Communication rights, power and pro-Gaza campus activism

Abstract

This article examines pro-Gaza campus activism and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement as contemporary struggles over communication rights and democratic participation. Focusing on student encampments across Canadian universities in 2024, it argues that such actions function not only as political protests but as intentional communicative practices that reclaim space, visibility and collective voice. Drawing on Vincent Mosco’s political economy of communication, the article analyses how corporatisation, securitisation and institutional governance constrain student expression while privileging market and security logics. From a Mosco-inspired perspective, the encampments reveal communication as a substantive democratic right – one enacted through deliberation, dissent and collective action against concentrated institutional power.