From a like to a movement: the impact of social media on citizen activism

Abstract

Digital activism is the use of social media and mobile devices to activate and mobilize people for a certain cause. In this research, it is studied how social media influenced citizen activism using a case study, the Climate March in Amsterdam on the 10th of March, 2019. This is done scraping all the relevant data from the facebook event and doing a content analysis using Nvivo and statistical analysis using Excel. The aim of this research is to understand the impact of social media on citizen activism. The participation of a lot of individuals in the Facebook event made the creation of meaning and shared opinions possible. The use of social media empowered individuals to take part and facilitated the creation of social capital, meaning the norms and networks that guide collective action. Even though many individuals participated in the Facebook event, the organizers’ posts had much higher engagement than regular posters, signaling a concentration of power. This networked power, when some nodes in the network have more power than other nodes, can be used to communicate the shared opinions to decision makers to foster policy changes. Using social media did mobilize many people to participate, but failed to reach individuals or organisations that were not already sympathants to the cause. The March also did not have any political or policy related implications, because the organizers did not communicate the created shared meanings and opinions to the decision makers nor did they push it on the political agenda. To make digital activism more effective, organizers should use their networked power to press for policy change after the event and stimulate ongoing activity and participation within the network community.