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Unpacking protest movements’ usages of social media: a case
study of groups involved in the End Austerity Now
demonstration on 20th June, 2015
Anti-racism bloc at End Austerity Now, June 20th 2015 Photo: Author’s own
CANDIDATE NUMBER: 70557 SUPERVISOR: DR BART CAMMAERTS
Dissertation (MC499) submitted to the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics, August 2015, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the MSc in Politics and Communication.
ABSTRACT Since the global financial crash of 2008, the global North has seen a wave of anti-
austerity protest movements. How these movements have used social media to organise and coordinate activists, disseminate information and self-mediate acts of resistance has been the subject of much recent media and communications research. This paper aims to contribute to this field by analysing the social media usages of five protest movements at the London End Austerity Now demonstration, 20th of June 2015. It uses the depth interview and thematic analysis to unpack the social media usages of The Socialist Workers Party, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, The People’s Assembly, Pando Active and The Green Party. The paper highlights the lack of comparative studies in the field of protest movements and social media, and the absence of research into the application of theory to empirical studies. Thus it positions itself at this intersection, its analysis guided by Cammaerts’ (2015) model of the affordances of social media to protest movements. The paper finds that the differences in the affordances of social media felt by the movements are linked to the extent to which the movements identify with, or can be characterised by, Standing’s (2011) concept of the ‘social precariat’. The movements which identify with the features of the social precariat adopt a broad ‘horizon of the possible’ with regards to social media, understanding and adopting all of its affordances. In contrast, the movements which share little in common with the social precariat have a narrow ‘horizon of the possible’, and accordingly limit the affordances social media can bring to their movement. The paper’s findings also imply that the features of the social precariat do not depend on the demographics of the individuals that make up the movement; rather, they are dependent on the structure, ethos and outlook of the movement as a whole.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 3
LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK ..................................................... 6
Social Media and Protest Movements ........................................................................... 6
Case studies on social media and protest movements ................................................... 9
Literature on the anti-austerity movement .................................................................. 12
Conceptual framework ................................................................................................ 16
Statement of intent ..................................................................................................... 17
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY ........................................................................ 17
Research design and sampling ..................................................................................... 17
Particular methods and procedures ............................................................................. 21
RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION...................................................................................... 23
Main findings .............................................................................................................. 23
The Socialist Workers Party ......................................................................................... 24
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament ............................................................................ 26
People’s Assembly Against Austerity ........................................................................... 27
PandoActive................................................................................................................ 29
The Green Party .......................................................................................................... 30
Further Analysis, Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research ............................. 32
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 34
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................... 37
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................... 38
APPENDIXES ................................................................................................................... 43
Appendix 1.................................................................................................................. 43
Appendix 2.................................................................................................................. 45
Appendix 3.................................................................................................................. 49
Appendix 4.................................................................................................................. 50
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INTRODUCTION 'It's one thing to like Facebook posts, and another to go outside parliament and start
shouting into a megaphone. We're trying to take the online activists offline… I think'
(200-202)
Respondent 2 from the Green Party
(line number in transcript)
The 21st century has seen some monumental changes in digital communications
technologies, and the manner in which protest movements use them. Indeed, social media
and so-called Web 2.0 applications today undoubtedly play a constitutive and instrumental
role for protest movements globally, in their efforts to coordinate and mobilise activists, to
self-mediate acts of resistance and to disseminate information (Cammaerts, 2015). Yet
examination of this phenomenon has been extensively critiqued (Cammaerts, 2008), and
the precise opportunities and constraints of social media to protest movements remain
widely contested (Jordan & Taylor, 2004, Cammaerts, 2012, Rucht, 2012, Warkentin, 2001).
Studying protest movements and their social media usages has unique challenges.
While the ‘protest movement’ is often referenced by academics as a distinct body (Tilly,
1986, Melucci, 1989, Zald and McCarthy 1980), the literature simultaneously acknowledges
it is something of a ‘moving target’ for the scholar to pin down (van de Donk et al., 2004:9).
Social media too is hard to analyse, in part due to its multiple platforms and international
nature (Cammaerts, 2012). Studied together, protest movements and social media make for
an ever-evolving dynamic subject matter, which is changing rapidly in the face of
technological and social developments.
This dissertation uses Cammaerts’ (2015) application of Foucauldian (1997) self-
mediation logics to protest movements’ usages of social media to qualitatively explore how
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separate protest movements experience the interplay between the affordances and
constraints of social media. It shows how Standing’s (2011) concept of the social precariat
class can help us understand how the affordances of social media are differently felt by
protest movements. The study aims to make a contribution to the discussion on how social
context, political purpose, and technological possibility influence protest movements’
usages of social media. Profiling five protest movements who all attended the End Austerity
Now demonstration on June 20th 2015, the paper explores how differences in the groups
themselves may have influenced their social media strategies for the event. It seeks to
highlight the need for more studies of this type to be carried out, so that a more general
understanding of how factors such as the agendas and demographics of the groups, the
social context in which the groups are operating in and the state of technology affect
protest movements’ usages of social media.
The End Austerity Now demonstration on the 20th June, 2015 offers an interesting
opportunity to examine different protest movements’ usages of social media in a
contemporary context. By using it as a case study for all the groups studied, the differences
in social and contextual factors the groups operated in are minimised. This allows the paper
to focus on the differences in agendas, demographics and resources of each group.
Organised by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, the event saw approximately 250,000
people from right across the activist spectrum march from the Bank of England to
Parliament Square on the 20th of June this year (Khomami & Wyatt, 2015). As its name
suggests, End Austerity Now was organised by the People’s Assembly to pressurise the
ruling Conservative Government to immediately end its austerity program. The event was
supported by a variety of trade unions and pressure groups, which walked in ‘blocs’ on the
day. There were around forty ‘official’ (i.e. recognised by the People’s Assembly) blocs on
the demo, and many more which formed on the day or which were not recognised by the
People’s Assembly.
This dissertation uses the depth interview (Berger, 1998) as a data collection method
and thematic analysis (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006) as a data analysis method to
qualitatively contribute to the discussion on how the opportunities and constraints of social
media to protest movements are felt by the movements themselves. It examines how social
media were used by five different organisations in the run up to End Austerity Now, both on
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the 20th of June itself and in the follow-up strategy from the demonstration. The groups
were purposefully chosen to reflect the range of movements that attended the
demonstration, and with the expectation that groups with significantly different agendas,
demographics and resources would have greater variation in their attitudes towards social
media. The groups analysed are The People’s Assembly Against Austerity, Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament, PandoActive, The Socialist Worker’s Party and The Green Party.
Three respondents from each group were chosen, based upon their heavy involvement in
their group’s respective social media strategies. Thematic analysis of the interviews aimed
to explore the range of interpretations of the affordances and constraints social media
brought to their movements at the time of this demonstration. Lastly, thematic analysis
enabled an examination of attitudes towards the historical and social context in which the
anti-austerity movement is taking place, and allowed for an evaluation of how these may
have influenced the social media strategies of the groups profiled.
The study draws on literature that theorises and generalises protest movements’
potential usages of social media (van de Donk et al., 2004, Cammaerts, 2012, Rucht, 2012),
literature on the interplay between the affordances and constraints of social media to
protest movements (Cammaerts, 2015), and literature on the anti-austerity movement itself
(Fominaya & Cox, 2013, della Porta, 2015). The paper bridges an underexplored gap in the
literature between general theorisations of how protest movements can and should use
social media (van de Donk, Loader, Nixon & Rucht, 2004, Cammaerts, 2012, Rucht, 2012),
and empirical case studies of how a particular movement has used social media at a
particular time (Froehling, 1999, Martinez-Torres, 2001, Mercer, 2004, Khondker, 2011,
Skinner, 2011, Juris, 2012, Conover et al., 2013, Valenzuela, 2013).
Next follows a summary of the existing literature on the opportunities and
constraints of social media to protest movements (both theoretical and case study papers),
and an examination of the current literature on the anti-austerity movement. This is
followed by a theoretical discussion, which in turn leads to a formulation of the study’s
research question. Following this there is a section about the rationale behind the
methodologies employed. The final section sees a presentation of the findings, together
with an outline of the limitations of the study, and proposes some areas for further
research.
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LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK The exploration of networked technologies usage by protest movements is
an expansive field, which positions itself at the ‘intersection between social context, political
purpose and technological possibility’ (Gillan et al., 2008:151). This paper uses the End
Austerity Now demonstration to contribute to research on how social context, political
purpose and technological possibility influence different protest movements differently. As
Cammaerts (2015:94) writes, protest movements’ usages of social media do not ‘align
totally – on the contrary, but [protest movements] do pick and choose from a similar and
above all mediated set of symbols, tactics, ideas, and critiques’. By profiling five
organisations who used social media somewhat differently for the same demonstration, this
dissertation examines the rationale behind the choice of these mediated symbols, tactics,
ideas and critiques. It explores to what extent empirical analyses can contribute to the
production of a theory that explains why different protest movements use social media
differently.
This section will firstly look at the literature on social media and protest
movements, before moving on to examine some specific empirical studies that have been
carried out on the topic. Following this there will be an examination of literature on the anti-
austerity movement, before the section concludes by showing how this paper positions
itself at the intersection of these three bodies of literature.
Social Media and Protest Movements
Writing about wildlife in the ecological psychology discipline, Gibson (1977)
argued that the environment surrounding an animal creates a set of both objective and
subjective affordances. He argued that as animals perceive or fail to perceive the
potentialities of the objects around them, a ‘unique combination of qualities that specifies
what the object affords us’ is created (Gibson, 1977:75). Gibson (1977) argues that the
subject/object dichotomy is broken down as we use objects in the environment around us,
as they become an extension of ourselves.
This understanding of affordances has been used extensively by technology
scholars (Cammaerts, 2015). Cammaerts (2015:90) applies this understanding to make sense
of the affordances of social media platforms to activists, which he argues are both inherent
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to the platforms themselves, but also ‘need to be recognised as such by activists’. In this
way, Cammaerts (2015) builds on previous works which outline distinct benefits and
constraints of social media to protest movements (Rucht, 2012, van de Donk et al., 2004,
Warkentin, 2001, Jordan & Taylor, 2004). His work provides a conceptual framework to
‘make sense of the roles that social media play for protest movements’, and highlights the
interplay between the affordances and constraints inherent to social media, moving away
from the distinctions made between them in previous literature (Cammaerts, 2015:87).
Cammaerts (2015) argues that the affordances of social media to protest
movements map on to a set of self-mediation logics, which align themselves with Foucault’s
(1997) stoic technologies of the self: examination, disclosure and remembrance. While
Bakardjieva and Gaden (2012) mapped Foucault’s technologies of the self onto the
individual’s use of Web 2.0, Cammaerts (2015) furthers the experiment by mobilising the
technologies onto collective actors. Cammaerts (2015) argues that Foucault’s stoic
technologies of the self are ‘tools’ that are used not only by the individual, but also by the
protest movement in creating and sustaining identities, internalising rules and constraints
and exercising resistance through social media. By adopting this conception of self-
mediation, Cammaerts (2015) understands mediation to be a communicative and dialectical
process, akin to the works of Silverstone (2002) and Martín-Barbero (1993). As Foucault
(1997:225) writes, the stoic technologies of the self permit ‘individuals to effect, by their
own means or with the help of others, a certain number of operations on their own bodies
and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to
attain a certain [desired] state’. Cammaerts (2015) contends that the rationale activists
employ to warrant the use of social (or any type of) media are sixfold: to mobilise, to
disseminate, to organise, to coordinate, to archive and to record. These self-mediation
logics, argues Cammaerts (2015), in turn map on to Foucault’s technologies of the self:
disclosure (to disseminate and mobilise), examination (to organise and coordinate) and
remembrance (to record and archive).
