Abstract
The rise of social media platforms and their seemingly central role in the protests that have shaken the world in recent years have sparked renewed academic interest in the relationship between social movements and media. Operating with a rather apolitical understanding of social media that abstracts them from wider social, economic and political contexts, dominant discourses have been largely celebratory, emphasizing the emancipatory and democratic character of social media and attributing them a great deal of causal power. Challenging such simplistic narratives, an emerging critical literature has sought to develop more nuanced understandings of the significance of social media for contemporary protest movements. This edited volume provides a timely and important contribution to that literature.
Critical Perspectives on Social Media and Protest offers exactly what it says on the tin: a collection of chapters that critically examine the relationship between social movements and social media. Seeking to address some of the inadequacies of recent debates on this topic, the editors’ aim is to ‘politicize and contextualize the architectures of what are predominantly commercial social media platforms in terms of their use for the purposes of antisystemic and progressive protest movements’ (p. 1). The book’s subtitle – Between Emancipation and Control – points to the fundamental contradictions that surround protest movements’ use of social media platforms, and this focus on contradiction runs through most chapters. While, as most of the contributors recognize, social media have proved to be fast and effective tools for organizing large-scale protests, their widespread adoption among contemporary protest movements raises a number of troubling questions surrounding sustainability and political efficacy that are examined in detail here.
The editors have assembled 12 diverse contributions from established and emerging scholars that offer both theoretically focused and empirically grounded analyses of the significance and consequences of social media for protest movements. Following the editors’ introduction, a helpful review chapter by Sebastian Haunss sets the scene for the contributions that follow by identifying and critically assessing some of the key assumptions that underpin recent literature on the Internet, social media and protest movements. The remainder of the book is organized into five sections, each made up of two (in one case, three) chapters. Chapters in the first two sections – Algorithmic control and visibility and temporal alienation and redefining spaces – examine how the commercial imperatives, technical infrastructure and temporal logic of social media circumscribe activists’ capacity for organization, collective identity formation, knowledge production and democratic decision-making. The third section – Surveillance, censorship and political economy – focuses on how the business models of commercial social media platforms enable both surveillance and interference on an unprecedented scale and limit possibilities for genuinely open and collaborative content production. Section 4 – Dissent and fragmentation from within – offers case studies that illuminate and concretize some of the contradictions identified in preceding chapters by exploring internal dynamics of conflict and fragmentation, while chapters in the final section – Myths and organizational trajectories – question celebratory narratives of ‘leaderless’ social media–facilitated protest networks.
It is difficult to single out specific chapters for praise from a volume that is, on the whole, of a consistently high quality. Particularly incisive is Oliver Leistert’s analysis of the fundamental contradiction between the algorithmic design of commercial social media platforms and the aims of emancipatory movements, as is Stefania Milan’s argument that social media are implicated in a shift towards a ‘politics of visibility’ that favours individualized self-expression over collective dynamics. Chapters by Veronica Barassi and Anne Kaun illuminate from different perspectives how the temporality of immediacy produced by social media restricts possibilities for critical reflection and the development of shared political projects. Arne Hintz’s insightful analysis of censorship and regulation demonstrates how the monitoring and restricting of dissent increasingly have become outsourced to private actors, with serious implications for democratic accountability. Emiliano Treré offers an engaging and unsettling account of how the #YoSoy132 movement in Mexico fell victim to government infiltration and internal conflict, while Mauro P Porto and João Brant’s chapter on the 2013 protests in Brazil provides a sobering analysis of how the individualized self-expression encouraged by social media contributed to fragmentation and the marginalization of organized social movements. Lina Dencik offers an original contribution to debates around leadership in social media–enabled protests by showing how social media can be mobilized strategically by conventional organizations to create a perception of authenticity and horizontality.
This is an engaging and provocative collection that offers plenty of food for thought for those contemplating the possibilities for emancipatory politics in the (post)digital age. One of its main strengths lies in the way it combines (as a collection and also within most chapters) theoretical sophistication with empirical rigour and political sensitivity. The editors have certainly succeeded in their aim of politicizing and contextualizing the role of social media in contemporary protest movements. Although presented as an effort to move beyond the much-lamented divide between cyber-optimists and cyber-pessimists in the literature on new media and protest, Critical Perspectives on Social Media and Protest leans decidedly towards the pessimistic end of the spectrum. Its pessimism is well-founded, though, as it offers compelling arguments and evidence as to why we should be reluctant to embrace social media as unproblematic tools for advancing emancipatory projects. As such, it should be essential reading for scholars – as well as postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students – interested in questions of media, democracy and social change. Despite the theoretical density of some chapters, it would also make very useful reading indeed for activists wishing to reflect critically on their practice.
Perhaps inevitably, the volume raises more questions than it provides answers. Possible solutions remain largely implicit in most chapters (with the exception of Lovink and Rossiter’s polemic about the importance of ‘orgnets’ – organized networks), and if I were to identify a weakness, it would be that the editors could have done more to balance the book’s critical assessment with proposals for how the contradictions and limitations of social media may be overcome or circumvented. That is perhaps more appropriately conceived as a challenge for future scholarship in this field, though – a challenge that Critical Perspectives on Social Media and Protest sets up admirably.