Alana Mann







Bursting the 'Brussels bubble': The movement towards transparency on European farm subsidies

While many social movements are using the digital media effectively to develop and sustain collaborations in transnational networks they struggle to get their issues on to the agendas of the mass media and policy-makers. This paper examines a case of cross-border, data-driven investigative journalism that is creating an alternative public sphere for the discussion of issues of food and agriculture in the EU and providing a political opportunity for the advancement of the agenda of European members of the peasant farmers' movement La Via Campesina. Farmsubsidy.org is a network of journalists, researchers, activists and data analysts working together to make the EU farm subsidy system, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), more transparent. Using freedom of information laws (FoI) these actors are pressuring the governments of member states to reveal the 'subsidy millionaires' who are benefiting from a system designed to assist small farmers. This paper argues that the initiative points to new strategic alliances for rural social movements in Europe.

Keywords: investigative journalism, Farmsubsidy.org, alternative public sphere, La Via Campesina, EU food and agriculture policies


References

  1. Atton, Chris (2008) Alternative media theory and journalism practice, Boler, Megan (ed.) Digital media and democracy: Tactics in hard times, Cambridge, MIT Press pp 213-227
  2. Bennett, W. Lance (2003) Communicating global activism: Strengths and vulnerabilities of networked politics, Information, Communication & Society, Vol. 6, No. 2 pp 143-168
  3. Bennett, W. Lance and Segerberg, Alexandra (2012) The logic of connective action, Information, Communicaiton & Society, Vol. 15, No. 5 pp 739-768
  4. Caroll, William and Hackett, Robert (2006) Democratic media theory through the lens of social movement theory, Media, Culture and Society, Vol. 28, No. 1 pp 83-104
  5. Carvajal, Doreen and Castle, Stephen (2009) A US hog giant transforms Eastern Europe, The New York Times, 5 May. Available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/business/global/06smithfield.html?pagewanted= all&_r0, accessed on 1 April, 2013
  6. Carragee, K. and Roefs, W. (2004) The neglect of power in recent framing research. Journal of Communication Research, June pp 214-233
  7. Castells, Manuel (2012) Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the internet Age, Cambridge, Polity
  8. Castells, Manuel (2009) Communication power, New York, USA, Oxford University Press
  9. Clark, John D. (2003) Worlds apart: Civil society and the battle for ethical globalization, Bloomfield, CT, Kumarian
  10. Couldry, Nick (2000) The place of media power: Pilgrims and witnesses of the media age, London and New York, Routledge
  11. Della Porta, D. (ed.) (2007) The global justice movement: Cross-national and transnational perspectives, Boulder, Ca. Paradigm Publishers
  12. DeLuca, K. M., and Peeples, J. (2002) From public sphere to public screen: Democracy, activism, and the 'violence' of Seattle, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol. 19, No. 2 pp 125-151
  13. De Schutter, O. (2009) Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food: Agribusiness and the right to food, 22 December. Available online at http://www.srfood.org/index.php/en/component/content/article/1-latest-news/641-agribusiness-and-the-right-to-food accessed on 8 Februrary, 2013
  14. DiMaggio, Paul, Hargittai, Eszter, Neuman, W. Russell and Robinson, John R. (2001) Radical media: Rebellious communication and social movements, London, Sage
  15. Downing, John (2008) Social movement theories and alternative media: An evaluation and critique, Communication, Culture and Critique, Vol. 1 pp 40-50
  16. Frederick, Howard (1993) Computer networks and the emergence of civil society, Harasim, Linda M. (ed.) Global Networks, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press pp 283-295
  17. Fuchs, Christian (2012) Some reflections on Manuel Castells' book Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the internet age, tripleC, Vol. 10, No. 2
  18. Gamson, William and Wolfsfeld, Gadi (1993) Movements and the media as interacting systems, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 528 pp 114-25
  19. Gitlin, Todd (1980) The whole world is watching: Mass media in the making and unmaking of the New Left, Berkeley, University of California Press
  20. Goffman, Erving (1974) Frame analysis: An essay on the organisation of experience, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press
  21. Habermas, Jurgen (1989) The structural transformation of the public sphere, Cambridge, Polity Press
  22. Hackett, Robert A. and Carroll, William K. (2006) Remaking media: The struggle to democratise political communication, London, Routledge
  23. Hackett, Robert A. and Carroll, William K. (2004) Critical social movements and media reform, Media Development, January pp 1-6
  24. Hackett, Robert and Zhao, Yuezhi (1998) Sustaining democracy? Journalism and the politics of objectivity, Toronto, Oxford University Press
