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Key points
- Communication on social media platforms can lead to social and cultural change.
- Two reasons activism can occur online are the ease of communication and the possibility for anonymity.
- For example, 80 percent of tweets by victims of sexual assault engaged with the movement by sharing the psychological impact of the assault.
Given how social media has been a part of most people’s everyday lives, it should not be surprising to us that social movement can be accomplished effectively online. In this post, my student, Sarah West, a psychology major and I will discuss what online social movement is and what psychological research has found about this topic.
Social Movement and Digital Activism
A social movement is defined as “a network of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and or organizations, engaged in a political or cultural conflict, on the basis of shared collective identity” (Diani, 1992, p. 8). Social movements or activism generate social actions (e.g., political campaigns, petitions, protests), aiming to ultimately promote systemic change. The rise of social media and technology has enabled people to share their experiences or their thoughts with their peers or the public easily. The added anonymity nature on some social media platforms further makes activism possible for sensitive issues, such as violence against women.
Social movements or activism that happen on social media are labeled as cyberactivism (Carty & Barron, 2019), digital activism (Gill & Orgad, 2018; Mendes & Ringrose, 2019), or hashtag activism (because of the use of hashtags to spread information and actions; Xiong, Cho, & Boatwright, 2019).
Research on Digital Activism: Examples from Feminist Activism
There are rising numbers of psychological studies that aim to understand how digital activism is being conducted. One of the widely studied types of activism is feminist activism, such as movements against sexual assault (#MeToo, #sendeanlat – translated from Turkish to English as “#tellyourstory”; Ikizer, Ramírez-Esparza, & Boyd, 2019) and movements to end rape culture (e.g., SlutWalk; Mendes, 2015).
Through sharing on social media as a community, individuals gather a legion of support from people who share concerns on the same issues (Keller, Mendes, & Ringrose, 2018). They were also found to feel a sense of security when sharing their stories on social media (Sills et al., 2016).
Members of my research lab worked together to examine two sets of Twitter data on digital activism against sexual assault (Li et al., 2021). One set of data involved social media users who identified themselves as victims of sexual assault, and another set of data involved general users who used relevant hashtags.
After analyzing the contents, we found that over 80 percent of the tweets written by victims engaged with the movement by sharing the psychological impact they experienced. For tweets authored by general users, most involved general, political, or legal discussion of sexual assault against women (69 percent). Many also involved educating the public on the issue by sharing resources (50 percent) and some proposing social actions (12 percent).
Of course, the results were mainly descriptive, but they reflected that social media has become a platform for open discussion of issues, even if those issues are considered to be sensitive. Compared with general discussion, much less content involves proposed solutions or social actions. This seems to reflect that many conversations on social media may not directly bring social changes; however, open discussion and conversations are a crucial part of making social changes. Therefore, social media is still a helpful platform to promote changes.
References
Carty, V., & Barron, F. G. R. (2019). Social movements and new technology: The dynamics of cyberactivism in the digital age. In B. Berberoglu (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Movements, Revolution, and Social Transformation (pp. 373–397). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92354-3
Diani, M. (1992). The concept of social movement. The Sociological Review, 40(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1992.tb02943.x
Gill, R., & Orgad, S. (2018). The shifting terrain of sex and power: From the ‘sexualization of culture’ to #MeToo. Sexualities, 21(8), 1313–1324. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460718794647
Ikizer, E. G., Ramírez-Esparza, N., & Boyd, R. L. (2019). #sendeanlat (#tellyourstory): Text Analyses of Tweets About Sexual Assault Experiences. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 16(4), 463–475. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-018-0358-5
Keller, J., Mendes, K., & Ringrose, J. (2018). Speaking ‘unspeakable things’: documenting digital feminist responses to rape culture. Journal of Gender Studies, 27(1), 22–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2016.1211511
Li, M., Turki, N., Izaguirre, C. R., DeMahy, C., Thibodeaux, B. L., & Gage, T. (2021). Twitter as a tool for social movement: An analysis of feminist activism on social media communities. Journal of Community Psychology, 49(3), 854–868. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22324
Mendes, K. (2015). SlutWalk: Feminism, activism and media. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Mcnmillan.
Mendes, K., & Ringrose, J. (2019). Digital feminist activism: #MeToo and the everyday experiences of challenging rape culture. In #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change (pp. 37–51). Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15213-0_3
Sills, S., Pickens, C., Beach, K., Jones, L., Calder-Dawe, O., Benton-Greig, P., & Gavey, N. (2016). Rape culture and social media: Young critics and a feminist counterpublic. Feminist Media Studies, 16(6), 935–951. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2015.1137962
Xiong, Y., Cho, M., & Boatwright, B. (2019). Hashtag activism and message frames among social movement organizations: Semantic network analysis and thematic analysis of Twitter during the #MeToo movement. Public Relations Review, 45(1), 10–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2018.10.014
