The Role of New Media in Protest Organisation

Conclusion

This discussion aimed to relate the theory discussed in Chapter 2 with the findings presented in Chapter 4. What is striking is that the organisations do seem to be kenn on engaging more with the public online, drawing from the expert interviews. Nevertheless, the knowledge about the right strategies and a relunctance to spend too much time and resources on SNS gives the impression of holding the organisations back. SCCC, as the only organisation, was following a direct strategy of personalisation by making Facebook and Twitter posts very individual, and thus approaching their followrs on a personal level.

Regarding Costanza-Chock’s repertoire of electronic contention, the other strategies employed by the organisations, such as sign posting for example, do extend on the traditional online strategies, but they are essentially similar. Still, involving SNS in campaigns can give the specific edge and provides the organisation with further channels for mobilisation. It also offers a “wall” for protest posters, so that organisations can spread their information without the distortion of traditional mass medie (Baudrillard, 1981).

6. Chapter – Conclusion

Examining the role social media played in the organisation of The Wave protest, a number of advantages and disadvantages for the protest organisation have emerged. Furthermore it became clear that social movement actors are by far not exhausting all the possibilities social media have to offer in terms of interactivity, awareness and mobilisation.

Therefore, in order to answer the research question,

Using ‘The Wave’ climate change protest held in London, England in December 2009 as a case study, how was social media used to organise the march?, the sub-questions shall be answered first.

As becomes evident in the interview and SNS (Facebook and Twitter) analyses not all movement organisations deal with the features of social media in the same ways, but have their own tactics. Generally, the organisations engage little with the possibility for direct communication, but use social media and SNS primarily for updating their followers and posting links. Especially the levels of engagement with interactivity differ. As many different forms of interaction exists, from the monologue, to mutual discourse, to content exchange (McMillan, 2006), many different ways of combining the degrees of interactivity is possible. Nevertheless a pattern emerged, which shows that the larger, more established and resource-rich organisation engage much more with interactivity than the smaller, more grassroots based organisations. This contradicts with the theory by Della Porta and Mosca (2005), who argue that larger NGOs will be more hesitant to adopt computer-mediated-communication strategies. A possible explanation is that, as social media and SNS are becoming more established in the daily communication processes, the established organisations have more resources to fully engage with the interactivity. For example, as the large organisations have their own new media officer, like Tom from SCCC, the employees, who are often volunteers, of smaller organisations also have to also deal with other bureaucratic processes of the organisation and have less time to invest in SNS.

Nevertheless, the organisations adapt SNS to their own needs and also work around the restrictions posed by the structure of the sites. Twitter for example only allows messages of up to 240 signs, which means that organisations use Twitter to call for action with short and snappy messages, while on Facebook, organisations post more information-heavy messages. Here they can add picture and video links and also make the content of their message more interactive.

Although interactivity offers the chance for intense direct communication, it is doubtful whether it can substitute face-to-face communication. But it has to be kept in mind, that mediated communication allows to reach much broader masses than face-to-face communication and can be more effective when trying to mobilise large numbers of people, at least for initial contact with the subject. This also allows the organisations to reach beyond their usual target groups or constituencies.

It is difficult to measure the success of mobilisation through social media, as it is impossible to record who has read and then acted upon the call to join the protest. Nevertheless, large member numbers could give a clue to the success of the profiles. Nevertheless, as the march was attend by around 50.000 people, thus the largest environmental march in the history of the UK, it is plausible that mobilisation through social media will have contributed to mobilisation through traditional media. Despite the mobilisation possibilities of social media, the organisations are still relying on traditional media to disseminate their issues and are keen to get featured in newspapers, magazines or media websites. Yet, once again, larger organisations are in a more beneficial situation with regard to traditional media.

Although social media seem to offer many possibilities for interactivity, awareness and mobilisation, their function is not particularly novel compared to more traditional electronic methods of contention, but adds more channels through which the tactics can be pursued. Yet the possibility to reach such a large user base, also outside of the organisation’s contacts, can be seen as a novelty to electronic contention. The increased possibility for interactivity between users and the organisation also adds an important feature to the repertoire. Engaging directly with the followers has positive effects on their identification with the organisation and thus increases solidarity and identification with the issue. Furthermore, organisations can easily link real-life action with online actions, as for example, the Twitterstorm was used to push the event in the online sphere to mobilise people in the offline world.

By asking the media experts on their opinion regarding the success of the movement, many different opinions were received. This is interesting as it shows that although it was a coalition event, the different member organisations clearly had different expectations about the outcomes. It seems clear that the march achieved to influence national British politics, as Ed Miliband has been as engaged as never before. Also the breadth of people attending impressed the organisations, and might be an indicator that SNS are not only in the hands of younger people anymore, but that all generations are moving their identity online. This would require further research. A larger research project could also inquire into the motivations of protest attendees and inquire about their sources of information and motivation to attend the march in order to gain insights into the power of reach of SNS. Yet, this would have by far exceeded this scope of this research project.

It is interesting that Della Porta’s theory (2005) on less computer-mediated-communication by resource-rich organisations was proven to not be valid anymore, based on the data gathered in this research project. It shows that research into the use of SNS from the perspective of organisations still needs to be expanded to understand the relationship between SNS and protest organisation in a new era of Web activities. A content analysis of the posts by the organisations seemed to be the most sensible methodology for getting insights into the use of SNS by the organisations. Although research on social media and NGOs generally exists, it should be kept in mind that SNS constitute a certain area of social media and thus have to be treated independently. Additionally a lot of this social media research in relation to social movements is based on transnational anti-globalisation movements, and not on a national environmental movement. Further research could dig more into the peculiarities of the environmental movement. Arguably it can be seen as a movement that encompasses members from all areas of society.

7.