Cammaerts’ (2015) work builds on a tradition of the repertoires of protest
movements being defined by the scholar, in times prior to the invention of social media. We
can view these different repertoires of contentious action as referring to the creative
imagination of movements in determining the ‘limitations of the possible at any given
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moment in time’ (Cammaerts, 2012:120). One of the first theorisations of protest
movements’ repertoires comes from Tilly (1986). Coming from the resource mobilisation
approach, Tilly (1986:391-392) identifies two historical periods in which protest movements
had distinctly different repertoires of contentious action. From the mid-17th-mid-19th
century, he argues that protest movements had a Feudal repertoire of action, in which
protest events mocked elites and local leaders rather than the structures they operated in.
Following this period Tilly (1986) argues that we operate in a Modernist period of protest, in
which the repertoires of protest movements include riots, strikes, uprisings, sit-ins,
marches, boycotts and mass demonstrations. Tilly (1986) established the foundation for a
functionalist approach to protest movements, conceptualising movements’ repertoires in
terms of what makes them succeed, and the rational arguments people make to join a
movement.
Tilly’s (1986) approach defines the protest movement in terms in of their
repertoire of contentious action – how they currently protest, and what means they have to
do so. This resource focused approach has been critiqued by more culturalist perspectives,
such as that of Melucci (1989). Melucci (1989) contends that we should view the protest
movement as a symbolic construction and maintenance of a collective identity. This view
accounts for less organised movements, and has traditionally been ignored in mainstream
movement studies.
More recently, della Porta and Diani (2006) have built on the functionalist
tradition and identified expansions in the available repertoire of contentious action. They
develop a set of logics that activists adhere to when deciding on their available repertoire of
action: the logic of numbers (mass demonstrations), the logic of damage (large-scale or
property disruptions) and the logic of bearing witness (public performance and civic
disobedience) (della Porta & Diani, 2006).
Cammaerts’ (2015:89) bridges the Tilly/Melucci divide, by showing how the
technologies of self-mediation can be used to simultaneously shape and constrain
imagination; to some extend ‘determining the horizon of the possible’. Accordingly, ‘social
media and the communicative practices they enable can potentially become constitutive of
the construction of collective identities and have become highly relevant in view of
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disseminating, communication, recording, and archiving a variety of movement discourses’
(ibid.). Thus the horizon of the possible both enables contentious challenges to authorities,
while at the same time creating a symbolic collective identity. Put differently, technologies
of self-mediation are ‘the ways through which a movement becomes self-conscious’ (ibid.).
Fitting with a post-structuralist interpretation of power, Burkitt (2002:235)
writes that ‘technologies of the self are forms of production as well as a means of
domination’. In this way one must view technologies of self-mediation as encapsulating a
set of limitations, or constraints. However, as Kennewell (2001:106) contends, these
constraints should not be considered negative, instead as ‘the conditions and relationships
amongst attributes which provide structure and guidance for the course of actions’. With
this approach constraints are seen to be complementary to the affordances, ‘and equally
necessary for activity to take place’ (ibid.).
As the most developed interpretation of social media use applied to protest
movements, Cammaerts’ (2015) application of Foucauldian logics to protest movements’
usages of social media guides my thematic analysis. It will allow for the recognition of an
inherent link between the affordances and constraints of the movements I will be looking at,
and the acknowledgement that the benefits and limitations felt by the movements may vary
from movement to movement.
Case studies on social media and protest movements
The need for more studies comparing movement to movement use of social
media is clear. This section analyses past empirical studies on protest movements’ usages of
social media, highlighting the absence of comparative studies. A look at these past empirical
studies also draws attention to the importance of context in each of these studies. The
studies carried out thus far on social media and protest movements are historically, socially
and culturally specific, making any generalisations difficult. This limitation is acknowledged
by other scholars in the field (Hara & Shachaf, 2008, Tully, 2011). Tully (2011:165-166)
argues that because ‘there is relatively little empirical research on the social movements
and the Internet, it is difficult to make large scale conclusions. Most research is time and
place specific and few generalisations have been made that hold up across all cases’. This
section intends to show that by comparing several movements’ usages of social media
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around the same event, this paper makes some contribution towards the creation of an
empirically testable theory of how social media affordances and constraints are felt by
different movements.
One of the first examinations of the use of the Internet for a protest
movement was the Zapatista movement in Mexico in the 1990s (Martinez-Torres, 2001,
Cleaver, 1998). An optimistic account of the potentials of social media for protest
movements, Martinez-Torres (2001) examines the Internet’s role in the Zapatista
movement. She argues the movement’s usages of the Internet are an indication of its
democratising potential, and asserts that they have ‘international aspirations, dimensions
and impacts’ (Martinez-Torres, 2001:347). The Zapatista movement is often touted as the
first example of the Internet used for the pursuit of democratic governance and social
change (Tully, 2011), leading to the development of the term ‘Zapatista Effect’ (Cleaver,
1998). This utopian view of the Internet has been questioned by other research and
empirical evidence (Froehling, 1999, Mercer, 2004, Tully, 2011).
Khondker (2011) also questions the democratising potential of new media in
his paper on the role of new media in the Arab Spring. He argues that new media
constituted only one factor among others, such as social and political factors in the region
that contributed to the successes of the Arab Spring (ibid.). However, an emphasis on the
context of the revolution is made throughout, stressing that the importance of new media
was increased ‘in light of the absence of an open media and civil society’ (ibid.:675). Thus, in
this paper Khondker (2011) joins scholars in acknowledging the potential of the Internet as a
vehicle for disseminating democracy (Poster, 1995, Cleaver, 1998, Martinez-Torres, 2001),
but at the same time identifies the limits and nuances to the role of new media in politics,
emphasising the importance of context in the Arab Spring case.
Valenzuela’s (2013) study analyses survey data collected on social media in Chile in
2011, in the midst of large demonstrations demanding change in energy and education
policy. It unpacks the use of social media for protest behaviour, examining the roles of social
media in activism (finding and mobilising information and joining causes through social
media), opinion expression (using social media to express opinions) and information (social
media as a news source). Valenzuela’s (2013) empirical study is the first to recognise that
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the divide between the sceptical camp (dismissive of social media as a tool for practical
change – e.g. Gladwell, 2010) and the convinced camp (social media is central for modern
political activism – e.g. Howard, et al., 2011) focuses too strongly on the issue of whether
social media use is related to political action. Instead, Valenzuela contends that ‘the more
important issue is how and under what conditions these new digital platforms relate to
citizen activism and protest politics’ (2013:92). It also escapes the narrow sample that
plagues most data on protest movements and social media, by using a data sample from the
general adult population. In not focussing on a particular subgroup, the study deepens our
knowledge on the uses and effects of social media and ‘provides new evidence on the role
of digital platforms as facilitators of direct political action’ (ibid.:920).
Most recently, the Occupy movement has been the subject of several empirical
studies surrounding social media and protest movements (Skinner, 2011, Juris, 2012,
Conover et al., 2013). Juris’ (2012) ethnographic study explores the relationship between
social media and public space within the Occupy Wall Street movement, empirically testing
his distinction between the ‘logic of networking’ and the ‘logic of aggregation’. Juris (2008)
understands the ‘logic of networking’ to be a cultural framework that helps give rise to
practices of communication and coordination across difference and diversity on the part of
collective actors, and the ‘logic of aggregation’ as an assembling of the masses from diverse
backgrounds in physical spaces (Juris, 2012:1-2). The study shows that in recent Occupy
movements, social media have contributed to an emerging logic of aggregation, whereas
websites and listservs helped give rise to a widespread logic of networking in global justice
movements in the 90s-00s. While an interesting application of logics to a case study, Juris’
(2012) study does not escape the limitations of working with a narrow data set, in this case
the one Occupy Wall Street movement.
Conover et al. (2013) use a greater amount of data, but from an even narrower pool.
They quantitatively analyse changes in the protestors’ levels of engagement on Twitter up
to fifteen months before the first Occupy Wall Street protest action. The results of the
analysis indicate that:
‘on Twitter, the Occupy movement tended to elicit participation from a set of highly
interconnected users with pre-existing interests in domestic politics and foreign social
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movements. These users, while highly vocal in the months immediately following the birth of
the movement, appear to have lost interest in Occupy related communication over the
remainder of the study period.’
(Conover, Ferrara, Menczer & Flammini 2013:1)
Much like the previous studies cited, the lessons to be learnt from this conclusion are not
far reaching. The study’s data set focuses on Twitter users who got involved with the
Occupy movement. While revealing an interesting usage pattern of Twitter users prior to
the Occupy Wall Street first action, it provides only a minor contribution to the search for a
generalizable theory of protest movements and social media.
Analyses of these studies show that empirical work on social media and protest
movements is in its relative infancy. We have seen a move away from a dichotomised
‘sceptical vs. convinced’ camp type of analysis into a more subtle understanding of the
potential affordances and constraints of social media to protest movements. However, the
current literature lacks comparative studies comparing type of movement or type of social
media to type of social media use.
Literature on the anti-austerity movement
Apparent in all the case studies discussed is the importance of context in
determining a protest movement’s social media use. While this study does aim to contribute
to the development of a more general understanding of protest movements’ usages of
social media, it cannot ignore the relevance of the context in which End Austerity Now took
place. This subsection discusses the climate in which End Austerity Now occurred, and
suggests some ways in which it may have contributed to how social media were used at the
time.
The global North has seen a wave of anti-austerity movements over the past five
years, beginning soon after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 (della Porta, 2015). One of the
first anti-austerity movements began in May of 2011, with a few hundred people beginning
a citizens’ occupation of Puerta del Sol in Madrid. Initially only a handful of tents were put
up, but soon mirror occupations had sprung up all over Spain. These ‘cities within cities’
(della Porta, 2015) soon became participatory democracy experiments, with a horizontal
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structure and collective decision making. Cooking utensils and supplies were brought in, and
the protestors lived as self-sustainably as they could for around a month, having an ‘all
power to the people’ philosophy at the centre of their movement (Postill, 2012). Indeed,
one of the spaces was named after Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the Egyptian Revolution
of the same year.
Summer of 2011 saw the birth of the anti-austerity movement in Greece, with tens
of thousands of protestors occupying the grounds of the parliament. The protestors
adopted a similar organisational structure to the ones seen in Spain, with a community set
up that held daily assemblies and which was horizontally organised (Sergi & Vagiatzoglou,
2011). The movement peaked with two strikes at the end of June, leading to heavy police
intervention and around 800 protestors injured (della Porta, 2015).
As previously discussed, September 2011 saw the beginning of the Occupy Wall
Street movement, starting initially with a thousand protestors occupying Wall St in New
York (della Porta, 2015). This number soon grew, and while official numbers are disputed,
the protestors who proceeded to mobilise under the Occupy movement in the US as a
whole went into the tens of thousands (Levitin, 2015).
It has been argued (della Porta, 2015:3) that this series of anti-austerity movements
are occurring in ‘the context of the crisis of neoliberalism’. This approach does not deny the
specific national context that shaped and framed the movements, but rather stresses that
the similarities can be singled out and ‘linked to shifts in neoliberal capitalism and its effects
on society’ (ibid.;3-4). Della Porta (2015:4) argues that the similarities can mainly be drawn
from the demographics of the movements, which she argues holds a ‘new class - the social
precariat, young, unemployed, or only part time employed, with no protection, and often
well educated’.
