Ebook: Voices for Transgender Equality: Making Change in the Networked Public Sphere

"This introductory chapter opens with a description of the National Center for Transgender Equality's (NCTE) work on the day President Donald J. Trump announced his ban on transgender military service. In doing so, it illustrates in brief the range of communicative activities practiced by NCTE and how they fit together into a coherent set of strategic practices aimed at saturating the communication system with voices in support of transgender equality. Building on this example, the chapter analyzes how the transition to a networked public sphere and related changes in the structure of the contemporary communication system have required social movements to develop of new activism strategies. In encapsulating the system-level argument in one extended case, this chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book to unfold by taking apart and deeply analyzing the system's component pieces"--