Organized Mobilization on Social Media: A Multi-Institutional Perspective on Protest Rhetoric, Reach, and Reinforcement

Abstract

Social media protests aim to mobilize participants and reach new audiences; however, little is understood about online social movements from a multi-institutional perspective. A multi-institutional understanding of online protest activities would recognize multiple sources of power, each of which leverages their (different) social, political, and cultural contexts to mobilize participation. This study proposes a multi-method framework to examine online mobilization by large Facebook groups protesting a law by the Indian government. First, an analysis of major Facebook groups reveals nostalgic, political, religious, and journalistic fields that form different narratives to the social movement. Second, findings based on linguistic topic modeling illustrate the criticism, broadcasting, and debating social media strategies characteristic of each field. Finally, a social network analysis approach identifies the importance of the journalistic field as a potential mediator that seeds information in nostalgic, political, and cultural fields through content coordination networks.