The social precariat has been conceptualised previously by Standing (2011:9) who
defines it as people:
‘who have minimal trust with relations with capitalism or the state… [it has] none of the social contract relationship of the proletariat, whereby labour securities were provided in exchange for subordination and contingent loyalty, the unwritten deal underpinning welfare state’
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Della Porta’s (2015) application of the social precariat to the anti-austerity movement is in-
line with the political opportunity approach to protest (Cammaerts, 2012), in the sense that
the actions of the movement are dependent on the existence of political opportunity.
Political opportunity can be thought of as ‘consistent - but not necessarily formal;
permanent or national - dimensions of the political environment which either encourage or
discourage people from using collective action’ (Tarrow, 1994:19). In the case of the anti-
austerity protests, the protests have reacted not only to the economic crisis, but also to a
political situation in which institutions are perceived to be (or are) especially closed towards
citizens’ demands, and unable or unwilling to address them in an inclusive manner (della
Porta, 2015).
As opposed to emerging as a result of contingent threats and opportunities, it seems
as though the movements have come about as a result of a ‘crisis of legitimacy’, a
Habermasian (1976) concept that refers to developments that respond to the emergence of
a new social formation that is incompatible with the organised state. As della Porta (2015:6)
observes, this is very true of the anti-austerity movements of the global North, especially
when considering their ‘political claims, frames and organisational forms’. As citizens
experience the effects of the macroeconomic (in this case the financial crash of 2008) and
political (in this case the crisis of neoliberalism) crises on their lives, a legitimacy crisis
emerges which may then fuel a motivational crisis (Habermas, 1976). Habermas (1976)
conceptualises a motivational crisis as a society in which people are unmotivated to
participate in and support the social system.
The anti-austerity movements of the past five years can also be mapped on to the
Kerbosian (1982) concept of a movement of affluence. Kerbo (1982) argued a movement of
affluence emerges in relatively good periods (the definition of which is left vague), is formed
by conscience members (members motivated by conscience not material need), is better
organised than a movement of crises, and is less likely to use violence. It is expected to be
stronger, longer lasting, larger, and more optimistic, pragmatic and successful than other
movements. In contrast a movement of crisis is more likely to be fuelled by poverty and
corruption, and protestors are less likely to feel empowered.
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This mapping of the movement of affluence onto the anti-austerity movements is
supported by della Porta’s (2015) research, who found that in the variety of movements she
analysed there were high levels of educated and young people, around half of which
identified as lower middle class. Della Porta (2015) found that while the movements were
made up of people with a variety of social backgrounds, they were united by feelings of
injustice. In other words, they were the conscience members outlined by Kerbo (1982).
It seems that the anti-austerity movements of the global North have linked the
financial crash to a legitimacy crisis at the political level, which has taken a specific form of a
crisis in political/state responsibility. As increasing numbers of groups and individuals feel
unrepresented in politics, big business’ collusion between political and economic power is
made more apparent (della Porta, 2015). Conventional forms of participation are lowered,
as is trust in institutions. End Austerity Now took place shortly after the UK general elections
in May 2015, where the Conservative Party managed to form a ‘majority’ government with
only 24.3% of registered voters voting Conservative (Hoskin, 2015). As an indication of the
public levels of enthusiasm for those in power, it is remarkably low. Overall, voting turnout
was 66%, down from 78% in 1992. These low numbers indicate a disenfranchisement and
dissillusionment with the political system. Indeed many voters turned away from The
Labour Party and The Conservative Party, the two longstanding UK mainstream parties, and
parties on either end of the political spectrum had a huge rise in numbers. The UK
Independence Party (to the right of The Conservatives) and The Green Party (to the left of
Labour) gained around 4 and 1 million votes respectively. Despite this amounting to over
16% of the vote, this resulted in each party having just one seat each in parliament out of a
possible 650, creating widespread outrage about the voting system (Ghose, 2015). All these
factors seem to mirror the features of a Habermasian (1976) legitimacy crisis, the
sentiments of which appear to be echoed around the global North (della Porta, 2015).
End Austerity Now takes place at a time when many movements in the global North,
including the UK anti-austerity movement, are rejecting traditional forms of politics,
institutional power is ‘deeply mistrusted and autonomous forms explored’ (della Porta,
2015:217). Representative democracy is seen within these anti-austerity movements as
corrupted, by the joining of the political and economic. A useful conceptual diagram to
explain the wave of anti-austerity protests in the global North is provided by Della Porta:
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Explaining Anti-austerity Protests
Source: della Porta, 2015:213
Conceptual framework
This chapter is used to outline where my research theoretically and contextually sits.
It shows that this paper positions itself at the intersection of literature on social media and
protest movements generally, empirical case studies of recent movements and recent
literature on the anti-austerity movement. From the literature theorising social media and
protest movements, it argues that Cammaerts’ (2015) application of Foucauldian self-
mediation logics to protest movements’ usages of social media provides the most developed
conceptualisation of the field. It allows the scholar to view opportunities and constraints as
intrinsically linked, and not necessarily falling into the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ camp. It allows for
protest movements to be seen to use social media in different ways; indeed, it is this that
defines ‘the horizon of the possible’ (Cammaerts, 2015). It is through the process of
identifying and internalising these affordances that the movement allows the movement to
become self-conscious, and forms its identity. The paper bridges the optimistic/pessimistic
divide and allows for a more nuanced understanding of how the protest movement uses
social media. Hence, the affordances (and inherent constraints) discussed in Cammaerts’
(2015) paper will guide my thematic analysis.
From an examination of the available case studies on protest movements’ usages of
social media, a clear lack of comparative studies is evident. The many different approaches
that have been taken have each facilitated an explanation of a particular social milieu, but
the broader implications of the works are limited. A key finding in the examination of these
Weakening of social
protection
Crisis of
responsiveness
Increasing inequality
and precarity
Weakening of
traditional
identity in fluid
societies
Horizontal organisation
with prefiguration of
democracy
Identity work; broad
identity; Ethical discourse
Selective mobilisation
of the ‘affected’
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case studies is the need to factor in the environments in which each of these phenomena
occurred.
An understanding of the climate in which End Austerity Now took place is
thus critical. Della Porta’s (2015) work has provided a comprehensive overview of the anti-
austerity movements across the global North, and shown the parallels between them.
Analysis of the context in which End Austerity Now took place has guided my interview
questions and thematic analysis, in that it is to be expected that the feelings of ‘the social
precariat’ (Standing, 2011:9) would be found in the UK anti-austerity movement.
Statement of intent
This dissertation aims to make a contribution to a more generalizable theory of
protest movements’ usages of social media. It applies the most contemporary analyses in
the field to an existing popular movement in the global North. By profiling five movements
involved in the End Austerity Now demonstration, it overcomes some of the limitations of
previous studies which have lacked a comparative element. Not aiming to escape the
relevance of context, it also considers the climate in which the demonstration took place,
and factors in the similarities it may have with other anti-austerity movements in the global
North.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
Research design and sampling
My research question aims to highlight differences in social media usages by protest
movements for the same demonstration. To answer this, the ‘depth interview’ (Berger,
1998) was the most suitable data collection method. As Berger writes, the depth interview
‘is a kind of probe’, carried out to get at ‘particular issues, such as hidden feelings or
attitudes and beliefs of which a respondent may not be aware’ (1998:55). As I am trying to
explore the rationale for the movements’ social media strategies being the way they were, a
‘probe’ into those who constructed them is the soundest approach. Furthermore, as the
movements studied ranged in size and level of formality, there were not the same
quantitative data available on each. Thus, a study akin to the Conover et al. (2013) Occupy
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paper would not have been possible. Undoubtedly, this is a problem future comparative
studies will face.
My interviews fell into Hammersley’s (2012) ‘interpretivism’ paradigm of
interviewing, in that they aimed to explore social phenomena which are unobservable by
the naked eye – one cannot ‘see’ rationale. As recommended by Bauer and Gaskell (2000) as
a suitable length of time for a comprehensive depth interview, my interviews each lasted
around an hour. To manage the ‘enormous amount of material’ generated by the depth
interview, I have created a topic guide which clearly divides the issues I am addressing into
manageable categories (Berger, 1998:57). This allowed analysis of the data to be more
structured, and saved having to sift through entire transcripts when looking for quotes on a
particular issue. See Appendix 1 for my topic guide.
My pilot study allowed me to test the suitability of my topic guide. However, a
problem I experienced with both this study and my pilot was moving from discussing the
action to the reasoning behind it. This appears to be a common problem with the depth
interview, as Berger (1998:58) writes ‘moving from discussing what they have done to why
they did it is not easy for many people’. In my interviews I often found that respondents
were confident talking about what they were doing on social media for End Austerity Now,
but struggled when trying to outline exactly why. Common responses were akin to ‘that’s
just what is done on social media’.
After reviewing my pilot study I gathered that this was a potential problem and thus
adopted the ‘nondirective interviewing’ technique; ‘allowing patients to open the interview,
develop it, and process it at their own pace’ (Leon, 1988:17). This definitely helped in this
study, as I felt respondents were not only just answering the questions asked of them, but
also were telling me generally what was on their mind regarding the topic. I further
minimised this occurrence by not offering any opinions, as recommended by Berger, who
writes that they ‘may affect the answers you get’ (1998:61). Similarly, I did not ask leading
questions, as they may have given respondents ‘hints about the answers’ I got (Berger,
1998:61). Speaking as little as possible during the interviews proved to be a fruitful method.
As Berger (1998) advised I only interjected when it was necessary to obtain further
clarification or information.
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For my data analysis method, thematic analysis was chosen. As a ‘form of pattern
recognition within the data, where merging themes become the categories for analysis’
(Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2006:4), it enabled me to draw out commonalities and
variations in:
the affordances and constraints of social media to the movements profiled
the interplay between these affordances and constraints
temporal changes in the social media usages – before, during and after the
demonstration
the extent to which the features of the social precariat are present or felt within the
movement
the extent the movements identify or have parallels with the global North anti-
austerity movement
As suggested would happen by Rice and Ezzy (1999), the reading and re-reading of the
interview transcripts allowed for themes to emerge that were important, and those that
were not as prevalent. How the affordances and constraints of social media to the
movements were experienced differently by each of the movements was made clear by
thematic analysis of the interviews. Another benefit of thematic analysis was that it did not
seek to bring any judgement on the opinions summarise the data. This fitted well with my
research, which seeks only to unpack protest expressed. As Neice (2000:295) wrote of
thematic analysis, it allowed me to ‘condense and summarise’ movements’ social media
usages, and not make judgements on them.
My coding frame derives from a ‘hybrid approach’ or inductive and deductive coding
(Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). In the sense that one looks for recurrent themes within
the data, thematic coding is partly an inductive process (Neice, 2000). However, as Braun
and Clarke write, this approach ‘denies the active role of the researcher always plays in
identifying patterns/themes, selecting which are of interest, and reporting them to readers’
(2006:80). My coding process was a more self-reflexive and circular procedure, in that I
acknowledged the subjective role I had in identifying the themes. Coding frames were
constructed for each movement, to highlight differences in emerging themes. Please see
Appendix 2 for an example of a finalised coding frame - the coding frame constructed for
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the SWP respondents. To construct the coding frame, I used Braun and Clarke’s (2006)
model for the six stages of thematic analysis, as detailed below:
Phases of thematic analysis
Phases Description of the process
1 Familiarising yourself with the data:
Transcribing data (if necessary), reading and re-reading the data, noting down initial ideas.
2 Generating initial codes:
Coding interesting features of the data in a systematic fashion across the entire data set, collating data relevant to each code.
3 Searching for themes:
Collating codes into potential themes, gathering all data relevant to each potential theme.
4 Reviewing themes:
Checking if the themes work in relations to the coded extracts (Level 1) and the entire data set (Level 2), generating a thematic ‘map’ of the analysis.
5 Defining and naming themes:
On-going analysis to refine the specifics of each theme, and the overall story the analysis tells, generating clear definitions and names for each theme.
