'Activist knowledge' or 'dissident knowledge', refers to the ideological and ideational aspects of social movements such as challenging or reformulating dominant political ideas and ideologies, and developing new concepts, thoughts and meanings through the interactions with social, political, cultural and economic authorities. The cognitive or ideational aspects of social movements have been theorized by a group of scholars such as Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Hank Johnston and David Snow and others and S A Hosseini, from an integrative approach. The creation of new systems of meaning is an inseparable part of social movements. Especially in today's information society, as Manuel Castells said, "the real targets of the current mobilizations are the minds of people around the world." it is "by changing minds that they expect to put pressure on the institutions of governance and, ultimately, bring democracy and alternativesocial values to these institutions" Social movement actors play an important role in transforming social knowledge at manylevels. Many activists are deeply engaged in formulating tensions, articulating themes, andcontributing to the present vocabulary of social thoughts. They redene what is real andwhat is possible. They often develop provocative ideas to cause or resist social changes.Even at the practical level, by responding to social problems and formulating those problemsfor society, social movements create spaces for new intellectual activities and spur publicdiscussions. As mentioned in the World Social Forum’s Charter of Principles, for instance, the World Social Forum is a movement of ideas that prompts reflection, and the transparent circulation of the results of that reflection, on the mechanisms and instruments of domination by capital, and on the alternatives proposed to solve the problems of exclusion and inequality The meaning and knowledge making processes in social movements are not however restricted to information acquisition and processing, social psychological cognitions, practical knowledge, deliberative contemplationsin public spheres, discursive and ideological transformations, framing and so on. Activist knowledge is formed through both strategic, and communicative in confronting dominant social processes. Such knowledge is shaped at a very pragmatic level that differs in nature from the academic level of knowledge production, the institutional level of political ideology construction, and even the routine interactional level of cultural reproduction".
