The Role of New Media in Protest Organisation

Electronic Action Repertoire

By exploring the use of social media by NGOs in the organisation of protest, the aim is to understand how the organisations make sense of the possibilities that social media offer in terms of the three concepts of interactivity, awareness and mobilisation. The exploration of these concepts will give a grounded picture of the most prominent ways in which NGOs use social media and also point to the shortcomings of the full potential.

Costanza-Chock (2003: 173) has identified ways in which social movement organisations use new media to express their “electronic action repertoire” and effectively achieve their goals. Although Costanza-Chock differentiates between three forms of electronic contention (conventional, disruptive and violent), based on research by Tarrow (1998 in Costanza-Chock, 2003), only the conventional tactics are of interest for this case study. The SCCC never intended to disrupt or even use hacktivism in their online activities. When Costanza-Chock drew up this categorisation, social network sites were still relatively unknown and not popular among such large parts of the global population. Therefore, his analysis focuses on those new media possibilities that were more widely spread in the early millenium and excludes the Web 2.0 possibilities for interactivity. Nevertheless, he argues that the internet has solely “amplified and extended ‘traditional’ movement communication efforts” (2003: 174).

The traditional, contentious tactics employed by social movement organisations are (Constanza-Chock, 2003: 175):

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  Representation – mainly through websites presenting information, mission statements, contact information etc.
  
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  Information distribution – about goals, events, actions via websites, email, bulletin boards, chat rooms, press releases for various audiences
  
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  Research – to gather information about targets, about their cause, economic or environmental data, media analysis etc.
  
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  Cultural production – organisations often present or distribute visual art, music, videos etc. By artists associated with the organisation online
  
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  Fund-raising – appeals to members, selling of merchandise
  
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  Lobbying – electronic collective action aimed at political institutions, through online petitions, email campaigns
  
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  Tactical communication – aided for mobilisation for street offline collective action and coordination during the protest.
  

These tactics are used by organisations for different outcomes, such as political, mobilising or cultural aims (Costanza-Chock, 2003: 178). This repertoire of online contention is only seen as an extended version of the traditional means of communication, yet it does not include SNS and the increased possibilities for communication and interaction.

The successful implementation of these tactics can be facilitated by the availablilty of resources for the social movement organisation. From an organisational perspective, resource mobilisation theory (McCarthy & Zald, 1977) is interesting here. The more resources the organisation is able to collect, the more possibilities is has to successfully follow Costanza-Chock’s repertoire. Therefore, wealthy organisations will find it easier to employ these strategies (Della Porta & Mosca, 2005).

This research aims to discuss the social media repertoire used by SCCC in comparison with this already established electronic action repertoire, in order to explore if social media can indeed offer an innovative strategy of online contention or simply expand the traditional online tactics.

2.5 Summary

The environmental movement is still one of the most popular and important social movements. Especially as environmental catastrophes, whether occurring natural or man-made, continue to headline the news, people are constantely reminded of their environmental impacts and reliance on nature. Theories such as new social movements, resource mobilization theory and political opportunity theory help us to understand how social movements function, yet they cannot be applied to all movements in general and sometimes a combination of the theories makes most sense. This is also the case in the environmental movement.

The internet and ICTs have helped movement organisations to expand their strategies of awareness raising, mobilisation and expression of dissent beyond the reliance on traditional media. Social media and SNS seem to also allow organisations with fewer resources to engage personally with their constituency, as they need less financial resources for their webpresence and can communicate efficiently through space and time. The following will explore if the role of social media with protest organisation is really new or if, in what way it expands the repertoire of contention established by Costanza-Chock (2003).

3. Chapter – Methodology

This chapter discusses the methods that were used to gather the data and especially to look at the reason why this data is useful. The research takes a case study approach to investigate the protest organisation strategies of The Wave demonstration in more detail. This is sustained through five expert interviews and content analysis of Facebook and Twitter groups of five of the organisations involved in the coalition. The organisations are SCCC, Oxfam, Action Aid, Envision and Campaign Against Climate Change. These will be presented in more detail below.

The Facebook and Twitter analysis is conducted of 477 and 456 entries on the discussion boards respectively. The results of the analyses will illuminate the attitude towards social media by the organisations and the organisation’s actual use of SNS.

3.1. Case Study Research

This project takes a case study approach of The Wave protest in order to investigate the use of social media by the non-governmental organisations in the process of mobilisation and organisation of real-life protest marches. Especially regarding the study of social movements, case studies seem a popular research strategy, although other research strategies exist. Case studies are popular because “the strength of the case study method is its ability to examine, in-depth, a ‘case’ within its ‘real-life’ context” (Yin, 2006). According to Snow and Trom three characteristics of case studies can be identified, which are:

“(a) investigation and analysis of an instance or variant of some bounded social phenomenon that (b) seeks to generate a richly detailed and ‘thick’ elaboration of the phenomenon studies through (c) the use and triangulation of multiple methods or procedures that include but are not limited to qualitative techniques” (Snow & Trom, 2002: 147).

This means that a case study is usually chosen to explain a certain aspect of social movements, for example a certain genre or a specific aspect of the process of social movements, like mobilisation or recruitment. Case studies thus allow for a broader research focus or a much specialised, microscopic focus (Snow & Trom, 2002: 148/149). Stressing the necessity for combining several research strategies in case study research to receive the most comprehensive results (Yin, 1981), Snow and Trom suggest using different qualitative research methods (2002: 151). Especially in qualitative research the use of triangulation is sensible in order to generate more details and counterbalance shortcomings of other techniques used (Blee & Taylor, 2002: 111; Flick, 2002: 226) Therefore, in order to fully understand the application of social media in the process of protest organisation, five semi-structured expert interviews with representatives of the NGOs involved in The Wave were conducted, but also a content analysis of Facebook and Twitter discussion pages of the respective NGOs. This methodological triangulation should cover the most important aspects of social media use from perspective of the protest organisation.

This single case study is chosen to shed light especially on the engagement with social media by NGOs and their incorporation in the process of mobilisation and organisation of real-life protests. The findings will contribute to social movement research in so far as they will show whether social network sites in particular add to the traditional repertoire of contention. The Wave as a case study poses to be interesting, because it is a recent case of a large-scale protest being organised through social media in addition to traditional means.

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