Social movement 2.0: integrating and assessing scholarship on social media and movement

Abstract

ABSTRACTWith over five years of hindsight following historic protests around the world, we review scholarship published on “Social Movement 2.0” (SM2.0)—our shorthand for the convergence of Web 2.0 platforms and protest, movements, or other resistance activities. Initially, we review 97 articles as offering disparate assumptions concerning social movement, agency, and the relationship between humans and new communication technologies (NCTs). We suggest SM2.0 scholarship could benefit from following debates in social movement rhetoric and media ecology. Particularly, building upon rhetoricians’ critiques of traditional movement theory, we encourage scholars to amplify the constitutive meanings and identities created through NCTs in protest (rather than rely upon functional paradigms). Building upon media ecology scholarship, we critique SM2.0 analysis that leverages technological determinism or isolationism to address media’s power in social change. We feature instead scholarship that unpacks the relationship between media and the unique contexts in which protestors build networks of resistance. We call for greater complexity in scholarship at the intersections of movement and media.