Social Movements and Digital Organizing

Abstract

Internet use is thought to be changing the organizational dynamics of social movements. This panel will take stock of changes and continuities in social movement organizing through both a historical analysis, looking back at 20 years of digital organizing, and a focus on emerging platforms and trends. The panel invites papers that critically examine the relationship between digital media and different organizing models, posing important questions around the politics and ideology that informs the use of such media and their technical design. Research in this area has investigated whether and how the use of digital media fosters more decentralized and horizontal forms of organizing. It has also questioned the meaning of the term ‘organization’, asking whether it needs to be expanded to encompass more informal and unofficial practices of organizing that happen without social movement organizations or other institutions of collective action. Research has further explored how digital communication practices can produce new organizations from below, as well as hidden hierarchies and power asymmetries that belie the purported drive towards horizontality. A key issue in this respect is how the values, goals, knowledge and experience of different collective actors affect practices of digital organizing. This panel includes papers that focus on the role of digital media in mobilizing audiences and in creating communities of hope and indignation. Apart from Twitter and Facebook, that have received significant academic attention in recent years, the panel comprises papers that also investigate more private channels of communication, including internal email lists and instant messaging platforms like Telegram and Whatsapp. Yet beyond the functions and practices of digital media, this panel also asks critical questions around the significance of these changes (and continuities) in social movement organizing. Why do such changes matter? Research has investigated whether digital media use is facilitating the prefigurative politics of certain movements, helping activists to enact in the present the more democratic forms of organizing that they would like to see in the future. Other research has looked at the impact of such media practices on the mobilizing potential of social movements, on the speed of action and its impact on public opinion and policy making. The panel will thus advance our understanding of why and how digital organizing matters for collective action, aiming to make a critical contribution to this field of research.

Title	Details
The Yellow Vest Movement Organizing its Activities: Between Online Coordination Repertoires and Spontaneous Individual Communications	View Paper Details
Under Surveillance: Social Movement Organizing and State Repression in Catalonia	View Paper Details
When Do We #NotWelcomeRefugees: Detecting Expansion and Radicalization of Far Right Forces in Digital Spaces	View Paper Details
Digital Media and Local Protest	View Paper Details