Backfire materials

These articles apply the backfire model to different case studies, as indicated by the titles or annotations.

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.

Yaffa Shir-Raz, Ety Elisha, Brian Martin, Natti Ronel and Josh Guetzkow. Censorship and suppression of Covid-19 heterodoxy: tactics and counter-tactics. Minerva, vol. 61, 2023, pp. 407-433, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-022-09479-4

Brian Martin. Covid information struggles. Social Epistemology Review & Reply Collective, vol. 10, no. 6, 2021, pp. 16-26. On tactics of censorship and anti-censorship concerning challenges to Covid orthodoxy.

Brian Martin. Death tactics. In Marija Lojanica and Dragan Boskovic (eds.), Doomsday: Death (Kragujevac, Serbia: Faculty of Philology and Arts, University of Kragujevac, 2020), pp. 13-26. Tactics used by Death to reduce outrage, with case studies of medicine and war.

Brian Martin. Tactics against scheming diseases. Journal of Sociotechnical Critique, vol. 1, no. 1, article 2, 2020, pp. 1-20. How disease can be thought of as an active agent, with case studies of AIDS, smoking and human evil.

Sue Curry Jansen and Brian Martin. Campus activists: what to do about provocative speakers? Woroni (Australian National University student newspaper), 2 April 2019. How student protests against visiting speakers can backfire.

Brian Martin. Foreword. In Lester R. Kurtz and Lee A. Smithey (eds.), The Paradox of Repression and Nonviolent Movements (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2018), pp. xiii-xxiii. An overview of the paradox of repression and its relation to backfire.

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.

Sue Curry Jansen and Brian Martin. The Streisand effect and censorship backfire. International Journal of Communication, Vol. 9, 2015, pp. 656-671. Censorship can backfire, but often it doesn't.

Brian Martin. Tactics of political lying: the Iguanas affair. Journal of Language and Politics, vol. 13, no. 4, 2014, pp. 837-856. Two models for analysing tactics of political lying are applied to claims concerning the behaviour of two Australian politicians.

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.

Brian Martin. Defending dissent. In Sue Curry Jansen, Jefferson Pooley and Lora Taub-Pervizpour (editors), Media and Social Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pages 145-158. Defamation, whistleblowing and censorship backfire: a personal account.

Brian Martin. Theory for activists. Social Anarchism, No. 44, 2010, pp. 22-41. Comments on developing theory using the example of the backfire model.

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. 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. 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.

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.

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

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Truda Gray and Brian Martin. Defamation and the art of backfire. Deakin Law Review, Vol. 11, No. 2, 2006, pp. 115-136. Five examples are used to show how defamation suits can backfire.

Susan Engel and Brian Martin. Union Carbide and James Hardie: lessons in politics and power. Global Society: Journal of Interdisciplinary International Relations, Vol. 20, No. 4, October 2006, pp. 475-490: the disasters of Bhopal and asbestos were potential backfires for the corporations held responsible.

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.

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.

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.

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

Brian Martin and Truda Gray. How to make defamation threats and actions backfire. Australian Journalism Review, Vol. 27, No. 1, July 2005, pp. 157-166.

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.

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.

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

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.

Sue Curry Jansen and Brian Martin. Making censorship backfire. Counterpoise, Vol. 7, No. 3, July 2003, pp. 5-15.

Backfire materials

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