Article
“Activism, Advertising, and Far-Right Media: The Case of Sleeping Giants.”
Media and Communication
(2019)
Abstract
This study examines the international activist movement known as Sleeping Giants, a social-media “campaign to make
bigotry and sexism less profitable” (Sleeping Giants, n.d.). The campaign originated in the US with an anonymous Twitter
account that enlisted followers in encouraging brands to pull their online advertising from Breitbart News. The campaign
achieved dramatic success and rapidly spread to regions outside the US, with other anonymously run and loosely allied
chapters emerging in 15 different nations (as well as a regional chapter for the EU). Many of these were initially created to
take on Breitbart advertisers in their home countries, but in a number of cases they subsequently turned their attention to
disrupting financial support for other far-right news media in—or impacting—their home countries. Based on interviews
with leaders of eight Sleeping Giants chapters, as well as the related UK-based Stop Funding Hate campaign, this study examines
the Sleeping Giants campaign with respect to its continuity with media activism of previous eras, while also seeking
to understand its potential as one of the first high-profile activist campaigns to grapple with the impacts of programmatic
advertising on the news ecosystem. In particular, we consider how the campaign’s interventions speak to the larger debate
around the normative relationship between advertising and the performance of the news ecosystem.
Keywords
- activism; corporate social responsibility; hate speech; hyper-partisan news; online activism; online advertising; programmatic advertising; Sleeping Giants
Disciplines
Publication Date
2019
Citation Information
Joshua Braun, John Coakley and Emily West. "“Activism, Advertising, and Far-Right Media: The Case of Sleeping Giants.”" Media and Communication Vol. 7 Iss. 4 (2019) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/emily_west/23/