ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the literature on public interest media advocacy and activism. In so doing, it organizes the literature according to the three primary theoretical perspectives on social movements-framing processes, political opportunities, and mobilizing structures, to refl ect the increased tendency in recent years for scholars to conceptualize public interest media advocacy and activism as a social movement. As this review indicates, public interest media advocacy and activism encompasses a movement that has employed a number of distinct, though overlapping, frames. It comprises a movement with political opportunities that are strongly tied to technological developments and to the conceptualization of policy problems within the policy-making sector. It constitutes a movement that, from a structural standpoint, has both emerged from-and can potentially serve the interests of-a wide range of other social movements, including civil rights and democratization movements, the consumer movement, and the anti-globalization movement. This review considers the implications of these and other characteristics of public interest media advocacy and activism as a social movement in an effort to develop strategic recommendations for the movement as well as recommendations for future research.
