Social movements and protests in the “era of social media”
Some of the most important events the last decade have been influenced, or in part determined, by the content shared online and the extensive use of social media by a large number of the population.
In 2011, the movements that rose against the regimes in different Arabic countries, also known as the Arab Spring, were initiated by posts, images, and videos shared online, which incited people to go in the streets and join the revolution (Aday et al. 2012). In the United States, protests such as the Occupy movement in 2011, against the economic inequality and influence of corporations, and the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014, saw the participation of a great number of individuals both online and offline. Thanks to the content shared on social networks these movements were able to grow and gain global visibility (Zeitzoff, 2017). Social platforms had a similar influence in the organization of non-violent manifestations such as the Women’s March in 2017. The event created through a Facebook post, gained visibility and received international support, making it the largest protest in the history of the United States (Gantt- Shafer J. et al., 2019, p. 221). These examples suggest that social media are strategic tools for communicating and organizing social movements. Sociologists have evaluated the role of digital platforms in shaping conflicts and organizing protests, and have questioned what the future of protests will look like in a social media-saturated environment.
The social role of protests
Social movements have the power of attracting and influencing individuals. They aim to create a debate around an issue that was not taken into consideration before and that was not a priority for the people outside the affected community. Protesting on the streets is the opportunity for movements to show their identity and to change the narrative in power. Protests have a disruptive capacity, which is the ability to change things, and an electoral institutional capacity, which threatens the people in power (Tufeckci, 2018).
The event of the protest has a symbolical connotation as well. The number of people marching on the streets represents the ability of the movement to organize itself, and its potential to influence and change the status quo. Tufekci uses a metaphor to describe protests’ significance: “When a gazelle jumps very high in front of a predator, she wants to demonstrate that if she can jump that high, she can also run very fast”. Similarly, the amount of people in the streets threats leaders because it represents the organizing power of the movement and its disruptive capacity (2018).
A case study: The 2017 Women’s March
In January 2017, 5 million people across the United States on the streets 600 different cities to march against Donald Trump’s presidency. The march that counted more people than every other protest in the history of the country, started from a single post shared on Facebook the night after the elections of 2016. The Facebook event gained popularity overnight and it was organized into an actual march held on the 21st of January in Washington DC (Garrison, 2017). The event attracted the attention of global media, and it has been compared to previous marches in history such as the Million Woman March in Philadelphia in 1997, and the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech (Gantt-Shafer J. et al., 2019, p. 222). This association has led scholars to consider the differences between modern protests and marches of the past, and the changes that social media have brought in their organization.
Tufekci (2019) pointed out how protests that rose from social media have a different nature compared to the protests of the past. The March on Washington in 1963 for example, took almost two decades for its conception and actualization. During all those years, people organized themselves, gathered together to build a movement that aimed to transform the social conditions of many. The event of the march was just the final step of years of mobilization and discussion. Organizing the protest took six months of preparation, in which individuals met face-to-face, worked on the logistics, created bonds and shaped the identity of the movement (2019). On the contrary, in the case of the Women’s March in 2017, the idea of a protest came before the movement that supported it.
Tufekci argues that although the actual moment of the protest feels and stays the same, the mechanisms and logistics behind protests of the modern era and protests of the past are different (2019). Digital technologies made the organization and communication of the protest faster and easier, giving the possibility to involve a broader number of participants and gain global visibility. These new affordances empower but also weaken movements. (Tufeckci, 2019, p. 367). Furthermore, the number of people marching on the streets is no longer an indicator of the efficacy of the protest as it was for the movements of the past (Tufekci, 2018). This doesn’t mean that protests that rose from social media are less important, but rather that they lack a background structure that is necessary for movements to evolve (Tufeckci, 2019, p. 367).
Social Media and their influence on protests from the Medium Theory perspective
Social media are a new form of communication that presents new challenges as well as new opportunities. Most of the academic research on the relationship between social media and social movements has focused the attention on whether online presence can determine the success or failure of a movement, and have been interested in predicting what the future protests will look like in a social media-saturated environment.
Kidd and McIntosh (2016) have identified three different approaches on social media and their impact on movement’s success: techno-optimism, techno- pessimism, and techno-ambivalence. The Techno-optimistic approach stresses the democratic nature of social media in giving voice to different social groups and their problems. This approach also acknowledges the challenges brought by social media, but sees them as new opportunities for change. On the other hand, techno-pessimists consider the changes brought by social media to be superficial, and not able to transform the way people relate to each other and the world. All researchers, however, demonstrate a level of uncertainty regarding the positive and negative aspects brought by social media. Techno-ambivalence is situated between the optimistic and the negative approach, trying to highlight both possibilities as well as limitations of the technology (2016).
