Using Twitter to mobilise protest action: Online mobilization patterns and action repertoires in the Occupy Wall Street, Indignados, and Aganaktismenoi movements (original) (raw)
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Paper prepared for delivery at the 41st ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz, 11-16 March 2013 Panel on ‘The Transnational Dimension of Protest: From the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street’
The extensive use of Social Network Sites (SNS) for protests purposes was a distinctive featureof the protest events in Spain, Greece and the US. Like the Occupy protesters, the Indignant activists of Spain and Greece protested different manifestations of unjust, unequal and corruptedpolitical and economic institutions marked by the arrogance of those in power. But how did the networking capacities offered by the internet were utilised to diffuse cross-national solidarity and allow high-threshold, old-fashioned social movement tactics, such as occupations, to become a tactic that surpassed borders? A closer comparison of the content of the information exchange in SNS reveals not just similarities but also differences among the three movements, some clearly emerging due to the different national contexts. How common were the demands, practices, goals or political actions promoted by the three movements? We tackle these questions studying the communication patterns of people who tweeted about the movements. This paper presents the findings of a comparative content analysis that focuses on how Twitter was used by Spanish, Greek, and American citizens for exchanging information, organising protest events, mobilising participants and creating new, or supporting old, repertoires of engagement. Contrary to much of the recent theorising about the potential of social media, the results of our study indicate that although Twitter is used significantly for protest information diffusion, calls for participation are not predominant, while only a very small minority of tweets refer to protest organisation and coordination issues.
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(Social) Media isn’t the message, networked people are: calls for protest through social media
Observatorio (OBS*)
In recent years, protests took the streets of cities around the world. Among the mobilizing factors were the perceptions of injustice, democratization demands, and, in the case of liberal democracies, waves of discontentment characterized by a mix of demands for better public services and changes in the discredited democratic institutions. This paper discusses social media usage in mobilization for demonstrations around the world, and how such use configures a paradigmatic example of how communication occurs in network societies. In order to frame the discussion, social media appropriation for the purposes of political participation is examined through a survey applied online in 17 countries. The ways in which social media domestication by a myriad of social actors occurred and institutional responses to demonstrations developed, it is argued that, in the network society, networked people, and no longer the media, are the message.