In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Hacked Transmissions: Technology and Connective Activism in Italy by Alessandra Renzi
  • Stefania Milan (bio)
Hacked Transmissions: Technology and Connective Activism in Italy By Alessandra Renzi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020. Pp. 280.

Hacked Transmissions by critical media scholar Alessandra Renzi is a deep dive into the exciting journey of the pirate microtelevision movement known as Telestreet, active in Italy between 2002 and 2010 before succumbing to the switch to digital broadcasting. It is a thoughtful ethnography of what the author calls "connective activism"—a type of media activism that centers social justice in collaborative media production and foregrounds an ethics of care in political organization. The book will interest scholars across disciplines, including media studies, new media art, and historians of technology, for two reasons: it provides a unique window into the little-documented trajectory of the Telestreet movement, short lived but with memorable consequences well beyond Italy; it also approaches collaborative media production from the original viewpoint of political reorganization across cycles of struggle, crisscrossing between past and present and media activists' ability to anticipate future technology use.

The Telestreet experience is unique among Western do-it-yourself attempts to support grassroots social movements in articulating their stories. These "rebellious creatures" (p. 2) transmitted locally on analog frequency, covering one or two neighborhoods. Although not licensed and therefore operating as pirate stations, they exploited the "shadow cones" of commercial networks, broadcasting through vacant frequencies in areas that the licensee could not reach due to physical obstacles. To create a TV station, the standard kit, costing on average 1 to 2,000 euros, comprised basic equipment like an antenna, transmitter, and video camera, making it affordable for most. Run by volunteers and rigorously not-for-profit, Telestreet stations were closely connected with the Italian grassroots movement scene. Like the 1970s radio libere (free radio) movement, Telestreets inspired similar initiatives, for instance in Spain, France, and Argentina. In 2005, the Telestreet project won a distinction award in the "Digital Communities" category from the Prix Ars Electronica of Linz, Austria, one of the world's most prestigious media arts competitions.

Adopting a collaborative "co-research" approach and drawing on a wide spectrum of literature including feminist philosophy, the book analyzes the Italian microtelevision movement in its manifestations of social movement, tactical media, and community television projects. It situates Telestreet broadcasters in their historical and sociocultural milieu, namely the 1970s Italian autonomist movement (Chapter 2). It connects the genealogy of Telestreet with the evolution of Italian neoliberalism, as displayed in the privatization of Italy's media system in the 1980s–90s, which saw the rise of Silvio Berlusconi's media empire and political career (Chapter 3). Next, the book [End Page 1207] delves into the practices of the activist internet which preceded Telestreet, adopting the original concept of "social movement energetics" to expose the potential for political reorganization of a movement across time (Chapter 4). It argues that the autonomist movement wave, the grassroots experiments with the activist internet, and the Italian privatized mediascape all created fertile ground for the emergence of the Telestreet movement (Chapter 5). Among others, Orfeo TV in the Northern city of Bologna and Disco Volante TV, operated by a group of disabled people in the coastal town of Senigallia, illustrate the inner workings of the stations and their communities. But it is the Neapolitan insu^tv, the longest-lasting station, that takes central stage in the narrative, allowing the author to explore the complex relationships among the activist groups animating the station (Chapters 6 and 7), and between communication infrastructure and resistance practices (Chapter 8). The book includes a much-welcome methodological epilogue, detailing the process of co-research (or conricerca)—an approach to fieldwork that stresses care in building research relationships for achieving a movement's goals.

Hacker Transmissions is a refreshing read for at least three reasons. First, it embraces and gives voice to an ethics of care in both the methodology for approaching the fieldwork and the lens for analyzing Telestreet stations in their attempt to bring about change through technology. Interestingly, the activist spirit motivating this study (the author was simultaneously a "subject-object" of her own study) does not get...

pdf

Share