Backfire materials

Other topics

Samantha Reis and Brian Martin. Psychological dynamics of outrage against injustice. Peace Research: The Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1, 2008, pp. 5-23.

Brian Martin. The Henson affair: conflicting injustices. Australian Review of Public Affairs, July 2008. Tactics used in relation to Bill Henson's photographs of a naked girl are assessed as to whether they are characteristic of those used by perpetrators of injustice.

Truda Gray and Brian Martin. Backfires: white, black and grey. Journal of Information Warfare, Vol. 7, Issue 1, 2007, pp. 7-16: perpetrators can use black operations or ambiguous events as a pretext for action.

Plagiarism

Brian Martin. Tactics of scholarly abuses. In Guy J. Curtis (ed.), Academic Integrity in the Social Sciences: Perspectives on Pedagogy and Practice (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2023), pp. 185-200.

Brian Martin. Plagiarism struggles. Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification, Vol. 3, 2008. Tactics used by (alleged) plagiarists and those trying to detect or expose them.

Police beatings

Brian Martin. The beating of Rodney King: the dynamics of backfire. Critical Criminology, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2005, pp. 307-326.

Prisons

Hugh de Kretser. Prison litigation: barriers to justice. Precedent (journal of the Australian Lawyers Alliance), Issue 81, July/August 2007, pp. 29-33: obstacles to justice when prisoners are abused by prison officers.

Protest

Brian Martin. How to counter Trump's efforts to reduce outrage. Waging Nonviolence, 15 February 2017.

Brian Martin. How activists can challenge double standards. Interface: a journal for and about social movements, Vol. 7, No. 2, November 2015, pp. 201-213. Tactics for exposing and countering double standards by governments and other powerful groups.

Brian Martin. Flotilla tactics: how an Israeli attack backfired. Truthout, 27 July 2010. Tactics used in the Israeli attack on the Free Gaza flotilla, May 2010.

Brian Martin. From means to ends and back again. In Jørgen Johansen and John Y. Jones (eds.), Experiments with Peace: Celebrating Peace on Johan Galtung's 80th Birthday (Cape Town, South Africa: Pambazuka Press, 2010), pp. 214-219. In social action, it can be useful to turn goals into methods and methods into goals.

Brian Martin. Making accompaniment effective. In Howard Clark (ed.), People Power: Unarmed Resistance and Global Solidarity (London: Pluto Press, 2009), pp. 93-97. The effectiveness of accompaniment - using international observers to protect activists under threat - is explained using the backfire model.

Jørgen Johansen and Brian Martin. Sending the protest message. Gandhi Marg, Vol. 29, No. 4, January-March 2008, pp. 503-519. How protesters can connect with audiences, align their methods with their messages and deal with attacks.

David Hess and Brian Martin. Repression, backfire, and the theory of transformative events. Mobilization, Vol. 11, No. 1, June 2006, pp. 249-267: backfires can be transformative events for social movements, as show by the cases of the 1930 salt march, the 1991 Dili massacre and 1972 arrest of alternative cancer therapist John Richardson.

Brian Martin. How nonviolence works. Borderlands e-journal, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2005; reprinted in Charles P. Webel and Jørgen Johansen (eds.), Peace and Conflict Studies: A Reader (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 289-298: the events at the salt march illustrate how backfire analysis can extend Sharp's concept of political jiu-jitsu.

Brian Martin and Iain Murray. The Parkin backfire. Social Alternatives, Vol. 24, No. 3, Third Quarter 2005, pp. 46-49, 70: activists opposing the deportation of US peace activist Scott Parkin from Australia in 2005 used backfire techniques.

Brian Martin. Rallying support. Peace News, March-May 2003, pp. 32-33.

Refugees

Andrew Herd. Official channels or public action: refugees in Australia. Flinders Journal of History and Politics, Vol. 23, 2006, pp. 117-134.

Andrew Herd. Amplifying outrage over children overboard. Social Alternatives, Vol. 25, No. 2, Second Quarter 2006, pp. 59-63: the Australian government misrepresented the actions of refugees.

Sharon Callaghan and Brian Martin. Igniting concern about refugee injustice. In: Rick Flowers (ed.), Education and Social Action Conference, 6-8 December 2004 (Sydney: Centre for Popular Education, University of Technology, Sydney, 2004), pp. 299-303.

Sexual harassment

Paula McDonald, Tina Graham and Brian Martin. Outrage management in cases of sexual harassment as revealed in judicial decisions. Psychology of Women Quarterly, Vol. 34, 2010, pp. 165-180.

Paula McDonald and Sandra Backstrom. Fighting back: workplace sexual harassment and the case of North Country. Australian Bulletin of Labour, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2008, pp. 47-63. How a victim opposed sexual harassment in the film North Country.

Greg Scott and Brian Martin. Tactics against sexual harassment: the role of backfire. Journal of International Women's Studies, Vol. 7, No. 4, May 2006, pp. 111-125. The case of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas is used to illustrate how to oppose sexual harassment.

Surveillance

Brian Martin. Opposing surveillance. In Katina Michael and M. G. Michael (eds), From dataveillance to überveillance and the realpolitik of the transparent society: the second workshop on the social implications of national security, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, 2007, pp. 71-82. Later published in IEEE Technology & Society Magazine, Vol. 29, No. 2, Summer 2010, pp. 26-32. Methods of resisting surveillance.

