the authoritarian regime in place at the time

This piece was an interesting read. I found this because it shows how media have been able to cause great political change, like the #Blacklivesmatter movement, even long before the days of social media. I also found the article had a similar format to our regime analysis assignments.

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