'We get off the PCs and we go to the Square': Greek Blogosphere’s Protest Framing of the Summer 2007 Wildfires

Over summer 2007, Greece witnessed unprecedented and massive demonstrations spurred by disastrous forest wildfires. According to many commentators and scholars, these demonstrations were brewed out of the debate in the Greek blogosphere. Nevertheless, “demonstrating” had not been the only protest-action advocated and debated in the various Greek blogs: a number of on-line (e.g. group emailing) and off-line (e.g. reforestation initiatives) protest actions had been proposed yet demonstrating ended up being the action preferred by the majority of bloggers –as well as their blogs’ commentators. In this paper I examine the factors distinguishing those endorsing the ‘demonstrating’ option vis-à-vis all others suggested, by analyzing the online discussion around the Mt Parnitha’s (in the region of Athens) wildfire as it developed in the Greek blogosphere between June 28, 2007 (the day the wildfire erupted) to July 7 (the day before the related demonstration in central Athens). My data include the fire/protest-related content of all 180 Greek blogs which had had posts concerning the Mt Parnitha’s wildfire (total N of posts= 247; total N of comments = 2,196). My guiding hypotheses are that those opting for demonstrating would differ in their ‘framing’ of the situation (cf. Snow et al. 1986), particularly in their ‘diagnostic’ framing of attribution of responsibility- in effect blaming the State (authorities) for this disaster. Furthermore, this attribution of blame towards the state will be coupled with feelings of “outrage” and “anger” (cf. Jaspers 1998). I argue that differences at those two aspects (‘diagnostic framing’ of, and ‘feelings’ towards the forest wild-fires) will be statistically significant predictors of a person’s endorsement of the ‘demonstrating’ option vis-à-vis other types of protest. References: Jaspers, J. (1998), “The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and around Social Movements”, Sociological Forum, 13 (3): 397-424 Snow D.A., Rochford Jr, E.B., Worden, S. K., & Benford, R. D. (1986) , “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation”, American Sociology Review, 1(4): 464-481