6 Producing the report:
The final opportunity for analysis. Selection of vivid, compelling extract examples, final analysis of selected extracts, relating back of the analysis to the research question and literature, producing a scholarly report of the analysis.
Source: Braun and Clarke, 2006:87
Despite thematic analysis’ strengths, a minor problem I experienced was when ‘coding
the record’ (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983) and the sheer amount of time it took. I
conducted fifteen interviews which produced over 97,000 words of transcribed data. The
resulting hours spent coding forced me to rearrange my working plan significantly.
Overall, the depth interview and thematic analysis proved to be extremely fruitful for
the research. As discussed, the empirical data available on this topic is sparse and varied,
making a quantitative study impossible. Thus, the depth interview allowed me to examine
both what the different movements’ strategies were, and why they had been chosen. The
transition from what to why was difficult, but was a fascinating line of enquiry when put in
the context of the social precariat.
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Particular methods and procedures
At End Austerity Now, there were over forty blocs, each affiliated with an organisation or
movement. For this study, a cross section of five movements was chosen: The Socialist
Workers Party (SWP), PandoActive, The Green Party, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
(CND) and the People’s Assembly. From each movement, three respondents were
interviewed, each of whom had some role in their movement’s social media strategy.
Respondents were asked to read and sign an ethical consent form, outlining their right to
anonymity, what the research would be used for and an option to withdraw from the study
at any point. Please see Appendix 3 for a copy of the letter of consent. The study adhered to
LSE ethical guidelines.
Without time constraints, it would have been optimal to compare the social media
usages of all the movements which were at End Austerity Now. As this was not possible, my
sample of five (the maximum I felt I could research given my deadline) was chosen
purposefully to reflect the range of movements which had mobilised for End Austerity Now.
To show this range, the following table outlines differences in their key features. This is
obviously not an exhaustive list of differences; many more which are relevant are discussed
in the subsequent results section.
Brief overview of movements studied
Name (year established)
Brief introduction Membership size (as of July 2015)
Approx. size of bloc
The Green Party of England and Wales (1990)
The Greens are a left-wing political party that stands candidates in local and national elections. The Party has one Member of Parliament in the House of Commons, one representative in the House of Lords, and three Members of the European Parliament. It has various councillors in UK local government and two members of the London Assembly.
~61,000 1500-2000
The People’s Assembly Against Austerity (2013)
The People’s Assembly is a coalition of pressure groups and organisations including major trade unions such as Unite, UNISON, NUT, NUJ, PCS, RMT and numerous other campaigning groups and individuals such as the Green Party, the Communist Party, the Coalition of Resistance, Left Unity, Labour MPs, Tariq Ali, Imran Khan, John Pilger and Ken Loach.
~170 affiliated groups
4000
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The Socialist Worker’s Party (1977) – previously International Socialists (1962) and Socialist Review Group (1950)
The SWP is a Trotskyist revolutionary party. While they do not stand candidates in national elections, they are affiliated with the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), who do.
~5000 (affiliated with the student bloc) ~1000
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (1957)
CND advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the UK, international nuclear disarmament and tighter arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
35,000 ~1500
PandoActive (2014)
PandoActive has created a new online platform which collates and calendars all direct action in London and Manchester. It works with organisations to promote events and aims to get more people politically involved.
5 organisers, ~50 affiliated groups and supporters
~150
From each group, I found after interviewing three people involved I reached data
saturation, by which I mean I had a complete understanding of the social media strategy of
the group. I also felt that I had a comprehensive understanding of the rationale that led the
group to pursue a certain strategy. This number was tested in my pilot with similar results. I
secured my interviews on the whole through personal contacts, as a prominent activist in
London. The fifteen interviews were recorded and then later transcribed. Please see
Appendix 4 for an example of my transcription - my interview with Respondent 1 from the
People’s Assembly.
Given the variation in size and resources of the groups, my respondents had very
different positions within the campaign. For example, some of the more established
movements (e.g. CND) used social media strategy which was formed by a paid
communications director, whereas in others (e.g. People’s Assembly) it was put together by
heavily involved volunteers. This variation in respondents actually benefitted my research,
in that it revealed differences in how social media was prioritised. It also provided me with a
more rounded understanding of how the ‘social precariat’ features were found within the
group. This is discussed more comprehensively in my results and analysis section.
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Using the literature on the area, I generated an initial coding frame, in which expected
themes were listed in the columns, and respondents were listed in the rows (phase two of
Braun and Clarke’s six phase model, 2006). As tested in my pilot study, the main affordances
and constraints in the frame came from Cammaerts’ (2015) six logics:
Cammarerts’ (2015) Self-mediation Logics
Logic Description
Dissemination: The need for movements to disseminate their movement discourses as widely as possible.
Mobilization and recruitment:
Recruitment and mobilisation online and offline direct action.
Organisation: The need for the internal organisation of a movement.
Instant coordination: On-the-spot coordination of direct actions.
Sousveillance: The act of self-recording events.
Archiving: The need for movements to archive protest and other artefacts, and the articulation of alternative imaginaries.
I used the features of the social precariat to guide my questions and coding frame to
draw out themes surrounding the context of the anti-austerity movement. I then
systematically read and re-read the data, checking if these and others to add to the coding
frame were present (phase three/four, Braun & Clarke, 2006). This entire process mirrored
that which I carried out in my pilot study, on the protest organisation Brick Lane Debates.
RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION
The following section presents the main findings that have been derived from a thematic
analysis of the empirical data. After first presenting a brief overview of my findings, I then
discuss the findings from each movement. These findings are then discussed in relation to
the emerging themes as a whole. This is followed by a more general deliberation of the
findings. Finally, limitations to the study are outlined and some possible areas for future
research are suggested.
Main findings
My research found that the groups studied used social media at End Austerity Now
to different degrees, and placed different levels of importance on it. I found that the degree
to which social media was prioritised, incorporated into a successful communications
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strategy and successfully used was dependent on the extent to which the group identified
with the features of the ‘social precariat’ (Standing, 2011). Described in the interviews
frequently as the difference between the ‘old left’ and the ‘new left’, this variation in the
movements mapped perfectly on to the difference between a movement with features of
the ‘social precariat’ and a movement without. The more related the group was towards the
‘social precariat’, the higher the engagement with social media was likely to be.
Interestingly, whether the movement could be characterised by the social precariat was not
determined by the demographics of its individual members. Instead, it seemed to be much
more indicative of the ethos, organisation and aspirations of the group as a whole. There
was a sense of the identity of the movement being something greater than just the some of
its parts.
All Cammaerts’ (2015) affordances were felt by the movements to a greater or lesser
extent. As Cammaerts’ suggests, these affordances and constraints of social media were
adopted dependent on how the movement self-identified, and determined the ‘horizon of
the possible’. Those movements with a broadened ‘horizon of the possible’ with regards to
social media were those which expressed much common ground with the social precariat. In
the same manner, those with a smaller ‘horizon of the possible’ with regards to social media
were the movements which did not share as many features with the social precariat. The
movements which fell into the category of the ‘old left’/without the features of the social
precariat were the SWP and CND, and the movements which were part of the ‘new
left’/with the features of the social precariat were the People’s Assembly and Pando Active.
The Green Party bridged the two categories, with some features of the social precariat and
an internal battle over the party’s approach to social media was expressed by the
respondents.
The Socialist Workers Party
Respondents from the SWP did not strongly identify with the social precariat. Their
social media strategy surrounding End Austerity Now was minimal and unstructured. The
most prominent affordances of social media for the movement were (line numbers of
transcript):
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Dissemination: Respondent 1: ‘there was a lot of Facebook groups for planning meetings, and there was a lot of sharing of memes, like 'this is why I'm marching on 20th of June' and stuff like that' (222-223) Organisation: Respondent 2: 'I think social media plays two roles. it does play a very important role in terms of organising the blocs. This is really important to show how people are mobilising' (114) Archiving: Respondent 1: 'all the videos… are put online as an online resource, which you can direct people to, and which will be a lot more informed than you' (43-45)
Mobilisation & recruitment and instant coordination were barely mentioned, and the
affordance of sousveillance did not arise as a theme at all. The continued importance of
offline methods was strongly stressed by all respondents, more than in any other group.
Social media was seen by all as a means to an end, and not something that needed to be
particularly prioritized. No respondent was aware of any particular SWP social media
strategy, and indeed the attitude was expressed by Respondent 1 that social media was a
tool for other groups, and not the type of media that was in the ethos of the SWP to adopt.
These attitudes are exemplified here:
Respondent 3: 'our strategy is just being there to meet the people who are angry and who are looking for answers. Then talking about ideas, sharing our publications and that sort of thing’ (28-30) 'I think social media quite a useful tool but it's quite limited' (53) 'Facebook and Twitter is quite important, but the way you're going to develop people and win people to what are quite complex ideas, is by talking to them' (98-99)
This unwillingness to incorporate social media into their communications strategy is
interesting when considering the respondents themselves. All the respondents were less
than 27 years old, highly educated (Bachelor’s degrees or higher) and felt motivated by the
lack of social security they perceived (two had become politically active in the UK student
protests of 2010). In essence, they had many of the features of the social precariat.
However, their attitudes towards social media did not reflect this, suggesting the social
precariat is found in a movements’ ethos as a whole, rather than in individual members.
This was a recurring truth throughout the movements profiled.
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The respondents of the SWP, felt motivated to mobilise for End Austerity Now not
because they identified with the social precariat, but they saw it as another opportunity to
fight for revolution. As an organisation with a 65 year history, End Austerity Now was seen
as yet another demonstration in the ongoing rejection of capitalism, and push for socialism.
As such, communications methods for the demonstration were not dramatically altered,
and the feeling among the respondents was they were sticking to what they knew worked,
their tried and tested methods of the last 65 years. This attitude is summarised:
Respondent 1: 'the offline methods have been going on for 100 years or more' (33) 'people are still trying to figure out how the Internet works' (35) 'older projects do not have social media in their tradition' (145)
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The respondents from CND echoed many of the attitudes towards social media that
were seen in the SWP respondents. While the respondents were more aware of the possible
affordances of social media to CND, there seemed to be a perceived difficulty in adopting
them for their movement. Indeed it was suggested multiple times that social media may not
be appropriate for their ‘type’ of organisation, although the respondents found it difficult to
identify precisely what that type is. The most prominent affordances of social media for
their movement were:
Dissemination: Respondent 2 'a certain segment of the population are on their social media accounts every day, so it's the best free advertisement' (169) Mobilization and Recruitment: Respondent 3: 'social media is a good way of getting people to do their first action for CND. Then once they Tweet or whatever we can follow it up by encouraging them to do a bigger action' (326) Instant Coordination: Respondent 1: 'social media makes things like arrests less likely because there's things like instant reporting' (240)
The affordance of archiving and organisation were less strong themes, and the affordance of
sousveillance again did not arise. Much like the SWP, the continued benefits of offline
methods were repeatedly mentioned by all respondents. Again, this was seen not as a
limitation of social media, but rather an appropriateness of offline methods of
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communication for the ethos and demographics of CND. While an awareness of the
importance of social media came through more strongly than from the SWP respondents,
there was a certain hesitancy to assert their relevance to CND. This attitude can be seen in
the following quotes:
Respondent 1: 'it's [social media] a good free instant way of getting the message out, but it's a bit less reliable than other methods’ (288) Respondent 3: 'we have a twin parallel strategy of how we maintain the support from the traditional supporters and the new supporters communications strategy. The former involves social media.. a bit' (25-29) 'the vast majority of our supporters need some encouragement[offline] to mobilise' (295)
The respondents from CND did not strongly display the features of the social
precariat, and did not feel End Austerity Now and the anti-austerity movement generally
was a new cause. For CND, End Austerity Now was another demonstration to exhibit their
continued fight against nuclear weapons. Their communications material for the
demonstration thus framed the fight against nuclear weapons in terms of the anti-austerity
debate. This was done as a way to attach themselves to the anti-austerity movement, as
opposed to the values and aims of the anti-austerity movement coming first.
