THE NEW-NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: ARE SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGING THE ONTOLOGY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS?

Abstract

Our hypermediated societies affect the very nature of what a social movement is. This article identifies five core nodal points of what constitutes a social movement: Program claims, Identity construction, Connections, Actions, and Resolve (PICAR). Primarily using France’s yellow vest movement case, I assess the impact of social media on these nodal points. I find that social media afford opportunities as well as present challenges for contemporary movements which taken together amounts to a newly emerging ontology. This new-new social movement ontology is characterized by processes of discontinuity (open ideological positioning, fluid collective identities, weak ties, an online repertoire of action, and relative ephemerality) co-existing with continuity (the return of a class politics of redistribution, the continued importance of collective identity, offline repertoires, and cycles of protest). This analysis demonstrates the dynamic interplay between political and mediation opportunity structures, producing new emancipatory potentials and challenging constraints.