#ThisisanEducationElection: the changing role of media in education organizing

In November 2011, a coalition of New York City (NYC) education organizers and advocacy groups launched the PS2013 campaign to place public education at the center of the 2013 mayoral race. Activists developed a complex and situated communications strategy to influence a new space of political engagement, namely mayoral elections. This article is empirically grounded in a qualitative case study of the media strategies of the two-year PS2013 campaign to transform dominant discourse market-based school reform. I document and critically examine a fluid and strategic repertoire of media technologies and tactics deployed by education activists used to communicate with corporate news media, mayoral candidates, as well as their own constituencies and allies. In this way, the paper contributes to the critical scholarship on the role of media in contemporary education organizing against neoliberal education reform.