The indignados social movement and the image of the occupied square: the making of a global icon

Abstract

This article is concerned with how the indignados social movement (also known as M15) used distinctive symbolic and visual communication strategies to articulate their collective self-representation as a movement of global citizens. Through social semiotic analysis and critical discourse analysis of textual and visual materials available in the blogs of the encampments of Lisbon, Barcelona and Madrid, the author illuminates how the indignados used the image of the occupied square as a model of dissent and democratic participation, which becomes available for global circulation. Drawing upon Hariman and Lucaites’s conception of iconic image described in No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (2007), the author argues that the image of the occupied square is a global icon that embodies the universal value of democracy. It is suggested that if we want to understand the image of the occupied square as an embodiment of democracy across nationally-defined public spheres, we need to understand the ways in which the indignados, as political agents, devised and used particular protest images to develop and dramatize a particular vision of democracy that resonates strongly with global audiences. The article goes on to show that the image of the occupied square resonates with global audiences because its meanings tap on a repertoire of culturally shared representations of non-violent occupations of urban space in the 20th century (e.g. Tiananmen Square, the American Civil Rights Movement sit-ins) that is powerfully embedded in Western public memory.

Space and the desire for democracy in the 15M

“…It was an attempt to restore “the street as a place of political communication,” as the Barcelona acampada put it (Dhaliwal, 2012, p. 264; see also Jiménez & Estalella, 2011). In the 15M, therefore, agora was the name of a space in which people turned to face each other and participate with each other in asambleas to manage their affairs (Martínez & Bernardos, 2015; Rovisco, 2017, p. 341; Sevilla‐Buitrago, 2015, p. 95). The implied contrast is with a space we might call parliament, a space in which a few government representatives act on behalf of people, stand in for people, as they gather to discuss and make decisions about the affairs of the whole community.…”

“…It is a big, imposing building that seems to be standing right up against the plaza, looming over it with its shoulders thrown back and its chest puffed out (see Figure 1). When the acampada and its asambleas were in full swing, the scene was almost an exact incarnation of the frontispiece of Hobbes’ Leviathan , with the Real Casa de Coreros as the artificial person, looming over the natural persons in the town below (Rovisco, 2017, p. 346). I don’t mean to say that the indignados staged this scene consciously, with copies of Hobbes in their back pocket.…”

Introduction: The Aesthetics of Global Protest : Visual Culture and Communication

“…The question is not how much the material or digital space accounts for but what the interaction between online and offline spaces means for democratic expression, political voice, visibility and notions of solidarity. As an example, protestors playfully subverted the supposedly rigid distinctions between online and offline during the Indignado occupation by creating an 'analogue Twitter' at the height of the Plaça de Catalunya encampment with protestors writing 'tweets' on Post-it notes and sticking them to a pedestal in the square (Rovisco 2017). The presence of digital space offers opportunities to structure interaction across different actors (such as public, protestors, politicians, media, government) with some social media platforms being 'a mechanism to co-constitute and co-configure the digitally networked protest space' (Bennett and Segerberg 2013: 95).…”

Faceless government: civic action in media photographs during the Venezuelan anti-governmental protests of 2017

“…Lin, 2018;Mann, 2019;Ruiz, 2017), and also as part of the process of image-making as an interaction between the protesters, photographers and audiences (e.g. Faulkner, 2013;Rovisco, 2017). The case of the Venezuelan protests in 2017 highlights each of these themes, and thus the article contributes in particular to how visual representations function in terms of performing citizenship and the role of media photography as a part of political struggle within the context of an authoritarian government in a hybrid media environment.…”