ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN PROTEST MOVEMENTS: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has been a remarkable assertion for racial equality worldwide. Similarly, the Farmer’s Protests in India have been hailed as the largest protest in human history. Both the BLM protests and the Farmers Protest in India have gained worldwide support and attention. The movement can be seen as an attempt to seek racial, economic or political justice. The paper seeks to analyse the nature of these protests and how cyberspace or social media has been used and or has contributed to the organisation of the ongoing protests. And it also looks at the government's response to this use of social media as an organisational tool. One of the characteristic features of these protests has been the highly organised nature considering the fact that they are a group of people who were isolated in space and yet came together especially in the case of the BLM. About the farmer protests, nearly 40 farmer organisations were engaged in the protests. The lack of attention given to these protests in the initial days by the mainstream media is also studied necessitating the use of used social media to a large extent to generate and keep up the support of the protestors and inform the public. The study seeks to analyse the various protests in the context of a demand for economic and political justice in the absence of effective political mobilisation on the issue by mainstream political parties.