Unaffiliated Socialization and Social Media Recruitment: Reflections from Occupy the Netherlands
Year: 2013
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: It is a topic of lasting interest for social movement scholars and political scientists alike whether the ubiquitous media environment in which citizens now operate has an imprint on the scope and quality of their appetite for civic engagement (Bimber, 2003;Jenkins, 2006;Coleman & Blumler, 2009).In particular, there has been continued querying of social media usage as an avenue for renewed political socialization.A 'mobilisation effect' leading to a swell in the number of participants in activism and specifically in physical instances of participation such as demonstrations continues to be disputed (Fisher & Boekkooi, 2010;van Laer, 2010).Moreover, much skepticism has been voiced about the enabling role social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, have had in the not so distant popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East (see Morozov, 2011).Fresh ethnographic evidence suggests that in a highly censored media environment, those platforms served a key twofold initial purpose: to distribute viral appeals to participation as well as to provide participants with an effective coordination tool, i.e.Twitter (Gerbaudo, forthcoming).With the present paper, we seek to contribute recently collected evidence from a specific case study to this on-going discussion.In particular, we aim to shed new light onto the question of a hybridity in social movement mobilisation in the digital age.For that purpose, we build upon emerging evidence that social media can contribute to protest participation (Tufekci, Wilson, 2012;Margetts, 2012).In what follows, we discuss this notion in relation to the mobilisation of unaffiliates into the Dutch Occupy Movement.
Authors: Dan Mercea, Paul Nixon, Andreas Funk
Language: English
Topic: Social Media and Politics
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1597736008