The respondents from CND acknowledged there were many affordances social
media could bring, but were not sure if they were suitable for them. Just as Cammaerts
(2015) writes, the self-identification of the movement as an older, more traditional
organisation limited their ‘horizon of the possible’. This internalisation of their ethos limited
the extent to which they used social media for End Austerity Now.
People’s Assembly Against Austerity
In stark contrast to the SWP and CND, respondents from The People’s Assembly
cited all the affordances of social media to their movement, and discussed their adoption
for End Austerity Now enthusiastically. The following quotes exemplify their enthusiasm for
all Cammaerts’ (2015) affordances of social media for protest movements:
Dissemination: Respondent 2: 'we had a group of people on the 20th of June just constantly Tweeting from the same account, all Tweeting different things. Some
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people Tweeting interesting pictures of signs, another quotes, that sort of thing' (47-50) Mobilisation and Recruitment: Respondent 3: 'the main way we advertised End Austerity Now was through social media' (87) Organisation: Respondent 2: ‘in getting people there [to End Austerity Now], social media was a way to organise people on to the coaches' (94-96) Instant Coordination: Respondent 2: 'we set up a live stream for End Austerity Now from our website. It's a great way to boost your event.. why not reach however many more thousand followers?' (156-158) Sousveillance: Respondent 1 ‘Twitter allowed us to monitor police activity on the day and report on it ourselves.. in a way the mass media would never do’ (177-179) Archiving: Respondent 3: I'm trying to push [YouTube] to become more of an education tool.. so people watching our videos can watch our talks etc.' (87-89)
The respondents from the People’s Assembly displayed all the features of the social
precariat. The respondents were all younger than thirty, and were motivated by
disillusionment with mainstream politics in the UK. Established in 2013, it is a young
organisation consciously founded within the broader anti-austerity movement of the global
North. It aimed as an organisation to bring together ‘conscious activists’ from across the left,
who were all united by feelings of injustice towards the current neo-liberal austerity agenda.
Accordingly, it saw the horizon of the possible with regards to social media as extremely
broad.
Despite having been mentioned by respondents from other groups as having an
exceptionally developed social media strategy, the respondents from the People’s Assembly
appeared unsatisfied with their social media strategy at End Austerity Now. Quotes such as
the following were commonplace:
Respondent 3: 'I don't think we have a hugely developed social media strategy’ (189)
'we have a paid social media person, but there's not much strategy to what she does' (125)
When pushed on why the respondents thought so little of what they currently got from
social media, all respondents reiterated the huge potential of social media to their
movement. They did not appear to think they weren’t doing a lot at present; it was rather
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that they focused on how much more they could do. This is fitting with their identification of
a broad horizon of the possible.
Respondents from The People’s Assembly displayed all the features of the social
precariat. As fitting with the rest of my findings, they then found many affordances of social
media to their movement. Also agreeing with my other findings, the social precariat was
found more in the ethos and identity of the group as a whole, and not totally aligning with
the demographics of the group themselves. The movement is a coalition of much older
organisations and movements (from which the respondents came), but the approach to
social media was solely associated with their identity as a People’s Assembly member.
Hence what is implied here is that through membership of the organisation, activists from
other movements with different attitudes adopt and internalise social precariat outlooks, at
least in their capacity as a People’s Assembly member.
PandoActive
Analysis of the interviews with the respondents from PandoActive suggested the
movement shared many similarities with the People’s Assembly. The respondents from
PandoActive insinuated the movement had been formed to serve the needs of the social
precariat’s fight against austerity. All respondents situated themselves and their movement
in the broader fight against neo-liberalism, with quotes akin to the following commonplace:
Respondent 3: 'the anti-austerity movement has become something that every activist organisation is connected to, including ourselves' (245-246) '[End Austerity Now was] well placed, promoted on a good platform, and anti-austerity is the movement of our time' (289-290) With regards to the self-mediation logics the movement adopted, the responses
varied slightly from the other movements, as the premise of PandoActive is to create a new
social media, pandoactive.com. Nonetheless as a project in its infancy, PandoActive and
their website pandoactive.com relied on the affordances of mainstream social media,
primarily in their relation to developing their own platform:
Dissemination: Respondent 2: 'they [Facebook and Twitter] are both very powerful tools to get your information to reach a massive audience very quickly' (75-76)
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Mobilisation & Recruitment: Respondent 1: 'Pando Active's communication strategy is mostly focused on social media.. so we're mostly looking at Facebook and Twitter, because most of the people we're trying to target.. that's their main way of finding out about events' (20-22) Organisation: Respondent 2: 'we used the networks we'd built on social media to build a bloc for us on the 20th of June, so we could go to the march and talk to people about Pando Active. Which we wouldn't have been able to do if we didn't have those networks on social media' (104-107) Instant Coordination: Respondent 3: 'we live Tweeted the 20th of June, just like any activist event we got to' (146) Sousveillance: Respondent 1: ‘social media allow us to record and disseminate the activity of the state on days like June 20th’ (134-136) Archiving: Respondent 2: [when live Tweeting] 'you feel like you have more of a responsibility to be attentive to everything that's happening' (158)
Much like the People’s Assembly, PandoActive is trying to build a movement as a
coalition of others. However unlike the People’s Assembly, PandoActive’s network consists
overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) of young, conscience movements, and their
connections to the ‘old left’ are minimal. This was not a conscious decision, but one that
naturally arose when they decided to exclude political parties from the network.
Fittingly, their ‘horizon of the possible’ is broad, and they adopt all of the logics with
apparent success and ease. Incorporating social media into their movement was not an
active step, rather, the adoption self-mediation logics was natural and not doing so was
unconsidered. Just as was found in the interviews with the People’s Assembly, the
respondents from PandoActive were reluctant to acknowledge their success online. Again
similarly to the People’s Assembly, this apparent bashfulness came not from a coy attitude,
but rather an understanding of the potentials social media could have for them in the
future.
The Green Party
Analysis of the respondents from The Green Party produced the most thought-
provoking results. Unlike the previous movements profiled, The Green Party did not clearly
fall into the new left/social precariat/adept at social media camp or the old/traditional
left/minimal social media use camp. The party appeared to have features of both, and their
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online strategy surrounding End Austerity Now reflected this. The respondents were aware
of this identity, and in every respondent’s case a large portion of the interview was spent
discussing it. Typical lines of conversation included:
Respondent 1: 'we've got to be careful though, because there's an internal divide between Green Party seniors and youngsters. It's very defined at the moment, and we are trying to reach out to the older members' (308-309)
Often referred to as a tension within the party, the respondents described the
Greens as a party of two halves: the half that had joined the party prior to 2014 and the half
that had joined over the last 18 months. The growth the party has seen has been
remarkable, with around 10,000 members in December 2013, compared to around 67,000
today. Prior to 2014 the respondents claimed the party’s members had been motivated to
join primarily from environmental concerns, and had wanted the party to act as an
alternative voice within the parliamentary system. This caucus of the party shared many of
the features of the ‘old left’, akin to the features of the SWP and CND. The party members
had generally been long-standing, and respondents asserted that the communications
strategy within the party had remained the same for a long time.
Today however, the party enjoys over 30% of its members under the age of 30, and
the party has over quadrupled in size. This huge increase, commonly referred to as the
‘Green Surge’ (Harris, 2015) occurred in the months leading up to the UK general election in
May 2015. Respondents identified a distinct difference in the motivations and characters of
these new members. The ‘Green Surge’, argued respondents, was made up of individuals
who were politically motivated by issues of social justice, were more actively against
parliamentary institutional power structures, and more active at demonstrations and other
direct action. This is fitting with the 2000 strong Green bloc at End Austerity Now; the
largest Green presence at any demonstration. Huge numbers of students joined, with the
Greens cited as the second most popular party with the (18-21 age bracket) in January 2015
(Syal, 2015). In essence, this new caucus had all the features of the social precariat.
Unsurprisingly, when I reached out to the Greens to request interviews on their
social media usages the respondents who came forward all identified as being from the
newer branch of the party. Optimistic personally about the affordances of social media to
protest organisations, they seemed to feel wary about adopting these affordances fully for
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the Greens. For End Austerity Now, two communications strategies were adopted, for the
different factions of the party. This approach is reflected in the following comments on the
most discussed affordances of social media:
Dissemination: Respondent 1: 'in terms of fostering discussion internally and externally, for most of us social media is invaluable' (185) Mobilisation and Recruitment: Respondent 3: 'social media allowed us to organise a larger Green Party presence than we otherwise would've had [at End Austerity Now]' (256) Organisation: Respondent 1: 'we sorted out who was going where, who was bringing what stuff, the designs for the placards.. all organised on Facebook chat' [discussing End Austerity Now] (345-346) Instant Coordination: Respondent 2: 'we are very responsive [on social media] to live problems.. although maybe not to the extent I would've liked to have seen' (53-54) Archiving: Respondent 3: 'there were a lot of great images that are still being shared on social media many weeks after the demonstration' (240)
Clearly, the Green Party is in a state of transition, and this is reflected in their social
media strategy. While the younger (in terms of time spent in the party) faction of the party
are optimistic and willing to set the horizon of the possible as broadly as possible, they had
concerns about leaving the older core of the party behind. As with the other movements,
the way their movement identified seemed to determine their social media usages.
Accordingly, they displayed more knowledge and optimism about social media than the
SWP and CND, but seemed less confident with their social media usages than the People’s
Assembly and Pando Active.
Further Analysis, Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research
Analysis of the SWP, CND, PandoActive, the People’s Assembly and The Green
Party’s social media usages for End Austerity Now has shown how Standing’s (2011) concept
of the social precariat can be used to understand differences in the adoption of Cammaerts’
(2015) affordances of social media. The groups fell into two categories the first of which did
not identify with the social precariat, and also did not set their horizon of the possible very
wide with regards to their social media use. The second consisted of movements which
were very much the ‘dangerous new class’ (Standing, 2011) referred to, and did see and use
the affordances of social media to their movement. The SWP and CND fell into the first
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group, and the People’s Assembly and Pando Active were in the second. The Green Party
straddled these two camps, displaying features of both. Their approach to social media
reflected this.
While it would be easy to distinguish the differences in these groups as the
differences between younger and older movements, when taking into account the groups
that form the coalitions of the People’s Assembly and PandoActive this does not seem to be
the case. While both coalitions are relatively young, they engage and mobilise activists from
movements of all ages, with the activists themselves having widely different demographics.
What thus appears to determine the social media usages of the movements is the ethos and
identity of the movement that is leading the mobilisation, and how they are situating
themselves within the wider activist sphere.
In the case of PandoActive and the People’s Assembly, the respondents suggested
they identified strongly with the broader fight against the ‘crisis of neo-liberalism’ (della
Porta, 2015). They are movements motivated by conscience, in that they were fighting for
broader institutional change, and better social provisions for themselves and their society.
As I understand it, they epitomised the new social precariat class. In the case of the SWP
and CND, I am reluctant to solely bracket them in the ‘old left’. They among other ‘old left’
movements have a rich and diverse history, which does not have time to be fully explored
here. It is better, perhaps, to frame them in relation to what they do not appear to be:
identifying or sharing the features of the social precariat.
This research also raises an interesting question regarding identity and Cammaerts’
(2015) self-mediation logics. His paper suggests that social media and the affordances they
hold can become constitutive of the collective identity of the movement (Cammaerts, 2015).