  25. Hallahan, Kirk (1999). Seven models of framing: Implications for public relations, Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol. 11, No. 3 pp 205-242
  26. Hencke, David (2007) So that's where the 100 billion went, Guardian, 22 January. Available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/jan/22/mondaymediasection.freedomofinformation, accessed on 7 April, 2013
  27. Howe, Jeff (2006) The rise of crowdsourcing, Wired, No. 14.06, June. Available online at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html, accessed on 17 April 2013
  28. Itcaina, X., and Cadiiou, S. (2007) Sectoral issues and environmental causes: The mobilisation of the French Basque fishermen after the sinking of the Prestige, French Politics, Vol. 5 pp 315-332
  29. Juris, Jeffrey S. (2007) The new digital media and activist networking within anti-corporate globalisation movements, Inda, Jonathan Xavier and Rosaldo, Renate (eds) The anthropology of globalisation: A reader, Malden, MA., Blackwell pp 189-208
  30. Laer, Jeroen Van and Aelst, Peter Van (2010) Internet and social movement repertoires: opportunities and limitations, Information, Communication and Society, Vol. 13, No. 8, December 2010 pp 1146-1171
  31. La Via Campesina (2007) The Nyèlèni declaration. Available online at http://www.nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290, accessed on 10 June 2010 Langman, Laureen (2005) From virtual public sphere to global justice: A critical theory of internetworked social movements, Sociological Theory, Vol. 23, No. 1 pp 42-74
  32. Lawrence, Felicity (2005) Multinationals, not farmers, reap biggest rewards in Britain's share of CAP payouts, Guardian, 8 December. Available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/dec/08/freedomofinformation.foodanddrink accessed on 20 March 2013
  33. Lokkegaard, Morten (2010) Report on journalism and new media: Creating a public sphere in Europe. Available online at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference=A7-2010-0223&language=EN, accessed on 9 January 2011
  34. Marres, Noortje, and Rogers, Richard (2005) Recipe for tracing the fate of issues and their publics on the web, Latour, Bruno and Wiebel, Peter (eds) Making things public: Atmospheres of democracy, Cambridge, MIT Press pp 922-935
  35. Medrano, Juan (2009) The public sphere and the European Union's political identity, Checkel, Jeffrey and Katzenstein, Peter (eds) European identity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press pp 81-108
  36. McMichael, Philip (2008). Peasants make their own history, but not just as they please, Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 8, Nos 2-3 pp 205-228
  37. Mulvad, Nils (2011) Crowdsourcing in investigative journalism, Global investigative journalism network. Available online at http://gijn.org/2011/04/04/crowdsourcing-in-investigative-journalism/, accessed on 17 April 2013
  38. Nielsen, Nikolaj (2013) Bogus UK farmland received EU farm aid, EU Observer. Available onloine at http://euobserver.com/economic/116211, accessed on 17 April 2013
  39. Olesen, Thomas (2005) Transnational publics: New spaces of social movement activism and the problem of global long-sightedness, Current Sociology, Vol. 53, No. 3 pp 419-440
  40. Pan, Zhongdang and Kosicki, Gerald M. (2001) Framing as a strategic action in public deliberation, Reese, Stephen D., Gandy Jr, Oscar and Grant, August E. (eds) Framing public life: Perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world. Mahwah, NJ., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates pp 7-32
  41. Potter, Clive and Burney, Jonathan (2002) Agricultural multifunctionality in the WTO-legitimate non-trade concern or disguised protectionism? Journal of Rural Studies, Vol. 18 pp 35-47
  42. Rotheham, Lee (n.d) Food for thought: How the Common Agricultural Policy costs families nearly £400 a year, the Taxpayers' Alliance. Available online at http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/cap.pdf, accessed on 7 April 2013
  43. Sassen, S. (2004) Sited materialities with global span, Howard, P. N. and Jones, S. (eds) Society online: The internet in context, London, Sage Publications, Inc. pp 295-306
  44. Stewart, Heather (2006) Who's creaming off EU subsidies?, Observer, 21 March. Available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/may/21/europeanunion.food accessed on 1 April 2013
  45. Tilzey, Mark (2006) Neo-liberalism, the WTO and new modes of agri-environmental governance in the European Union, the USA and Australia, International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, Vol. 14, No. 1 pp 1-28
  46. Tuchman, Gaye (1978) Making news: A study in the construction of reality, New York, Free Press
  47. Watts, D. C. H., Ilbery, B. and Maye, D. (2005) Making reconnections in agro-food geography: Alternative systems of food provision, Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 29, No. 1 pp 22-40
  48. Zald, Mayer N. and McCarthy, John D. (1994) Social movements in an organisational society, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers

Note on the contributor

Dr Alana Mann is a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her book Power shift: Global activism in food politics, is being published by Palgrave Macmillan this year.