scholarly journals The coup that flopped: Facebook as a platform for emotional protest

First Monday ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaroslav Švelch ◽  
Václav Štětka
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Movement Mobilization

This paper develops the idea that recent “networked” social movements are driven by emotions and provides an analysis of the role of emotions in movement mobilization. The case study focuses on the 2013 protests against a “coup” within the Czech Social Democratic Party. The protests had an immediate impact, resulting in a series of demonstrations, mainstream media attention and a successful overturning of the “coup”. The movement’s Facebook page served as an important catalyst for the protest. We argue that the movement’s success can be explained by its emphasis on perceived issues of morality. As people tend to gather on Facebook to express their feelings, social media become a primary conduit for emotional protest, which can be subsequently taken to the streets.

scholarly journals Scaling Social Movements Through Social Media: The Case of Black Lives Matter

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511880791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia Mundt ◽  
Karen Ross ◽  
Charla M Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Scaling Up ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Careful Management

In this article, we explore the potential role of social media in helping movements expand and/or strengthen themselves internally, processes we refer to as scaling up. Drawing on a case study of Black Lives Matter (BLM) that includes both analysis of public social media accounts and interviews with BLM groups, we highlight possibilities created by social media for building connections, mobilizing participants and tangible resources, coalition building, and amplifying alternative narratives. We also discuss challenges and risks associated with using social media as a platform for scaling up. Our analysis suggests that while benefits of social media use outweigh its risks, careful management of online media platforms is necessary to mitigate concrete, physical risks that social media can create for activists.

Social Media, Political Mobilization, and Citizen Engagement

2017 ◽  
pp. 360-388
Author(s):  
Kenneth C. C. Yang ◽  
Yowei Kang
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Resource Mobilization Theory ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Mobilization Theory

On March 18, 2014, a group of student protestors raided and occupied the Legislative Yuan and later the Executive Yuan in Taiwan. The student-led movement lasted for about 3 weeks after Taiwan's President made significant concessions to change his non-transparent practices when signing the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) with People's Republic of China. Mostly labelled as a movement of civil disobedience against government's dealings with China, the 318 Sunflower Student Movement is viewed as an important step toward the deepening of Taiwan's democratization process. Its repercussions were felt in Hong-Kong and Macao where similar civil disobedience movements had emerged. On the basis of the resource mobilization theory (RMT), the authors used a combination of case study and thematic analysis methods to examine the role of social media in political mobilization in Taiwan. This chapter identified two major recurrent themes as follows: challenging mainstream media and mobilizing multi-movement resources.

scholarly journals Social democratic representation and welfare spending: a quantitative case study

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 589-596
Author(s):  
Henning Finseraas
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Quantitative Case Study

AbstractThe welfare state literature argues that Social Democratic party representation is of key importance for welfare state outcomes. However, few papers are able to separate the influence of parties from voter preferences, which implies that the partisan effects will be overstated. I study a natural experiment to identify a partisan effect. In 1995, the Labour Party (Ap) in the Norwegian municipality of Flå filed their candidate list too late and could not participate in the local election. Ap was the largest party in Flå in the entire post-World War period, but have not regained this position. I use the synthetic control method to study the effects on welfare spending priorities. I find small and insignificant partisan effects.

German Social Democratic Agrarian Policy, 1890–1895 Reconsidered

1980 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Harvey Maehl
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Agrarian Policy ◽  
Great Debate ◽  
North Germany ◽  
To Come ◽  
Subsequent Rise ◽  
Auxiliary Role