This appears to suggest a linear relationship between social media and a movement’s
identity; the extent to which movements adopt these logics contribute to the construction
of how the movement self-defines. Conversely, my research suggests a linear relationship in
the opposite direction; the already formed identity of the movement determines how they
adopt the affordances of social media.
It seems neither linear relationship accurately captures the process of self-mediation
and identity formation. Perhaps it is more accurate to describe a movements’ identity
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formation process in relation to its social media usages as a more circular procedure, in
which predisposed identities determine initial attitudes towards and adoptions of social
media, which then in turn contribute to the construction of the movement’s identity (along
with external factors). This allows for a more reflexive understanding of a movement’s
relationship with social media, and allows analysis to escape such linear binaries. This
approach to identity formation echoes de Gay et al.’s (1997) understanding of the ‘Circuit of
Culture’ in which production of movement frames, self-mediation, representation by the
media and reception all operate in conjunction with one another.
While the marriage of Cammaerts’ (2015) and Standing’s (2011) work has proved
successful in this paper, more extensive research in the field will generate a richer
understanding of the applicability of this model empirically. Furthermore, the study would
have benefitted from more varied or even randomly selected respondents. When securing
interviews, the volunteers that came forward were inevitably people who felt comfortable
talking about the affordances of social media, and may not have been completely
representative of the group as a whole. Securing interviews with a randomly selected group
of activists was unfortunately not possible, as the activists involved in these organisations
are often only loosely associated, or unaware of the movement’s social media strategy.
Further research into this area should aim to expand and update the empirical
knowledge in the field. Other global North anti-austerity movements should be profiled, to
advance work towards a generalizable theory of protest movements’ usages of social media.
Research may also look into social media affordances by platform and temporally to further
enrich the subject. Scholars may also want to examine differences in the affordances of real-
time (synchronous) and delayed (asynchronous) social media.
CONCLUSION Protest movements in contemporary society have complex and contradictory
relations with social media. The movements’ articulations on social media make for a
fascinating and multi-faceted field of study, which is constantly evolving in the face of social,
political and technological developments. This paper makes a contribution to the small body
of empirical studies on protest movements’ usages of social media, by examining the social
media usages of five movements who mobilised for End Austerity Now. More broadly, it
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hopes to impact the development of a generalizable theory of protest movements’ social
media usages.
The results of this paper show that the extent to which Cammaerts’ (2015)
affordances of social media are felt by the movements can be linked to the extent to which
the movement as a whole identifies with the social precariat class (Standing, 2011). In this
study a stark divide in social media attitudes is found between the movements who do
identify with the social precariat class (People’s Assembly, PandoActive) and those which do
not (CND, the SWP). The former sets a broad horizon of the possible with regards to their
social media usages and the latter a narrower one. The Green Party demonstrates features
of both camps, and has a similarly divided approach towards social media.
The challenge for the scholar moving forward from this paper is to test the
applicability of this model to other anti-austerity movements. This paper has strongly
highlighted the lack of comparative studies in this area, and makes some step towards
bridging the divide between the theoretical and empirical papers. While this study has
focused on all social media usages surrounding one demonstration, there are a multitude of
angles the scholar could and should approach this topic from: type of platform used,
synchronous/asynchronous social media usages and temporal changes in social media
usages to name but a few. Studies of this type will provide academic study of this field a
more rounded and comprehensive understanding of the field.
The respondents for this study had very different approaches and attitudes to social
media, and where they positioned themselves in relation to the anti-austerity movement.
All acknowledged however, that social media now has a central role in the communicative
practices of many protest movements today. New platforms, possibilities and prospects are
continually arising as conditions change. By ongoing critique and examination of these
developments and relationships, we can hope to arrive at more informed assessments of
current protest communication and mobilisation.
I leave you with one of my favourite quotes from my interviews, summing up the
importance and challenges of the study of protest movements and their social media
usages:
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‘Protest movements in the UK are seeing numbers of people they haven’t seen for.. I don’t know, a decade? The atmosphere among activists at the moment is similar to what I experienced in the Stop the War movement of 2003. And social media.. It’s created a monumental shift in how these movements operate, and allowed all these movements to identify with others across the globe. It’s also given loads of people confidence and opportunity to align themselves politically where they haven’t before. We’re seeing people from many different backgrounds using social media in many experimental ways. That’s basically changing what it means to be an activist.’
Respondent 3 from PandoActive (130-139)
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this paper would not have been possible without the emotional
and financial support provided by my parents Grace and Andrew Edgar, and Tony Jennings.
Thank you for the continual care and encouragement you have shown me.
I would also like to express my thanks for my supervisor Dr Bart Cammaerts, who has
provided exceptional advice and encouragement throughout the development of this
project. Long may you be an alternative voice at the LSE!
Special thanks also must go to all the activists who agreed to be interviewed for this
project. Without you, there really would have been no project. You all went out your way to
accommodate me and organise further interviews, and I hope when I see you at future
demonstrations you will let me buy you a drink!
Lastly, a huge thanks must go to all my beautiful friends, who have put up with me
through the many ups and downs of the last year. I definitely wouldn’t have made it without
you. Lots of love for Ciara, Emily, Hassan, Jack, James, John, Julie, Kim, Laurence, Lou, Saskia,
Tom, Vicky & Victoria. Before you start fighting, you’re in alphabetical order.
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APPENDIXES
Appendix 1
Topic Guide for Interviews
Introductory comments and questions 1. Reiterate terms of consent form & confirmation of personal details.
2. Could you tell me a little about your involvement in the X? (what you do, how long
you’ve been involved etc.)
3. And how about your political motivations more generally? Why did you choose to
get involved with X?
4. Could you tell me about X’s communication strategy? (how they get new people
involved, how they mobilise people – looking for social media to come up here)
5. Following on from what you said about social media, what role would you say the
internet plays in your life in regard to your political motivations and aspirations?
6. Specifically thinking about social media, what role would you say it plays in your life
personally? How about in relation to X?
Questions on the movement’s level of usage of social media 7. How active is X on social media? Why have you chosen to create accounts for X on
these sites?
8. What role does social media play in X?/How integral is social media to X?
9. Which are X’s most active sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)? Why do you think that is?
10. More generally, when and why did X start using social media?
11. What strategies do you have for attracting attention to X on social media? (paying
for ads, organic growth etc.)
12. What would you say X mainly aims to get from social media? How successful would
you say this is?
Questions on preparations for 20th June 13. Can I ask you why X had a bloc at/organised End Austerity Now? (what they were
hoping to get out of it, what part of the protest they identify with) 14. How did X use social media to prepare for End Austerity Now? Is this typical of
preparations of any demo?
15. How would you say social media changes preparations for a demo, compared to the
pre-social media age?
16. Was the preparation for End Austerity Now in conjunction with offline actions?
17. How well do you think this went? Would you have done anything differently?
Questions on 20th June itself 18. Did you use social media on the day? How?
19. How this different to how communication happened at a demo before social media?
20. What would you say are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach?
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Questions on post-20th of June 21. Does X have a strategy for the follow up of the 20th of June?
22. What role does social media play in this strategy?
23. What opportunities does this bring to you? How about any limitations? (Examples?)
24. To what extent is this activity initiated by you, as opposed to ‘on the ground’
activists? (Examples?)
25. What opportunities does this bring to you? How about any limitations?
26. How is this different to how you followed up a demo pre-social media? (Do you think
this was a better or worse method?)
Concluding comments 27. Finally, do you have anything you feel I haven’t covered with regards to X and their
social media usage?
28. Thanks and summary again of what research will be used for.
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Appendix 2
Final Coding Frame for SWP Respondents
(line number) Opportunities
SWP Respondent
Personal position in SWP Dissemination Mobilisation & Recruitment
Organisation Instant Coordi-nation
Archiving
1 ‘I've been a member for almost five years' (1) 'I got involved in the SWP through the student movement in 2010. Now I'm a full time worker' (3-4) 'my main role is to organise Marxism festival' (5) 'because my role is a lot more in central office, not organising a branch or a district, I'm less likely to create a group or event' (55-56)
‘usually I'll share political stuff on Facebook, but not as much as I could do' (57) 'there was a lot of Facebook groups for planning meetings, and there was a lot of sharing of memes, like 'this is why I'm marching on 20th of June' and stuff like that' (222-223) 'it's free, it's cheaper than printing out 1000 leaflets' (252)
‘the point of social media for us is not to publicize stuff, it's to connect with people and get people involved, and have a serious conversation' (78-79) 'a lot of the organisation was through Facebook events.. stuff like 'Newcastle goes to the End Austerity Now demo!'.. then people click attending, then other people see, then people go and book their place on the coach' (203-204) 'there wasn't a coach going from Devon. So a member of the SWP booked a coach on the back of seeing how popular it was on Facebook, and just presumed people would book on to it. It was a gamble but he filled it in like 48 hours!' (288-291)
‘all the videos from Marxism festival are put online as an online resource, which you can direct people to, and which will be a lot more informed than you' (43-45)
2 ‘I work in the student office, so I help organise meetings, campaigns, demonstrations on different campuses' (8) 'involved in any demonstrations and campaigns that are going on in London' (10) 'started working 14 months ago, but been a member for 2/3 years' (13-14)
‘my non political friends would've seen all the photos of me at the demo' (189) 'we have a weekly email that sets out what's happening in the week. This is really important for people who are not living in London' (240-241)
‘when I plan what meetings I'm going to in a week, I always plan it on Facebook' (49-50) 'I think social media plays two roles. it does play a very important role in terms of organising the blocs. This is really important to show how people are mobilising' (114) 'I do think that social media can fool you a bit into how big something is going to be' (116)
‘I Tweeted on the day itself' (158)
‘we've got a YouTube channel, which we're using much better. We record all our major meetings and talks and put them online' (67-69) 'after every demo the Socialist Worker put up an online report, it got loads of hits and likes etc.' (160-161) 'after everyone gets home from a demo, everyone's going mad on Facebook sharing their photos' (165)
3 ‘I've been a member of the SWP for 6 years. I've been surrounded by it for most of my life, and for the past 15 months I've worked full time for the SWP too' (5-6) 'I've always grown up around revolutionary socialist ideas, because my parents are revolutionary socialists' (8) 'the thing that convinced me to become an active socialist was when the English Defense League started to grow, it felt like the SWP was offering a good explanation as to why it was happening and what we should do about it' (10-12) 'the main thing I do with the SWP is to work around central London universities' (15)
‘social media plays quite a minimal role in my political life. You might find out about immediate news from people sharing articles, and I tend to share that.. although maybe it plays a bigger role than I think' (67-69) 'quite a lot of members post up articles with excerpts from the text' (102) 'we have more followers on Twitter than members, so to a certain extent we are successful on social media, in that we do spread our ideas further' (113-114) 'I don't think we live Tweeted, but on the evening of the day we put an article up on the Socialist Worker that had been written on the demo, and shared that around our social media' (203)
‘the SWP aim for our ideas to reach a wider base through social media' (104)
‘we built the demo and bigged it up on social media' (145)
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Final Coding Frame for SWP Respondents
(line number) Constraints
SWP Respondent
Corporate nature of platforms
Continued benefits of offline methods Information overload/Clicktivist
Echo Chamber effect
Archiving
1 ‘most direct recruitment is articulated face-to-face' (47) 'you've either got to go for it or you haven't' [the internet] (50) 'we have members who can go out and sell the paper, and have conversations with people' (104-105) 'it is harder to relate to people over the internet' (239) 'you lose intonation' (240) 'I think it can be more difficult to have a serious conversation with someone if you're not face-to-face' (245) 'people can place too much emphasis on social media, and it's importance' (246) 'if you look at stuff that's happened, it's not because of social media, social media is just a tool' (249) 'I would've made more placards' (269) 'the tube strikes in London a couple of weeks ago showed what will really bring London to a stand still. It's workers taking action into their own hands' (333-335)
‘I think social media can sometimes distort things.. a lot of the time people will click attending to event if they just support it, but aren't intending on going' (230-231) 'it can be disheartening if you're new to it' (235)
‘all the videos from Marxism festival are put online as an online resource, which you can direct people to, and which will be a lot more informed than you' (43-45)
