Explaining Differential Involvement in Cross-Movement Coalitions on Social Media: the #StopHateForProfit Campaign

Abstract

Social movements form coalitions to gain leverage and achieve mutual goals, however little is known about how coalitions work, especially in the realm of social media. In this paper we examine the 2020 #StopHateForProfit coalition which pressured corporations to pull their advertising spending from Facebook because of its permissive content moderation policies toward disinformation and hate. From the digital traces of the campaign on Twitter, we explain the participation differentials among coalition social movement organisations (SMO) partners and their followers. The findings show that the coalition's centrality to movement agenda, the ideological homogeneity of followership, and the SMO partners and their followership's central positions in the communication network led to the highest and most time persistent participation rates. Our counter-intuitive findings extend the literature on social movements coalitions by suggesting that multi-issues, “big tent” movements with ideological breadth may find invoking the core of their large followership rather challenging despite the ease of participation afforded by social media.