The Signs of Our Discontent: Framing Collective Identity at the Women’s March on Washington

Abstract

ABSTRACT As organizing logics shift as the result of increasing reliance on digital technology, social movement framing also shifts. Understanding these changes is vital to shaping contemporary movement organizing. This article examines the budding anti-Trump movement at its earliest and thus far largest organized event, the Women’s March on Washington. We conduct a frame analysis of messages shared via protest signs to analyze the constructions of protester collective identity in this digitally-networked movement. Explicit appeals to collective identities framed the march as intergenerational but often aspire to, rather than embody, intersectionality. Opposition framing as Trump as a metonymy for larger social forces also helped to frame collective identity by coalescing around a common adversary. We also find that collective identity is multitudinous, fragmented, and tension-laden. Tensions are managed through construction of a master frame of resistance, which unites protestors through shared action even when the content of frames differs. We discuss the implications of our work for framing processes of collective identity in personalized and individualized networked social movements.