2 ‘we think social media is very important, but we also do think that the most important thing is getting out there and speaking to people, and offline stuff' (90) 'most of the important stuff that happens happens on a person to person basis. It happens offline, in the streets and in meetings and campaigns and stuff' (93-94) 'you still need to go out there with leaflets and stalls and stuff' (120-121) 'some people do see social media as a replacement for building movements, and I think that that's a mistake' (198-199) 'you can't just build something online' (200)
‘there's plenty of times in the last year where I've gone to an event and there's 700 attending on Facebook, then I get there and there's less than 50.. There's just too much info out there' (125)
‘you can get into a bit of an online bubble' (220)
‘we've got a YouTube channel, which we're using much better. We record all our major meetings and talks and put them online' (67-69) 'after every demo the Socialist Worker put up an online report, it got loads of hits and likes etc.' (160-161) 'after everyone gets home from a demo, everyone's going mad on Facebook sharing their photos' (165)
3 ‘we don't pay for ads, we decided we didn't think giving money to Facebook was something we wanted to do' (95)
‘our strategy is just being there to meet the people who are angry and who are looking for answers. Then talking about ideas, sharing our publications and that sort of thing' (28-30) 'the most active centralised element of our online presence is attached to our paper. The Socialist Worker regularly Tweets and shares its articles on Facebook' (48-50) 'I think social media quite a useful tool but it's quite limited' (53) 'as you saw with the Egyptian Revolution, revolutionary conditions were actually the most important' (56) 'one of the reasons we use a newspaper more frequently than social media is because with the newspapers you can see our ideas in their entirety, not an article in isolation. The paper shows how racism is linked to our austerity etc.' (62-64) 'Facebook and Twitter is quite important, but the way you're going to develop people and win people to what are quite complex ideas, is by talking to them' (98-99) 'we loads of postering, loads of leafleting of colleges and tube stations, we send it out on emails over and over again, and rang people' (140-142) 'we rang through our student members, but I don't think we ever put it on the Facebook group' (145) 'I don't think just demonstrating will be enough, one of the things that will be central to beating austerity will be strike action, the movement moving to the workplace' (240-243)
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Final Coding Frame for SWP Respondents
(line number) Social Precariat Features
SWP Respondent
Age Lack of Social Protection
Mobilising in the context of a neo-liberal crisis
1 ‘the internet is still quite a new thing' (30) 'the offline methods have been going on for 100 years or more' (33) 'people are still trying to figure out how the internet works' (35) 'older projects do not have social media in their tradition' (145) 'if you're birthing your political project, you're more likely to be better at social media' (147) 'it has a lot to do with the nature of your organisation, and how seriously you take social media' (150) 'the People's Assembly is completely different to the SWP' (154) 'our members are activists and trade unionists' (301)
‘often when you talk to people about austerity, why they're cutting back on the NHS etc., big questions come out. People say it's because 'oh it's because of immigrants' or whatever' (175-177) 'I think austerity affects such a wide range of people, that basically every person who isn't in the elite is affected by austerity' (304-305)
‘I became radicalised during the student movement' (7) 'suffering the disappointment of the general election of 2010 completely changed my mind about how you can change the world' [on Nick Clegg and tuition fees] (12-13) ''the SWP was the only organised and active group on my campus.. it seemed quite a natural choice' (18) 'it's important to fight cuts and austerity' (167) 'having a demo of quarter of a million people gives people a lot of confidence to challenge the myth of austerity' (170-172) 'challenging austerity brings out broader political questions about how you can change the world' (180) 'you can't be a serious a socialist if you're not challenging austerity' (182) 'being out there with hundreds of thousands of people has a direct impact on how people feel they have power, so they're not isolated in thinking austerity isn't working' (190-191) 'when the election result came through, the demo went from like 2000 to like 75000 in about two days, and that created quite a lot of momentum around it' (211-214) 'it's so wide ranging what austerity does' (308) 'people were shocked by the Tories getting in again, that the 20th of June was a bit of a reaction to that.. and it came at the right time, six weeks after the election' (313-315) 'now you see more than ever a desire for unity [among left wing activists]' (319) 'all these groups end up at the same conclusions, even if we come at it from slightly different angles' (320-321) 'all these groups end up at the same conclusions, even if we come at it from slightly different angles' (345)
2 ‘[it's mostly offline] partly because we've got people rooted in campaigns, you know, a lot of trade unionists etc.' (43-45) 'we're catching up a little bit in terms of Facebook and Twitter are the most popular social media, and we're slowly, slowly catching up to be a part of that' (78-79) 'only in the last three or four years have we made a proper effort to bring it up to date' (80) ‘most people over 30 use email quite regularly' (243) 'if I was working for the SWP 30 years ago, I would spend a lot more time out and about, which probably was quite a good thing, because you had more personal relationships’ (245-247)
‘we just wanted to get students together to show that students are being hit hard by what the Tories want to do, and the student movement's been a bit weak recently, over the last 4/5 years, ever since Millbank in 2010, there hasn't been that kind of breakthrough and that level of student struggle’(110-112)
‘you look at the situation in the world at the moment, you turn on the news, you see wars you see racism, you see austerity, and I think that I want to fight for a world where we don't have those kind of things' (15-18) 'there's a big international battle going on against austerity, and we need to be as organised as possible' (20) 'we need to fight for a world without capitalism' (23) 'the 20th of June demo was tremendously important, when you think it came a month after the election, so we thought it was really important to get a demonstration after that to show that people were angry at the Tories.' (99-102) 'there's been a media blackout of big demos, so social media is good for replacing that' (170) 'there's a mood to fight the Tories and a mood to resist austerity.. the 20th of June focussed that mood really well' (223-224) 'if the 20th of June had only 50000 people as it did last year, people would've been a bit disappointed' (228) 'the 20th of June showed that people do want to fight back' (229) 'a lot of people were depressed at the election result, then the 20th of June allowed people to express that. It had extra significance' (230-231) 'it mobilised people in a way that the left haven't done for the last 5 or 6 years' (235) 'the election result was a slap in the face for millions of people in Britain' (283)
3 ‘we're trying to develop our social media, but it's the kind of thing that will naturally develop as younger people join the party' (68) 'we need to develop a strategy that makes people share and Tweet our stuff more, but that is not really something that you can practically develop, it's something that will take place as younger people get involved in the SWP' (134-136)
‘austerity affects people across the board in quite a profound way' (250)
‘fighting austerity is obviously a positive thing, that has a massive resonance with people' (130) 'demonstrations give people a glimpse of the mood that exists' (132) 'it gives people confidence that post election, not everyone is a right wing racist bigot, who thinks the right thing to do is to slash the NHS' (135) 'austerity is the central mission of the Conservative government, and because of that there's a recognition that it's the central question in a whole range of issues' (252-253) 'the most impressive thing about 20th of June was that it mobilised loads of people that weren't part of the existing left, and that's the crucial thing' (257-259) 'it's great that there was such a sense of unity' (260) 'there were hundreds of thousands of non aligned people.. amazing' (261) 'it's qualitatively and quantitatively different this time round, mainly because of the outcome of the election' (267-268) 'the leadership of the anti-austerity movement previously offered strategies that didn't work. The trade union leadership led a series of strikes in 2011, where 2.5 million people were on strike, huge! But then they called them off! Throughout the whole period there was a grand old Duke of York strategy where the leadership of the trade unions marched their members up to the top of the hill, said 'we're going to fight the Tories', and then didn't. That has a demoralising effect on people, undoubtedly. That's one of the reason the demos got smaller' (272-277) 'also the fact that demos alone are not enough . People demonstrated and demonstrated [at the 2014 anti-austerity march] then were like 'we've still got austerity, what's going on!'' (279-280) 'other people said 'wait for Labour, in five years time Labour will win and reverse everything!' (282)
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Final Coding Frame for SWP Respondents
(line number) On specific benefits/constraints of particular social media
Other Notable Quotes
SWP Respondent
1 'local branches of the SWP have their own Facebook page, as do the national office' (45-46) ‘we use Thunderclap for a big event' (58) 'Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the most used, and all perform a different function' (60) ' Twitter is good for conversations and it's good for getting things out there, but it's harder to create a conversation' (63) ' YouTube is an online resource' (67) 'we have a website where all this comes together' (70) 'I think there is an argument for using something like Tumblr, but I'm not sure what we could get out of it that we couldn't from Facebook' (73-74)
‘we have an online presence, obviously' (20) 'our online strategy is quite uneven' (23) 'people are still working out how to do the online stuff, and I think that's true of every group' (25-26) 'it takes one or two dedicated people to keep up with social media for larger organisations' (85) 'it is hard work to have a social media presence' (88) 'I think we all agree it's important' (90) 'Brick Lane Debates and the People's Assembly are very different organisations, so what they use social media for would be very different' (95-96) 'it's not just doing social media, it's being talented at it' (134) 'I think certain groups are very good at social media, some people just manage to pitch it right' (135) 'demonstrations are not the be all and end all' (185) 'the 20th of June wouldn't have ever stopped austerity but if gives people's confidence in striking' (188) 'if you don't have that level of organisation, it just won't work. Look at what happened with the Poll Tax, it was organised' (198) 'we discussed paying for posts, but decided against it' (262-263) 'it would be an interesting experiment to pay for advertising on Facebook' (267) 'we've never thought our social media was good enough, we've always thought we could improve it' (273) 'it is a process of figuring out how best to use it as a tool, and not an end in itself' (276-277) 'we collected a lot of details on the day from people who were really interested in fighting austerity.. they've been followed up, invited to local meetings etc. about how we move forward from 20th of June' (280-282) 'if you didn't want to be organised, you would've have gone along to a massive demo' (285) 'social media doesn't have any role in the follow up strategy in a formal sense, but I think in an informal sense. For example when people express interest in joining they get sent an email and get stuff sent out to them in the post.. haha that sounds so old school' (287-288) 'I think the 20th of June was really good, but I don't think it's the end result. I think we need more demos, bigger demos' (350-351) 'the demos are great fun and their important for building, but they're not enough. They're important for building' (360) 'I lived in Scotland when they brought in the bedroom tax, and they managed to abolish it within a year.. because they were so organised' (337-338)
2 ‘Twitter keeps you up to date with the global political conversation' (53) 'all our publications have separate pages on Facebook, as does our annual festival, Marxism Festival' (69-70) 'the Facebook page for Socialist Worker Britain has 10,000 likes' (72) 'the Facebook and Twitter are used in quite similar ways, basically a recognition of the fact that their the two most broadly used textual platforms' (76-77) 'we started Twitter at the beginning of 2009, Facebook 2010' (80) 'the Twitter has 25,000 followers' (107)
‘out of our membership of 5000, 2000 are active on a regular basis' (28) 'that membership gets involved in local campaigns - from standing up to UKIP to supporting a local hospital' (30-31) 'the SWP's online work isn't as good as I'd like it to be - we could be much more media savvy. The majority of our work is offline' (35-37) 'every SWP branch will hold a weekly campaigning stall and a weekly branch meeting that's open to anyone' (40) '[our strategy] is very very ad hoc' (83) 'the people who run the stuff are not social media savvy enough to have a proper strategy, so it is just all over the place, and anyone who works for the party can have an input into it' (85-87) 'the bloc we were involved in was the student bloc, and it was the SWP alongside other organisations, such as the SAAA, the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, and a couple others' (104-105) 'I think the People's Assembly are quite good on social media' (134) 'The real test comes on October the 4th. Can we keep up the momentum from June the 20th?' (136) 'Can we get the 250000 who came to June 20th to get involved locally?' (140) 'local People's Assembly groups haven't taken off as much as we would've liked' (145) 'the People's Assembly put forward the brand, End Austerity Now, which got all this public attention, but it hasn't materialised into the local groups that we would've liked' (150-151) 'maybe it's because it's summer? But also, maybe the People's Assembly are paying for it a bit in the way that they haven't actually got the activists on the ground' (152) 'before social media, people would've only heard about a demo by watching the 10 o'clock news or by reading the Sunday newspaper' (167) 'the Student Assembly is something that's just online' (200) 'the social media side of the 4th of October will come from the People's Assembly' (215)
3 ‘we've got a website, where we have a 'find your branch' feature. You can put your postcode in and it'll get you a Google map with pins to show you your local groups' (35-36)
‘one thing people always say is that they see us [the SWP] everywhere, because we always have a big presence on demos, or stalls on campuses and in local areas as often as possible' (18-20) 'it's quite difficult to have a serious social media strategy as an organisation.. because to be effective social media relies on other people further dissemination, rather than you just putting it up' (56-57) 'I certainly don't have as an engaged relationship with it as some people do' (70) 'we're preparing heavily for the 4th of October, and the Festival of Resistance, which is like a counter conference to the Tory Party Conference. Why not take quarter of a million people to Manchester? They won't like that at all!' (234-236) 'none of this is automatic. The thing that will decide how good the follow up is is organisation' (284) 'the key question is 'are there political organisations that can argue with the government and win?'' (287)
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Appendix 3
Letter of consent
Protest Movements and their social media usages is the topic for my MSc Politics
and Communication research project.
