The Role of New Media in Protest Organisation

Mobilisation

The part of mobilisation is arguably the most decisive in protest organisation. The internet allows for specific targeting of groups of audiences, and also for wide spread distribution of information.

The creation of solidarity and community (Fenton, 2008: 39) facilitates mobilisation. SCCC achieves this through a number of tactics. First of all, a lot of messages on Twitter and Facebook are personalised by using the pronouns “you” or “us”. This means that people are spoken to directly and feel more valued through this. Furthermore, the authors of messages posted by SCCC add their name at the bottom of the message. This gives the organisation at least a name, if it cannot give a face, and makes it more social. The representative of SCCC, Tom, saw that as especially important.

As has been mentioned several times during this study, direct communication is one of the most important and effective ways to bind users and create a community. Nevertheless it seems that, apart from the SCCC, the other organisations do not seem to grasp the importance of this feature of SNS. By using Facebook as a signpost for example, Envision is still following the more traditionally mediated form of communication of the pattern of one-to-many communication. The other organisations do not present themselves much more effectively and only fall back on direct interaction on a few occasions. The potential for closer community creation through direct communication is thus present, but not exhausted at all.

Additionally other tactics for binding members are employed. Especially the arousal of emotion in advance of a protest can mobilise members (Jasper, 1998). The emotion of blame and moral shock are very strong emotions. All organisations refer to the emotion of blame in one way or another. Especially the UK government is hold accountable for the current climate change situation by being too lenient in international meetings in the past. The organisations directly target Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown in their campaigning, as representatives of the UK at the UN Climate Change Summit and call on them to act responsibly and use all means in their power to give the talks a positive outcome. CACC eever goes further and especially blames the old US government around George W. Bush for blocking earlier climate talks. CACC generally is oriented in a more radical way then The Wave protest is constructed. They therefore organised their own side events, such as a feeder rally to attract more members that also want more radicalisation. This shows that the member organisations also are targeting the march towards their preferred target audience to raise the largest number of participants possible. A similar strategy was employed by Action Aid in creating the Splash Dance to attract more young people to the march.

By posting calls for action on Facebook and Twitter, the organisations engage the users in online, as well as offline action. As online action is easier to attend to, as the action can be taken through a few clicks, as in the case of a Twitterstorm, offline action requires more investment by the participant. Yet, also if members only take part in the online action, they are binding themselves closer to the organisation as they have already invested their time and effort into the coalition. This could eventually lead to a lower barrier of real-life participation. Especially Twitter is used for calls of action and due to its limited signs, especially the imperative is used when mobilising users.

4. A New Electronic Action Repertoire?

In Chapter 2 (p.27) Costanza-Chock’s repertoire for conventional electronic contention has been described (2003). These techniques for online contention are now commonly used by social movement organisations in order to organise their movement activities, but are basically an extension of the traditional movement communication strategies, as Costanza-Chock (2003: 174) argues. As part of this research project, the contentious repertoire of social media, as opposed to the wider internet, shall be placed within the framework of conventional electronic contention. Costanza-Chock (2003: 175) has distinguished between seven different tactics of social movement organisations, which covered the areas of representation (1), information distribution (2), research (3), cultural production (4), fund-raising (5), lobbying (6) and tactical communication (7). During the course of this research project a number of these tactics have been explored with regard to social media, nevertheless not all seven areas could be covered. Excluded from the research were the areas of research (3) and fund-raising (5), as these themes were not apparent in the Facebook, Twitter and interview analyses. They were thus emitted from the research as they did not fit in the overall structure of the research project. Nevertheless, the results for the other categories are presented below.

It becomes clear that social media generally extend the classic action repertoire, yet does this extension also bring novelty?

Regarding representation, the organisations still mainly rely on their websites for presenting information about them and their events. Therefore the professionalism of the website is important to the organisations and has higher priority than representation on social media. As Cammaerts notes “having a website of their own allows activists more control over their own messages, their self-representation” (2007: 274). This was also mentioned by Helen and Phil. Still, also social network sites offer organisations to create a profile and represent information, yet they are mainly used to direct user traffic to the organisation’s website and function as a first introduction. Therefore, in terms of representation, SNS in themselves do not offer a novelty, but can only be classified as an addition to the traditional ways of representation.

Traditionally, the tactic of information distribution was followed by presenting information on the website or distributing them per e-mail newsletter or press releases etc. Here, the five NGOs have become more open by also engaging with social media and SNS in the distribution of information by creating events and providing updates for the news feeds of the SNS. Although essentially spreading information remains the same tactic, the information now take a different form, as they are usually very brief or in form of links to fit the quick messaging style of SNS. Furthermore, the constituency can reply to those immediately, which is a positive change. Another novel addition to information distribution via SNS is that the number of possible recipients has increased vastly. Regarding traditional online information, only people with interest would visit the organisation’s website and only subscribers to e-mail lists received the information, every member of a SNS is a potential recipient of the information. This is a vast potential for organisations, as Facebook for example has a membership of 400 million active users all over the world (Facebook, 2010). Through viral spiralling, information is quickly distributed. Generally, social media does not only add a channel to the distribution of information, but also adds new possibilities of reaching a larger audience and has changed the format of information.

Also the traditional online means of lobbying, such as online petitions and e-campaigns, are still used widely. Social media have the potential to add to these, as not only the NGOs have profiles on SNS, but also the politicians and political institutions. Therefore the possibility exists for NGOs to organise that their constituency can directly contact the politician over such networks. Furthermore, SNS offer possibilities to spread the link to online petitions more easily to a large number of people. Therefore, SNS might not directly add a new contentious action to lobbying, but can render it more effective overall. Yet, also Twitteractions should be included in this category. By encouraging users to support the events, visibility is increased which is also reflectes on the institutions that cannot ignore public support.

Regarding cultural production, Oxfam has successfully involved two artists in the promotion of The Wave. By catching the attention of mass media and distributing information via SNS, Oxfam has spread the word about the artist’s work, which was also available for purchase on their website. Also The Wave videostream can be acknowledged as art. The endless loop of videos that people have submitted resembles modern art. Social media thus encourage artistic contributions also by the public and involve them that way in the process of mobilisation. Also by linking to websites of photographers that documented the march, the organisations include cultural products in their repertoire. Social media thus extend the channels through which cultural production can take place and be promoted.

The final tactic under examination is tactical communication. Tactical communication is used to mobilise for real-world protests or demonstrations through online calls for action, either before the action takes place or for organisation during the march. As technology is getting more sophisticated, it is possible to access SNS via mobile phones with internet access on the street. SNS such as Twitter are very effective, especially regarding the communication during the protest. As can be seen from this research, two of the organisations have successfully used Twitter to update followers at home or to engage them in the Q&A with Ed Miliband during The Wave march for example (“Does anyone in the twitter-verse have a question for Ed Miliband at #thewave Q&A? @ reply them through and I’ll see if I can get one inn. 8:27 AM Dec 5^th, 2009 via txt” by Oxfam). This shows that SNS do indeed add to tactical communication by making it more productive and efficient, yet the basic idea behind tactical communication is not generally new.

Overall, social media do not revolutionise the conventional electronic contention tactics, but they do add further possibilities to the essential task. Nevertheless, one very important improvement can be noticed, which renders communication more effective. As mentioned above, SNS have a very wide reach among people and thus allow NGOs to potentially reach millions of users world-wide. Viral spiralling is common on SNS, so when the friends of a user like what he has added to his profile, they might follow suit. Therefore, without spending further financial resources, NGOs gain access to millions of potential recruits.

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