The Role of New Media in Protest Organisation

4.4 Conclusion

A number of strategies employed by the organisation could be identified, whereas each organisation is stressing different aspects. Nevertheless, distributing links to other events, YouTube, pictures and the organisation’s websites is most prominent. Envision calls this ‘sign posting’ users to issues of interest. Furthermore, creating solidarity and community is a relevant strategy to bind members to the cause. SCCC is most involved here, the other organisations seem to neglect this. Still, this can be achieved in simple ways, for example by referring to users directly by name, or including them in ‘us’ – the activits. Furthermore one can encourage users to tweet live from the event, which according to Oxfam is a change to traditional protest reporting. Most organisations agree with referring blame to the UK government and put them in the position of responsibility for leading the UN climate talks into a positive direction. Another strategy to give the demonstration more legitimacy was to refer users to websites of traditional media on which The Wave was featured. By presenting the interest of traditional media, the importance of the march becomes more emphasised. Regarding the offline and online side events, like the Splash Dance and Twitteractions, their role also is related to binding members to the cause, by encouraging them to be active in advance of the protest.

SCCC is using these strategies successfully, as far as it is possible to say. The organisation is keen on involving its members and creating bonds between the organisation and the users. The smaller NGOs seem to be rather reluctant in their use of social media and can definitely be encouraged to get more involved. An interesting fact is that a more traditional NGO, like Action Aid, prefers traditional face-to-face communication in order to mobilise its members, as was noted by Della Porta and Mosca (2005).

It can be noted that no significant difference exists between the strategic use of Twitter and Facebook that is not explainable with the different structures of the sites, yet it seems that Twitter is used more for mobilisation purposes, due to the nature of its short message, and Facebook more for information purposes.

4. Chapter – Discussion

This chapter relates the findings of the expert interviews and the Twitter and Facebook pages to the theoretical framework discussed in Chapter 2.

As the expert interviews present, discrepancies between the strategies and use of social network sites among the organisations exist. Especially the possibility for direct communication through social media is often not exploited fully by the organisations. The organisations could be more successful in mobilising participants for social movements by engaging in more direct communication and thus fostering solidarity. Despite this, the more established and resource rich organisations, like SCCC, Oxfam and Action Aid are more social media savvy than the smaller organisations Envision and Campaign Against Climate Change. Once again, the three concepts of interactivity, awareness and mobilisation guide the discussion.

The final point of discussion evaluates the uses of social media in relation to Costanza-Chock’s repertoire of online contention (2003). The aim is to investigate if the uses of social media are simply additions to his repertoire or if they offer any substantially new opportunities.

1. Interactivity

The opportunities that the Web 2.0 and social media offer in terms of interactivity cannot be neglected. Hardly any other medium before has allowed for such direct communication between two, and especially more than two participants. Three types of interactivity were distinguished with regard to new media. These are user-to-user interactivity, user-to-document interactivity and user-to-system interactivity (McMillan, 2006: 209).

When comparing the interview results with Twitter and Facebook strategies, the organisations have different approaches to interactivity. Some organisations make more use of the possibilities than others. Envision, for example, takes a more hesitant perspective. By using Facebook and Twitter as ‘signposts’ directing users to the full information on their website, Envision is interacting only on a basic level with the user. ‘Signposting’ conforms to the ‘monologue’, the one-way and sender controlled interactivity. In some cases, when the interface allows it, like on Facebook, other users may post a comment on the information, thus allowing for the ‘feedback’ type of user-to-user interactivity. SCCC is most involved in this degree of interactivity and converses with users frequently. Regarding user-to-content interaction, Envision’s strategy complies with ‘content-on-demand’ interactivity, as the users are provided with the content, yet can choose whether to pursue it or not. This is similar for the other organisations as well. The user has the final choice about the content he/she wants to read by joining the specific group- or event page, or following an organisation on Twitter. The final category, user-to-system interactivity, is used similarly by all organisations, as all are dependent on the interface that the social network site provides. Still, the organisations can decide how extensively they use this, by posting links, pictures and even videos or replying to messages etc. As opposed to Envision, SCCC takes a much more interactive approach. Messages on their Facebook or Twitter walls often develop into a ‘responsive dialogue’, communication that is aware of previous messages, either between organisation and user or even between users. Interaction of user-to-content is also much higher on the SCCC profiles, as users post links and comments themselves and interact amongst each other, in addition to the extensive postings by the coalition. The type of content the coalition posts is very diverse, ranging from links and plain information to pictures, Twitter actions and calls for real-life action. The strategy by the SCCC thus has a much higher potential to engage the users and can therefore be more effective.

