TY - JOUR
T1 - How Social Media Facilitates Political Protest
T2 - Information, Motivation, and Social Networks
AU - Jost, John T.
AU - Barberá, Pablo
AU - Bonneau, Richard
AU - Langer, Melanie
AU - Metzger, Megan
AU - Nagler, Jonathan
AU - Sterling, Joanna
AU - Tucker, Joshua A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The writing of this article was supported by the INSPIRE program of the National Science Foundation (Awards # SES-1248077 and # SES-1248077-001) as well as New York University’s Global Institute for Advanced Study (GIAS) and Dean Thomas Carew’s Research Investment Fund (RIF). We wish to thank Monica Biernat, Shahrzad Goudarzi, Curtis D. Hardin, Miles Hewstone, Howard Lavine, Craig McGarty, H. Hannah Nam, Sharareh Noorbaloochi, Chadly Stern, Wolfgang Stroebe, and several anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. We also acknowledge that the research programs summarized herein benefited greatly from the computer programming assistance of Duncan Penfold-Brown, Jonathan Ronen, and Yvan Scher. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John T. Jost, Department of Psychology, Meyer Hall, 6 Washington Place (Room 610), New York University, New York, NY 10003. E-mail: John. Jost@nyu.edu
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 International Society of Political Psychology
PY - 2018/2/1
Y1 - 2018/2/1
N2 - It is often claimed that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are profoundly shaping political participation, especially when it comes to protest behavior. Whether or not this is the case, the analysis of “Big Data” generated by social media usage offers unprecedented opportunities to observe complex, dynamic effects associated with large-scale collective action and social movements. In this article, we summarize evidence from studies of protest movements in the United States, Spain, Turkey, and Ukraine demonstrating that: (1) Social media platforms facilitate the exchange of information that is vital to the coordination of protest activities, such as news about transportation, turnout, police presence, violence, medical services, and legal support; (2) in addition, social media platforms facilitate the exchange of emotional and motivational contents in support of and opposition to protest activity, including messages emphasizing anger, social identification, group efficacy, and concerns about fairness, justice, and deprivation as well as explicitly ideological themes; and (3) structural characteristics of online social networks, which may differ as a function of political ideology, have important implications for information exposure and the success or failure of organizational efforts. Next, we issue a brief call for future research on a topic that is understudied but fundamental to appreciating the role of social media in facilitating political participation, namely friendship. In closing, we liken the situation confronted by researchers who are harvesting vast quantities of social media data to that of systems biologists in the early days of genome sequencing.
AB - It is often claimed that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are profoundly shaping political participation, especially when it comes to protest behavior. Whether or not this is the case, the analysis of “Big Data” generated by social media usage offers unprecedented opportunities to observe complex, dynamic effects associated with large-scale collective action and social movements. In this article, we summarize evidence from studies of protest movements in the United States, Spain, Turkey, and Ukraine demonstrating that: (1) Social media platforms facilitate the exchange of information that is vital to the coordination of protest activities, such as news about transportation, turnout, police presence, violence, medical services, and legal support; (2) in addition, social media platforms facilitate the exchange of emotional and motivational contents in support of and opposition to protest activity, including messages emphasizing anger, social identification, group efficacy, and concerns about fairness, justice, and deprivation as well as explicitly ideological themes; and (3) structural characteristics of online social networks, which may differ as a function of political ideology, have important implications for information exposure and the success or failure of organizational efforts. Next, we issue a brief call for future research on a topic that is understudied but fundamental to appreciating the role of social media in facilitating political participation, namely friendship. In closing, we liken the situation confronted by researchers who are harvesting vast quantities of social media data to that of systems biologists in the early days of genome sequencing.
KW - collective action
KW - friendship
KW - group identification
KW - political ideology
KW - protest
KW - social media
KW - social networks
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85042091023&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/pops.12478
DO - 10.1111/pops.12478
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85042091023
SN - 0162-895X
VL - 39
SP - 85
EP - 118
JO - Political Psychology
JF - Political Psychology
ER -