The Social Media Overture of the Pan-European Stop-ACTA Protest: An Empirical Examination of Participatory Coordination in Connective Action

Abstract

Citation: Mercea, D. and Funk, A. (2014). The social media overture of the pan-European Stop-ACTA protest: An empirical examination of participatory coordination in connective action. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, doi: 10.1177/1354856514563663 This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. In the current political climate marked by deep economic transformation, social upheaval is fast becoming a preferred avenue for voicing anger and opposition to austerity and the retrenchment of the welfare state (Castells, 2012). Recent instalments of street protests that have swept the European Union from Greece to France and Spain, Bulgaria to the UK have signalled a deep preoccupation of the European citizenry with social justice whilst also underscoring the centrality of horizontal digital media in sparking and fanning protest. Not least, protest has been directed at preserving the existing scope of digital media for unencumbered information and communication, as witnessed in the cross-national mobilisation against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (henceforth ACTA). With this article, we seek to investigate an ostensible process of participatory coordination with Facebook and Twitter, which were both used in the pan-European protests against ACTA. Permanent repository linkThe aim of this study is to conceptualize and evaluate the scope for two modes of coordination it identifies -motivational and resource coordination -by way of a mixedmethod study of data retrieved in the run-up to the last Europe-wide anti-ACTA demonstrations of 9 June 2012.Coordination with social media tools has been principally considered in relation to the accomplishment of collective activities (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012: 749;Bennett et al., 2014). Second, it has been discussed in reference to the formation of participant commitment to collective action (see Garrett, 2006;Juris, 2012; Valenzula, 2013). This article speaks to both interests by assaying the scope for the cooperative rather than organizationally orchestrated development of requisite motivations and resources for collective action through networked communication. Consequently, we set out to delineate and empirically verify the notion of participatory coordination. Below, we begin this work with a brief overview of the Stop ACTA movement followed by a review of the sources informing the research aim and hyponym objectives outlined at the end of the same section. (Bruns and Burgess, 2012;. Both platforms may be viewed as social infrastructures enabling, inter alia, the public display of highly individualized and personalized exchanges (Langlois et al., 2009;Poell, 2014 (2009: 417-19). At the same time, the two services leave distinct imprints on the public communication to which they are applied (Poell, 2014: 719). Twitter hashtags -key words or abbreviations preceded by the hash sign (#) -provide one pertinent illustration of these assertions. Hashtags...

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“…The agenda melding process takes advantage of the connective action framework (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012) operating in the digital media realm. The connective action framework has recently been cited in academic literature as a new model to facilitate effective campaigning in social media networks (Mercea & Funk, 2016). The framework is characterised by digital networks and open technologies that allow personalised messages to be generated.…”

Building Contention Word-by-Word: Social Media Usage in the European Stop ACTA Movement

“…Personal action frames are unlike stable group identities and ideologies, which are organisational paraphernalia one embraces whenever joining organisationally orchestrated collective action (Bennett and Segerberg 2012: 746). This distributed modality for instilling the motivation and raising resources for collective action we termed participatory coordination (Mercea and Funk 2014). The empirical study stemming from this proposition sought to ascertain the scope for participatory coordination encountered in the networked communication of the Stop ACTA mobilisation, thereby performing an empirical verification of the theory of connective action.…”

“…Their activity on Facebook and Twitter further revealed both limited access and interest in tapping organisational resources from more established but ideologically compatible peers such as the Electronic Freedom Foundation who spearheaded the drive against the ACTA agreement at the EU institutional level (Lischka 2010). Instead, a sizable proportion of the communication witnessed on both social media platforms concentrated on the crowd-sourcing of requisite resources for collective action and the articulation of a critical and by-and-large reasoned discourse providing a cohesive justification for the protest (Mercea and Funk 2014;Mercea 2015). Accordingly, the discursiveness encountered on social media may be regarded as adding to the eventfulness of the 9 June demonstrations.…”

Are people more connective than political actions? Towards an empirical approach for action participants

“…Empirically, LCA literature has used two major indicators to differentiate between collective and connective action: action organizers and mobilization channels (Bennett and Segerberg 3 2013; Cristancho and Anduiza 2013;Lim 2013;Mercea and Funk 2014;Bennett et al 2014;Anduiza et al 2014;Vromen et al 2015;Boler et al 2014;Wright 2015). While collective action depends basically on hierarchical organizations and perhaps also digital media for mobilization, connective action relies largely on individuals and digital media.…”