ABSTRACT
In the UK, the media regulator Ofcom (Office of Communications) periodically conducts research on the kinds of content media consumers find offensive. In their 2016 survey, they presented participants with eight scenarios and asked them about how much the words and gestures described bothered them in the contexts of the situations described. Protest signs fulfill a range of functions beyond communicating the collective views of a group of protestors. They also allow people to express their individual priorities, their specific interpretations of events or policies, and their unique identities or affiliation with particular groups, resulting in what communication scholar Kirsten Weber and her colleagues, in their analysis of signs at the 2017 Women’s March in Washington D.C., call ‘individualized collective action’.