Torture

Aloysia Brooks. The annihilation of memory and silent suffering: inhibiting outrage at the injustice of torture in the War on Terror in Australia. PhD thesis, University of Wollongong, 2017.

Brian Martin and Steve Wright. Looming struggles over technology for border control. Journal of Organisational Transformation and Social Change, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2006, pp. 95-107.

Brian Martin and Steve Wright. Countershock: mobilizing resistance to electroshock weapons. Medicine, Conflict and Survival, Vol. 19, No. 3, July-September 2003, pp. 205-222: backfire analysis of the use of torture technology.

War

Brendan Riddick. Political violence and the management of outrage: the convergence of media and political power to conceal human suffering in the "war on terror". PhD thesis, University of Wollongong, 2013. The backfire and propaganda models applied to aspects of the war on terror, including Afghanistan, Fallujah, the Nisour Square Massacre, and drones.

Brendan Riddick. Outrage in Fallujah: strategies in the communication of political violence. In Anabèl Ternes (ed.), Communication: Breakdowns and Breakthroughs (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2013), pp. 173-183.

Brendan Riddick. The bombing of Afghanistan: the convergence of media and political power to reduce outrage. Revista de Paz y Conflictos, No. 5, 2012, pp. 6-19.

Truda Gray and Brian Martin. My Lai: the struggle over outrage. Peace & Change, Vol. 33, No. 1, January 2008, pp. 90-113. A backfire analysis of the 1968 My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war.

Truda Gray and Brian Martin. The American war in Indochina: injustice and outrage. Revista de Paz y Conflictos, No. 1, 2008, pp. 6-28. How the US government tried to inhibit outrage from the bombing, the Phoenix Program and the My Lai massacre.

Brian Martin. Iraq attack backfire. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 39, No. 16, 17-23 April 2004, pp. 1577-1583.

Water privatisation

Mary Scott. Water privatization tactics: Cochabamba, Manila, New Delhi. PhD thesis, University of Wollongong, 2015. Tactics used to encourage acceptance of putting public water supplies in private hands.

Whistleblowing and dissent

Brian Martin. Academic dissidents: be prepared for reprisals - and more. Brian's Comments, 16 October 2017.

Brian Martin. Breaking the siege: guidelines for struggle in science. In Science under Siege: Zoology under Threat, eds. Peter Banks, Daniel Lunney and Chris Dickman (Sydney: Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, 2012), pp. 164-170. A zoology case study is used to illustrate tactics.

Review of Eve Hillary, Sarah's Last Wish, in The Whistle (Newsletter of Whistleblowers Australia), No. 64, October 2010, pp. 10-12. Challenging medical abuse.

Brian Martin. How to attack a scientific theory and get away with it (usually): the attempt to destroy an origin-of-AIDS hypothesis. Science as Culture, Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2010, pp. 215-239. Tactics used in a scientific dispute to minimise outrage over perceptions of transgressing proper scientific behaviour.

Brian Martin. Corruption, outrage and whistleblowing. In Ronald J. Burke and Cary L. Cooper (eds.), Research Companion to Corruption in Organizations (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2009), pp. 206-216. Tactics used by corrupt operators to minimise outrage, and implications for whistleblowers.

Brian Martin. Enabling scientific dissent. New Doctor, No. 88, December 2008, pp. 2-5. Techniques for resisting attacks on dissent in science.

Brian Martin. Energising dissent. D!ssent, No. 24, Spring 2007, pp. 62-64: methods of resisting suppression of dissent, with a focus on Australia.

Brian Martin. Bucking the system: Andrew Wilkie and the difficult task of the whistleblower. Overland, No. 180, Spring 2005, pp. 45-48.

Workplaces

Brian Martin. Tactics against bullying at work. 2007.

Kylie Smith and Brian Martin. Tactics of labor struggles. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, Vol. 19, No. 3, September 2007, pp. 193-206. How employers try to reduce outrage from anti-worker actions, with special attention to Patricks versus the Maritime Union of Australia.

Brian Martin. Resisting unfair dismissal: a campaigning approach. Leaflet, September 2005. Text published in The Whistle (Freedom to Care, UK), No. 26, October 2005, pp. 4-6.

Brian Martin. Boomerangs of academic freedom. Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, #12, 2005, pp. 64-79. A summary published as "The boomerang effect," Campus Review, Vol. 15, No. 26, 6 July 2005, p. 5. The dismissal of biologist Ted Steele from the University of Wollongong is analysed in backfire terms.

Brian Martin. The Richardson dismissal as an academic boomerang. In: Kenneth Westhues (ed.), Workplace Mobbing in Academe: Reports from Twenty Universities (Queenston, Ontario: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), pp. 317-330. Also in Kenneth Westhues, Administrative Mobbing at the University of Toronto: The Trial, Degradation and Dismissal of a Professor during the Presidency of J. Robert S. Prichard (Queenston, Ontario: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), Essays in Response, pp. 70-83.

Brian Martin with Will Rifkin. The dynamics of employee dissent: whistleblowers and organizational jiu-jitsu. Public Organization Review, Vol. 4, 2004, pp. 221-238.

Talks and workshops

Backfire workshop: notes for a low-technology workshop for 2-20 people, by Brian Martin.

Backfire workshop: notes for a workshop, plus handouts on promoting backfire and on Plan B, by Jason MacLeod.

"Tactics against injustice": a powerpoint show (1MB) for giving a talk/workshop, by Brian Martin.