LSE Media and Communications PhD Symposium 2015

Struggle and resistance against established and emerging hierarchies and hegemonies constitute one of the central themes in contemporary media and communications research. On one hand, struggle and resistance broadly constitute newsworthy content in the framework of media production practices. On the other, media are themselves used as tools of protest and participation by individuals, groups, and movements actively engaged in modes of struggle and resistance against power in various manifestations. Further, media as discursive and material social forms are also subject to diverse challenges and contestations in media and communications studies. Explorations of this power/resistance dialectic are often considered analytically by drawing upon the opposition or dualism of structure and agency. To what extent do structure and agency serve as a useful heuristic for considering the sorts of questions posed by current scholarship in media and communications?