Disrupting the media frame at Greenham Common: a new chapter in the history of mediations?

Abstract

Drawing on Martin-Barbero's insistence on analysing the media's complex processes of social `mediation' and Scannell's insistence on grasping the phenomenal complexity of the media frame and how people interact with it, it is argued that an important, relatively neglected, dimension of the disruptive power of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp (1981-) has been its challenge to the terms of the media frame, the `struggle for visibility' it represents. This struggle for visibility is examined in two stages - in relation to the early years of intense media coverage and in relation to the later years of media silence. In the concluding section, connections are opened up between Greenham Common and recent, more obviously `mediated' forms of protest action.