The Role of New Media in Protest Organisation

Case Study: ‘The Wave’ protest

Global warming and climate change have become issues that are deeply rooted within today’s society, affecting all citizens of the globe. Due to visible evidence, the fact that the earth is heating up cannot be debated. While the extent of human influence, the speed of warming and its implications are discussed heatedly, not only non-governmental organisations have grasped the necessity to react. Governments worldwide state that they are committed to decrease CO2 emission or enforce other measures to reduce global warming. For this cause 192 nations gathered to draw up a framework for climate change mitigation beyond 2012 to follow up on the Kyoto protocol of 1997. This meeting was held in Copenhagen between the 7^th and 18^th December 2009, it was the 15^th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of 1992 and the 5^th meeting after Kyoto. Opinions on whether the conference would be successful or not differed, and with 192 parties at the table, decision making turned out to be nearly impossible. The final result of COP15 is therefore only vague and does not fulfil the targets aimed at before the conference.

The Stop Climate Chaos Coalition (SCCC) organised ‘The Wave’ protest march and action day in London, England on 5^th of December 2009 in order to raise awareness, urge politicians to act on climate change at Copenhagen and to sign a binding document. Protesters walked through London with the aim of encircling the House of Parliament. Additionally ecumenical services took place, speakers from different NGOs took stage for speeches and the National Union of Students organised an after-party in the London School of Economics.

SCCC is a coalition of 110 organisations that united for this action day in London. Affiliates include members from global environmental organisation, such as Greenpeace or World Wildlife Fund, to global human rights organisations, like UNICEF, to local organisations from different backgrounds, such as Norfolk Climate Action or The Jewish Community Centre in London (Stopclimatechaos.org, 2010).

SCCC is according to the information provided on their homepage:

“The UK’s largest group of people dedicated to action on climate change and limiting its impact on the world’s poorest communities. Our combined supporter base of more than 11 million people spans over 100 organisations, from environment and development charities to unions, faith, community and women's groups” (Stopclimatechaos.org, 2010).
Records of the number of people that took part in the march in London differ from 20.000, as reported by the police, to around 50.000 as reported by SCCC. Yet the police did not deny these claims made by the organisers (BBC News, 2009; Press Release SCCC, 2010).

Symbolically the colour blue was chosen for the march, as protesters were asked to dress in blue or paint their faces and hands blue. During the march, every half an hour, protesters would stop to perform the so called “Splashdance”, a simple choreography. This gave the march a carnevalesque atmosphere and provided the event with possibilities to become a media spectacle.

Image 1. Protesters at The Wave climate change march, London, December 2009

(Oldfield, 2009)

Within the light of the failure of the UN climate summit, it is questionable, what the effects of the march on worldwide governments and their attitudes to climate change are. Yet, by directly addressing Gordon Brown, the former British Prime Minister, SCCC achieved that he publicly committed to the cause and addressed himself directly to the protesters and people of the United Kingdom to give all his efforts for a solution in Copenhagen:

“I strongly support ‘The Wave’ demonstration today. [...] Copenhagen needs to be something we have never achieved before. A climate change deal which involves all countries and sets the world on a path to the reduction of global emission. It can be done. Together we can make climate change history” (Gordon Brown, Number10 TV, 2009).

The organisation of the event and mobilisation of potential protesters was largely conducted through means of new media, although also traditional ways for promotion, such as flyer-ing, were also used. The coalition was active in establishing groups and events on Facebook, still occupies a Twitter account, can be found on Flickr and YouTube and other social networking sites. In the run up to the march, the audience was encouraged to send in YouTube clips of them doing a Mexican wave. These were then put together to create a continuing videoline of people waving their arms as a promotional and mobilising video stream. This involved considerable commitment by users, as they had to get people together, shoot the video and, if necessary, edit it¹. Futhermore, this strategy forced users to interact with the technologies of video and internet. This shows that the organisers were keen to integrate potential protesters on a personal level and encourage two-way communication through different strategies, the success of which will be evaluated in this thesis paper.

Image 2. Screenshot of www.the-wave.org.uk videostream

(www.the-wave.org.uk, 2009)

2. Chapter – A Theoretical Framework

This research project has to be grounded in a theoretical framework. To illustrate the particularities of the environmental and climate change movement, this chapter begins by placing them within the context of social movement theory. After a short summary of the development of the environmental movement, an overview of the social movements theories of new social movements (NSMs), resource mobilisation theory and political opportunity will be given. Furthermore, insights into protest theory will be provided.

The second part of the theoretical framework is dedicated to theory about new media and social media. The development from Web1.0 to Web2.0 had significant impacts on the ways that people perceive of the internet and has introduced new possibility for communication.

Finally, the social movement theory and social media theory need to be related to each other to investigate the common usage of new media by social movements in terms of interactivity, awareness and mobilisation for offline protests.