The Political is Personal: Movement Frames in Contemporary Protest Politics

This paper is an investigation in to changing patterns of protest mobilisation and political engagement in contemporary democracies. Bennett and Segerberg point to the growth of personalised movement frames as a critical innovation in contemporary political systems where civil society, its underlying organisational structure, and collective action frames no longer sufficiently integrate political and social life. This paper builds upon their work by developing an account of the personal sphere as a generative space for political mobilisation. Using a combination of 3.8 million tweets collected during the June 2013 Turkish protests that started in Istanbul's Gezi Park, and survey data collected from those attending the demonstrations, the paper elaborates the manners in which lifestyles and personal experience become transformed into political matters. The paper concludes by distinguishing the elements of the political system to which differing kinds of personal action frames and collective action frames are addressed.