Investigating the role of social media technologies in the political narratives of Global Justice Activists

Abstract

This research presents the findings from a case study undertaken in the summer of 2013. It shows the role that the Web, particularly social media, played in the narrative forming experiences of activists identified as members of Global Justice Networks. Global Justice Networks are international networks of activists who content with dominant neoliberal ideologies of governance. Historically these networks have used the Internet, the Web and now social media to organise and promote their contention. In the latter half of the 2000s and into the 2010s, much comment has been made about the role of social media in allowing new waves of democratic discourse to take effect in previously authoritarian nations, but there is a growing current of unease regarding the effects that a handful of western Web technologies can have on shaping complex socio-political events. This research presents an ethnographic method which explores the use of social media in political protest in an attempt to glean, through quantitative data, the kinds of phenomenon underpinning social Web technology use, the way that the technologies assert dominance on users, encourage or restrict cohesion and ultimately shape politics.

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ORCID for David Millard: orcid.org/0000-0002-7512-2710

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