As was represented in Table 7 (p.58) of Chapter 4, the smaller organisations are generally less active on Twitter than the more estbalised organisations SCCC, Oxfam and Action Aid. This contradicts with the wide spread theory that established and richer organisations are more hesitant in adopting computer-mediated-communication (Della Porta & Mosca, 2005) and that resource-poor organisations see more importance in their web presence (Cammaerts, 2007). According to Tarrow (2003: 31), face-to-face communication still is most effective and is indeed still hold dearly by established organisations. What are possible explanations for this contradiction?

First of all, it is possible that organisations have realised that SNS have become an established medium and are now keener to engage with users through this platform. The possibility for very direct communication, although not literally face-to-face, has been adopted by the established organisations. Whereas the resource-poor organisations are still struggling over creating their perfect website and want to improve their web presence (as was also expressed by Helen [Envision] and Phil [CACC]), the larger organisations have used their resources to create professional websites and can now concentrate on SNS. Furthermore, larger organisations can divide up the tasks of maintaining a website and creating content for a SNS among their departments, whereas in small organisations, a clear work division is often missing. This is also due to the increased financial capacities of larger NGOs. A stark example is the structure of Oxfam compared with that of CACC, where Phil is responsible for nearly all organisational parts of movement activity himself, whereas Oxfam even has its own media department only for climate change issues.

A further code for interactivity was the level on which the organisations used the possibility for mobile internet and were using their SNS, especially Twitter, profiles to update followers during the march. This can also be divided into the different sets of interactivity. As was made visible in Table 7 only Oxfam, SCCC and also Action Aid used this option effectively, once again the larger organisations are more involved in interactivity. This shows stronger engagement with the public and also offers users more reason to return to the profiles in order to look for updates and news. As mentioned, only Twitter was used for this. The nature of Twitter can be compared to the short message service (SMS) of mobile phones, yet it is possible to reach a large number of people at once. This tool may arguably be more useful and exciting to use in cases where protests become violent and protesters can inform others or the media via Twitter about sudden turn of events. The Wave seemed very planned through and was a peaceful march, therefore most Tweets talk about the friendliness of the march by reporting on the atmosphere. Despite the usefulness of reporting live from the protest event, the organisations had to experience their dependency on technology. As in the case of CACC the battery died, and Tom of SCCC did not receive his internet-compatible mobile phone in time for the protest.

By exhausting the interactive possibilities of retweeting and Twitter actions, SCCC was able to push The Wave protest up the scale of the most talked about topics of Twitter. Although the Twitterstorm was not as strong as hoped, it still managed to make the list of the most prominent hash tags (#thewave) on Twitter. This increased the visibility of the protest and can raise attention of Twitter users not previously interested as well. The organisations are also interactive with users, documents and the system by twittering live from the march via mobile phones. Especially Oxfam and SCCC were active here, so they were able to upload information for people in real-time.

During a “Q&A” session with Ed Miliband after The Wave protest action, the Oxfam Twitterer encourages users to twitter their questions to him, so he can ask Miliband on their behalf. Here, direct communication with the users at home allows them to directly partake at meetings that are physically distant, which seems to be one of the most ideal forms of communication via social media. It allows for communication between physically separated people and also does not require the same space of time to make sense.

By being active on SNS, the organisations show that they care about the protest and are keen on engaging the public in their enthusiasm as well. This is also expressed through the call to retweet on Twitter, for example, it actively engages the user in the promotion of the march.

2.