Public Contention in the Hybrid Media System: 38 Degrees and the Organisational Management of Digital Micro-Activism

This paper will examine the role of emerging, digitally-focused organisations in facilitating political engagement through their use of social media. Drawing upon a three-month participant observation, ethnographic data from interviews with staff and members, as well as campaign emails, content from Facebook and Twitter, and online news articles, this paper explores how the UK-based political activist movement, 38 Degrees, uses the seemingly mundane functionality of Facebook and Twitter to empower their membership to engage in forms of public contestation. By exploring the movement’s use of social media across a process-based definition of participation, this paper shows how the the leadership of 38 Degrees uses digital tools to support engagement repertoires that blend online and offline tactics. In what I describe as the organisational management of digital micro-activism, the leadership creates opportunities for meaningful participation through its use of Facebook and Twitter. These low-effort technologies are used to enable members to guide the strategic direction of the movement, to mobilise wider publics, and to support other forms of digital and real space activism. By designing campaign actions that are granular, and by using technologies that are widely diffused amongst their membership, the leadership provides a bridge between digital micro-activism and sites of power. This raises new questions about the nature of public contention, as the lines between public and private expression, digital and real-space activism, and active and passive engagement become blurred.