Posters and protesters

Pedro Ramaciotti Morales (), Jean-Philippe Cointet () and Caterina Froio ()
Additional contact information
Pedro Ramaciotti Morales: médialab, Sciences Po
Jean-Philippe Cointet: médialab, Sciences Po
Caterina Froio: Sciences Po

Journal of Computational Social Science, 2022, vol. 5, issue 2, No 2, 1129-1157

Abstract: Abstract Do social media incite protest movements, how? How does onsite protest shape online communication dynamics on social media? We examine the oft-debated relationship between social media activity and protest, considering the Yellow Vests or Gilets Jaunes movement in France. We use data of temporal and spatial distribution of Facebook activity and onsite events over a year of social mobilization to address these questions within a system of interacting online and offline activity. This study contrasts with others by analyzing mutual influences between online and offline domains while considering collective information diffusion in social networks. The results show that the relationship between social media activity and onsite protests is not constant nor one-sided, but mutual, and that it changes over the course of the collective action in specific and measurable ways. Using online and offline data, we show different mechanisms by which both domains of activity influence each other. Specifically, the creation of Facebook groups impacts the outbreak of protests, and in turn, this outbreak modifies the parameters of information diffusion between users on Facebook. In addition, Facebook content that pertains to the frames of the movement and mobilization affects onsite mobilization efforts. Our work contributes to the modeling of social movements as systems of online and offline events, expanding on studies that traditionally examine the impact of online activity over onsite protest.

Keywords: Social network analysis; Complex systems; Human dynamics; Social media; Political participation; Collective action; Protests; Social movements; Facebook; Yellow Vests; France (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s42001-022-00163-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jcsosc:v:5:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s42001-022-00163-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... iences/journal/42001

DOI: 10.1007/s42001-022-00163-x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Computational Social Science is currently edited by Takashi Kamihigashi

More articles in Journal of Computational Social Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().