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Examining Mondoweiss Blog Activists' Claims-Making and Protest Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Graduate Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2016 The trs ategic use of The aF ce of Apartheid: examining Mondoweiss blog activists’ claims- making and protest activities over the Scarlett Johansson and SodaStream controversy Divinity Bridget O'connor-De Losrios Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd Part of the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation O'connor-De Losrios, Divinity Bridget, "The trs ategic use of The aF ce of Apartheid: examining Mondoweiss blog activists’ claims- making and protest activities over the Scarlett oJ hansson and SodaStream controversy" (2016). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 15987. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/15987 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The strategic use of The Face of Apartheid: Examining Mondoweiss blog activists’ claims- making and protest activities over the Scarlett Johansson and SodaStream controversy by Divinity Bridget O’Connor-DeLosRios A dissertation submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Major: Sociology Program of Study Committee: Abdi Kusow, Major Professor Daniel Krier Paul Lasley Robert Mazur Susan Stewart Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2016 Copyright © Divinity Bridget O’Connor-DeLosRios, 2016. All rights reserved. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii ABSTRACT iv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 18 CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY 90 CHAPTER 4. HISTORY 147 CHAPTER 5. ANALYSIS 188 CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSION 259 APPENDIX A: A SUMMARY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW VIOLATIONS BY ISRAEL 306 APPENDIX B: TABLE 2 COLLECTION OF IMAGES 308 APPENDIX C: IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY IRB APPROVAL LETTER 320 BIBLIOGRAPHY 321 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am incredibly grateful to all of the people who have guided, supported, and taught me so much throughout this process. First and foremost, I would like to thank my Major Professor Dr. Abdi Kusow. Not only did you have the patience to guide me to the end, but you helped me conceptualize emergent ideas, and provided insightful feedback on all my drafts. I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to my first advisor, Dr. William F. Woodman. Thank you to the committee members who helped guided me through the process: Dr. Daniel Krier, Dr. Paul Lasley, Dr. Robert Mazur, Dr. Susan Stewart, and of course including Dr. Gloria Jones-Johnson and Dr. Kathleen Waggoner. Rachel M. Burlingame the sociology department administrator (secretary), thank you for your patience and support with never-ending questions and requests for assistance. You are truly the center in our department and one cannot be completely successful without your kind assistance. I cannot thank enough to those individuals I met in Palestine and the respective activists and movement supporters in the state of Iowa for sparking my interest in the conflict and the state of Palestine, specifically Betsy Mayfield (retired fund raiser and film maker with Palestinian sympathies). I am lucky to have an incredible support system in my family and friends. I owe a special thanks to my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Stacy Lindshield. You managed to keep my spirits up and reminded me to believe in the value of this endeavor. To my family, especially my parents, thank you all for the constant love, and pride. Thank you for unconditionally supporting me and having so much unwarranted faith in me and my academic endeavors. Ultimately my thanks (no word in English can truly express what this means) goes to my children: for paying the ultimate sacrifice for this final product. I hope one day you all truly understand the value of academic dedication and the time commitment that I had to devote towards this project for the greater good of our family. I love you all very much. We cannot fight for our rights and our history as well as the future until we are armed with weapons of criticisms and dedicated consciousness. Edward W. Said. Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it. Mahatma Gandhi We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians Nelson Mandela The global BDS movement for Palestinian rights presents a progressive, anti-racist, sophisticated, sustainable, moral and effective reform of civil, non-violent resistance. It has indeed become one of the key political catalysts and moral anchors for a strengthened, reinvigorated international social movement capable of ending the law of the jungle and upholding in its stead the rule of law, reaffirming the rights of all humans to freedom, equality and dignified living. Our South Africa moment has finally arrived! Omar Barghouti iv ABSTRACT I rely upon the ideas of symbolic interaction generally and the social constructionist approach to social movements in particular to explore the ways in which blog activists strategically use celebrity to generate attention on behalf the BDS campaign against SodaStream and to communicate claims and grievances on behalf of the wider Palestinian movement. Using grounded theory and mix-methods, I employed a process-oriented approach to collect and analyze three types of data: 1. text, 2. images, and 3. data I created quantitatively from the qualitative data extracted from Mondoweiss blog articles published from January to March 2014. The study addressed 1. in what ways blog activists strategically use celebrity to draw attention to the wider Palestinian movement’s claims and grievances; and 2. how blog activists maintained enduring interest in campaign activities for mobilizing social action and social change over time. The study examined how the SodaStream announcement of the Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson as their Global Brand Ambassador, which blog activities immediately labeled her as The Face of Apartheid, was used as an opportunity to provoke a response from the celebrity and to contest the authenticity of her reputation as a humanitarian fighting to end poverty. I identify how blog activities strategically utilize Johansson in multiple ways to problematize her as a spectacle to communicate claims and to generate attention. Blog activists utilized her responses as a further opportunity to strategically use her celebrity to sustain interest by politicizing her humanitarian reputation. This was intended to motivate action as they attached their contestation over her humanitarian reputation to key external issues surrounding the BDS campaign against SodaStream; ultimately legitimizing The Face of Apartheid label, a celebrity who chose to be on the wrong side of history. v Key words: Palestine; BDS campaign against SodaStream; Scarlett Johansson; blog activists and social movement creative tactics and strategies; perceived threat opportunity; turning points; qualitative methods 1 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION The history of social movement activity and protest has had a tenuous relationship with mainstream media particularly with newspapers and television, which are perceived as dominated or influenced by elite actors and/or the state who are also often the primary targets of social movement campaigns. Boycotts have played a central role in social movement protest activity and it is considered a successful campaign tactic. Such tactics have since found their counterparts online as alternative media have afforded social movements with the tools and platforms to change the playing field of contentious politics. Social movements now have the potential for harnessing greater control on how their images and messages are presented and this can lead to effective mobilization for social action and social change. The BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement has structured their boycott campaigns around anti-apartheid claims-making and protest activities. Peteet (2005) advocates the practice of labeling people, actions, and events; particularly the “strategic” use of the label “apartheid” in the Israeli-Palestinian context by making parallels between apartheid South Africa and modern-day Israeli occupation of Palestine (Lowstedt 2014). Such anti-apartheid movements employ rhetorical and persuasive strategies and tactics stemming from human rights discourses that evoke shame and blame in their cultural and consumer campaigns to apply pressure to the apartheid state and their supporters. They also direct their activities towards entertainers (such as musicians or celebrities) to take advantage of their carefully crafted reputations and draw them into the political debate by making them respond to the debate, but ultimately to generate attention to wider movement’s claims and grievances. Subsequently, alternative media is changing how the world ‘sees’ and ‘talks’ about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Although both Israel and Palestinian movements engaged in ‘politics 2 of representations’ over what is to be taken as ‘truthful’ or the most accurate representation of the conflict, such counter claims-makings and confrontations are increasingly being taken online in what is referred to as ‘social media wars.’ This reflects a novel form
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