If in the 1890s any one aspect of economic development under capitalism confounded the prognostications of German Marxists it was the agricultural. The peasants had not obliged the pundits of German Social Democracy by permitting themselves to be ruined and liquidated as a class. The realization, based on a plethora of statistical evidence, that the peasant would be for years to come a hardy perennial disposed many leaders of the German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) to coquette with reformist approaches to the agrarian problem. This provoked the great debate of 1893–95 in the course of which traditional lines between orthodoxy and reformism became blurred. Some of the party's best men were compromised, and the “whole conception of the movement as that of a class which harbors goals of the broadest revolutionary compass” was put into question. The erosion of principle was such that not only men of the standing of Georg von Vollmar and Bruno Schoenlank in South Germany but also August Bebel, who was the generalissimo of the SPD, Ignaz Auer, and Wolfgang Heine in North Germany were to be labelled by Otto Wels, the later Social Democratic Reichstag leader, shining examples of opportunism. The problem of the small farmer was to be a major factor in the subsequent rise of revisionism, for Eduard Bernstein, that brilliant wandering star in many constellations, was to stress the indispensable auxiliary role of the peasantry in engineering the gradualist transformation of society along Social Democratic lines.

LOCAL RECEPTIVITY CLIMATES AND THE DYNAMICS OF MEDIA ATTENTION TO PROTEST*

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Patrick Rafail ◽  
John D. McCarthy ◽  
Samuel Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Environments ◽  
Insight Into

Research on media attention to social movements generally examines a small sample of media outlets and a diverse sample of protest events. This approach has produced significant insight into the type of protests covered by the media but has minimized the role of media organizations. This study flips the approach taken by prior work: we examine coverage patterns of 1,498 nationally coordinated but highly comparable vigils against the Iraq War in 426 U.S. newspapers. We show that protest coverage is shaped by local receptivity climates, which emphasize the organizational and contextual features of media environments that influence media attention. We show that larger newspapers, those that covered the Iraq War more extensively, and those in areas supporting the Democratic Party devoted more attention to the vigils. Our results bridge the gap between the features of protest events that are newsworthy and the organizational routines that structure journalistic work.

Luxemburg, Rosa (1871–1919)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Tudor
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Democratic Centralism ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Rosa Luxemburg ◽  
Radical Left

Rosa Luxemburg, of Polish-Jewish origins, was for most of her life a prominent activist and theorist on the radical left of the German Social Democratic Party. She defended revolutionary Marxism against the ‘revisionist’ critique ofEduard Bernstein; she developed an original and controversial Marxist theory of imperialism; and she advocated direct revolutionary action by the masses, as contrasted with Lenin’s insistence on ‘democratic centralism’ and the leading role of the Party.

Coloring social change: Humor, politics, and social movements

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-511
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Takovski
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Free Expression ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
On Line ◽  
Present Case Study

AbstractAs many social movements demonstrate, humor can serve as an important resource to resist oppression, fight social injustice and bring social change. Existing research has focused on humor’s role within social movements and its positive effects on the free expression of criticism, reduction of fear, communication, mobilization of participants and so on. However, the current literature on the activist use of humor also expresses some reservations about its political efficacy. While humor may steam off the energy necessary to counteract oppression and injustice, other tools of achieving the same political ends have been successfully deployed, primarily social media. Building upon this research, the present case study explores the 2016 Macedonian social movement called the Colorful Revolution. In particular, through the analysis of social media and activists’ reflection on the political use of humor, this case study examines how on-line humor contributed to the emergence and development of the movement. Factoring in activists’ opinions on the role of humor in society and especially in movements, while also paying attention to the role of social media, this case study tends to re-interpret the role of humor in the totality of the actions and circumstances underpinning the development of a social movement.

Democracy or Socialism? A Case Study of Vorwärts in the 1890s

1977 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 286-311
Author(s):  
Raymond Dominick
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Communist Society ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Proletarian Revolution

Interpreters who would make Karl Marx a democrat argue that a correctly informed socialist agitation can combine with economic conditions to create majority support for a proletarian revolution and a communist society. When the agitators themselves disagree about socialist theory, however, a dilemma is created. Should party leaders pose as guardians of orthodoxy and muzzle intraparty dissent, to the obvious detriment of democracy, or should they tolerate criticism of socialist dogma, and thereby perhaps weaken the chance for a successful revolution? Before Lenin imposed his answer to these questions upon the communist movement, the world's first mass-based and avowedly Marxist party, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), grappled inconclusively with this intraparty dilemma of democratic socialism.

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