Zeitzoff (2017) argues that rather than focusing on the challenges and advantages of social media, scholars should consider how the actors involved, leaders, protesters, and activists, change their form of interaction and adapt their strategies to the new technologies. He invites scholars to consider the important role of the data collected through social media. A crucial question for the groups engaged in conflict, leaders or protesters, is the amount of support that they receive (2017). The answer can be provided by the data generated through users' participation online. The observation of users on the platforms allows groups to understand their audience, and gives them the opportunity to change their narratives and actions according to how these are perceived by their supporters. Given the ability of social media to connect activists, communicate and coordinate at low cost, and monitor users' interests, some scholars have argued that social media function as recruiting platforms, persuading users to join a movement (Zeitzoff, 2017). Through social platforms, activists can identify like-minded people and create targeted messages (2017).
In the case of the Women's March of 2017, organizers used social networks to advertise the protest, to keep people informed about the follow-up political activity of the movement, and to recruit new members to run for congress (2017).
Some critics have argued that the types of participation encouraged by social platforms result in a lazy form of activism, also known as slacktivism. This term refers to the situation in which individuals adopt a low-risk and low-cost participation by "liking" and "sharing" content online, and refuse on-site involvement (Smith et al., 2019, p. 183). From this perspective, the participation encouraged by social media has been considered a form of "less meaningful activism" and judged ineffective compared to on-site, physical presence (2019).
In his work, Gladwell claims that social movements of the past succeeded because of the great sacrifices made by people in perusing a common cause. He describes this action as forms of high-risk activism, which efforts are bigger than the one applied through social media. He considers the changes brought by social media relatively small compared to the efforts that result from high-risk activism (Kidd and McIntosh, 2016, p. 788).
On the contrary, Clay Shirky and Castell have an optimistic view of the new opportunities that social media bring to activism, highlighting how technology is responsible for a change of actions in individuals. Because the costs and speed of engagement are reduced through social media, individuals are more willing to engage in collective action (Kidd and McIntosh, 2016, p. 787- 788). Castell identifies the success of modern protests in their "multimodal networking", described as an autonomous space between the online and offline world. He claims that such movements when they decide to occupy urban space, still keep a connection with the online world, which has become part of their identity. (Kidd and McIntosh, 2016, p. 768).
The Future of Social Media Protests
The advent of social media has influenced how movements organize themselves. Researchers have observed these changes and tried to understand whether social media has weakened or reinforced movements. Some have argued that the movements that rise from social media lack background structure, which makes them weaker than the movements of the past. Protests such as the Women’s March in 2017, can no longer be an indicator of a movement’s force because social media makes them easier to organize (Tufekci, 2019). The fact that social media have been used as recruitment platforms, has led critics to identify the new form of activism as “slacktivism”, which requires minimal effort and doesn’t produce the same strong effects as high- risk activism on the streets (Smith et al., 2019). On the other hand, techno-optimistic approaches have argued that social media have a positive impact in determining the success of movements, because of the possibility to mobilize people, to spread the message and challenge the narratives in power. Nevertheless, both opposite perspectives present some level of uncertainty and ambivalence regarding the impact of the platforms in determining the success of social movements (Kidd and McIntosh, 2016).
Considering all the new mechanisms introduced by digital technologies and the fact that the long-term effects on society are not yet visible, it is hard to establish whether social media reinforce or discourage activism and protests.
From the observation of recent events, we can assume that future movements will continue to include social media, and will adapt their strategies to the technology. For these reasons, researchers must focus on how different groups take advantage of social media, and consider the potential dangers that new technological affordances, such as data collection and user recruitment, can bring to society.
Reference list
Aday, Sean, Henry Farrell, Marc Lynch, John Sides, and Deen Freelon. 2012. “New Media and Conflict after the Arab Spring.” United States Institute of Peace. 80:1–24.
Garrison, O., (2017, January 26), Socially strong: Social media’s impact on the Women’s March on Washington, Retrieved from http://creativeclickmedia.com/womens-march- social-media/
Gantt-Shafer J., Wallis C., & Miles C., (2019) Intersectionality, (Dis)unity, and Processes of Becoming at the 2017 Women’s March, Women’s Studies in Communication, 42:2, 221–240, DOI: 10.1080/07491409.2019.1616021
Kidd, D. and McIntosh, K., (2016), Social Media and Social Movements. Sociology Compass, 10(9), pp.785–794.
Tufecki Z., WNYC Studios, (2018), The Power of a Protest, [podcast] On the Media, Available at: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/power-protest [Accessed 15 Dec. 2019].
Tufekci, Z., (2019), A Response to Johanne Kübler’s A Review of Zeynep
Tufekci — Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (2017, New Haven: Yale University Press). International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 32(3), pp.365–369.
Zeitzoff, T., (2017), How Social Media Is Changing Conflict, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 61(9), 1970–1991. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002717721392