The title for the research is Exploring the uses of self-mediation logics in protest
movements using social media: a case study of groups involved in the End Austerity Now
demonstration on 20th June, 2015. The research focusses on five cases studies of protest
movements who attended End Austerity Now, including (organisation name here).
I would like to obtain your consent to interview you about your experience of social
media and (organisation name here). I will record the interview and may take notes.
I will keep a record of your personal details, such as your relation to the movement
and your name. In transcripts of the interview or in the finished research project it will be
useful to reference your personal details, but this is of course subject to your consent. Upon
your request, I will provide you with a transcript and audio file of the interview, and I am
happy to leave unattributed or to remove any quotes that you may wish to withdraw. You
are welcome to see a copy of the finished research project if you would like to. Finally, you
are free to refuse to take part or to withdraw from the research at any time and you may if
you wish reject the use of tape recorders.
I (please print name) give my consent to be interviewed about my
involvement in (organisation name here) and understand the above.
Signed:
Email:
Telephone number:
For further information please contact me, Antonia Jennings, at any time at
[email protected] or on 07962377094.
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Appendix 4
Transcription of Interview with People’s Assembly Respondent 1
Methodology: Individual Interviews
XX: Interviewer RR: Respondent 1 from the People’s Assembly
‘..’ – indicates momentary pause, 1-3 seconds
[note about emotions, facial expressions, tone of voice, longer pauses]
XX: To start off with, could you tell me a little bit about your involvement in the People's 1
Assembly? 2
RR: Yeah, I was from October until um, the end of the end of June/beginning of July, well no, 3
from October 'til about the end of May-ish, I was their fundraiser three days a week. Part 4
time, and then I filled in for our full time, well we had two full time positions including the 5
national secretary and there was Claire Groom, who I spoke to you about before. She did 6
everything else in between full time and I took her role over the last month and a half, at 7
the time we were preparing for the June demonstration. And then I've just finished very 8
recently. 9
XX: Ok great, and could you tell me a bit about your political motivations more generally or 10
why you decided to get involved with the People's Assembly specifically? 11
RR: Yeah I had been involved in the Norfolk branch of the People's Assembly, been generally 12
interested in anti-austerity movements through being involved in the Students' Union, um I 13
was the sabbatical officer at our uni, UEA. I'd run lot's of campaigns on free education and 14
um, generally there are so many issues that don't relate to students as students, but that 15
will relate to them as individuals in the community that they live in, both in Norwich and 16
elsewhere. So it felt more and more important to try and link those campaigns together. All 17
these issues were being affected by the austerity agenda. And the Norfolk People's 18
Assembly was a great group that was already trying to build a mass coalition and then when 19
I was moving to London I applied for the job at the national office um, because even though 20
it was fundraising it seemed to be a very cool organisation to get involved with. 21
XX: Could you tell me a little bit about what the People's Assembly's communication 22
strategy is? So how does it get people involved, what communications strategies 23
and platforms does it use? 24
RR: The platforms it uses are Facebook and Twitter, and its website, and email. We have 25
NationBuilder, that's the kind of website we use, it's mostly just an incredible database, 26
where we can keep track of people from like, um.. like I was able for example to send an 27
email to every branch, called an e-branch email, with the details of those people in their 28
area that had liked our Twitter page and signed up to our website, and who were part of 29
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GMB [the union and founding member of the Labour party], or whatever like. You can really 30
strategise and narrow down your target audience. Um, and.. that database like 60,000 31
people on it when I left, and when I started it had 30,000. So when I left it was doubled. 32
Maybe even nearly 80,000, but that includes Facebook profiles, email addresses, so it could 33
have some duplicates. And in terms of strategy, we tend to, we have like for example, the 34
platform of Facebook. The office itself is made up of the national secretary, the part timers, 35
one of whom is paid one day a week to do social media, but really it just means she does it 36
in her day to day life from home and from work she's doing a number of other jobs. She 37
constantly posts stuff on Facebook and Twitter and is just someone to keep it running and 38
keep it going, whereas in the office we might think about what kind of messages do we want 39
to get out today, and it almost works.. problematically perhaps, I don't know [laughs]. 40
Maybe not. Our social media reach, for example on the 20th of June our Facebook post had 41
a reach of 3 million, which is a 20th of the UK's population or something. So, we do do very 42
well, but we almost do things day by day and in terms of looking forward.. in terms of 43
communication.. well we don't really [laughs]. We have in our minds the next big event, I 44
would say actually this is a really big weakness within the organisation, but like we do, we 45
know for example that the Tory Party conference is coming up in Manchester.. so now we 46
know that is the one message need to keep going with, but really every day will be random 47
stuff, whatever comes in the news we just try to be the first people to write something 48
about it? Or.. make a meme very about it? We did have various, uh.. yeah I mean it's really 49
hit and miss and ad hoc and everybody has access to the Facebook and Twitter? So.. the 50
voice change and the tone changes and in a way we have one person who was the, who was 51
on our Facebook admin who posts quite regularly, and he is the ex-general secretary of the 52
UCU, the University and College Union, who is really.. I think he's the co-chair or co-founder 53
of the Greece Solidarity Campaign? And he basically just posts about Greece every now and 54
then [laughs]. Every now and then you see this Greece link come up, and you go, I've never 55
met him! [laughs]. But you know at least that kind of proves that we're.. that actually like his 56
tone and his voice and the strange things he puts up are really not in keep with what we do 57
often, so I think we need to er.. have a chat with him! [laughs] So he's completely mad.. 58
there almost is no strategy. I mean I don't know how helpful that is, but it's probably the 59
truth! 60
XX: No no, that's really interesting! 61
RR: Yeah. I mean I think like the national secretary would have this a lot on his mind because 62
it's a very small organisation, and he's been working there forever, but all of the new staff 63
came.. and one of the staff in the organisation that I knew started in October apart from the 64
national secretary. And now, two of us have left and two have replaced us. So there's been a 65
quick turnover and so the strategy and the long term thinking has only been in the head of 66
only one person I guess. Apart from from a committee that sits above.. I don't know if you 67
knew it existed.. not many people do. I think that's also the problem? But we have the 68
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committee that make political decisions, and the office just work off the back of what is 69
decided in their meetings. So in some ways, we'll hear that oh the committee have got an 70
idea for another event on budget day, so we're going to we're going to be doing a national 71
day of action and we need to start thinking of contacting the groups, 72
contacting trade unions, um.. but yeah usually we don't have any kind of how many posts a 73
day or how many emails a week, we just try to uh.. act on like, the more action we're doing 74
the more communication we're doing. So if we've got something coming up we know that 75
we need to work on that and that activity spurs on more activity etc. For the next period of 76
time anyway. 77
XX: Ok, so then in terms of.. you've mentioned Facebook and Twitter, have you got 78
any accounts on any other social media? 79
RR: That's it. We have a YouTube but we don't use it very well, we have Tumblr, but I think 80
we should delete it. And delete all trafficking of it! [laughs] I think that if you have a social 81
media account you should use it well. Otherwise don't have it. 82
XX: Mm.. so then in terms of Facebook and Twitter, why do you think you chose those 83
platforms as opposed to others? 84
RR: I guess that we had them before anything else, and thought.. the interesting thing with 85
Facebook is that the way that People's Assembly started is that is was the Coalition of 86
Resistance originally, an organisation set up via Countefire, which is a sort of another 87
political organisation. And the Coalition of Resistance tried to build together loads of kind of 88
political campaigns, and anti-cuts campaigns into the coalition, and then there was the 89
People's Charter, which was a charter signed by loads of trade unions, that basically had a 90
very similar aims, and they came together to form the People's Assembly at their first 91
People's Assembly in Westminster in June 2012? Um, so they decided to.. so the coalition of 92
resistance Facebook page actually.. I think it has more than the People's Assembly even 93
now. It had like 40,000 likes or 50,000 likes. And so they built that up very well on Facebook 94
and then oddly created the People's Assembly one without um.. without closing down the 95
other. So 'cause they saw it as a tool through which to reach other people.. so what the 96
coalition page does now.. it shares things from the People's Assembly rather than sharing 97
it's own posts because we can now get a much further reach even though we haven't got 98
that much of a build.. or we didn't have that much of a build on ours. I think we had like 99
17,000 when I started and now it has like 40,000 or something. But like, uh.. so that's an odd 100
thing, that basically we managed to have a lot of reach via our posts using another 101
organisation's Facebook.. which oddly means I think, that people think that the Coalition of 102
Resistance still exists? [laughs] It doesn't! It should have a little banner that says 'p.s., we're 103
not really anything anymore, we're these guys! But it creates an odd illusion I think but I 104
think that the organisers that have access to that page, would quite like it still to be there 105
because I guess they can post things that aren't necessarily politically aligned with the 106
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People's Assembly sometimes? It's another way of them being able to get something out 107
without having to be democratically decided through..? So they basically used it because 108
everybody I think uses Facebook as a campaign tool.. it's a good starting point. All the guides 109
tell you to do that, it's what everybody's on, it's the most used forum. Twitter is another.. 110
it's a much better way I think of.. engaging people with content.. um.. like you can have a lot 111
more content on Facebook and you can create closer friends on Facebook.. so it's good for 112
local organising.. in terms of events. Twitter is good at responding very quickly to things that 113
happen instantly.. and we can really easily.. I mean the way in which we use Twitter a lot 114
more is following events that we're running? So often, if we have an event we'll have three 115
people who have our the passwords, and we'll just be making quotes of the people that are 116
speaking, taking pictures or the speakers and the audience, and just Tweeting it as we go, 117
live. But then halfway through the event we'll go 'has anyone done Facebook? Oh shit!'. And 118
then we do one standalone something of the event on Facebook, it gets far more reach than 119
loads of things.. um.. one after the other because they don't reach as far.. I think it's the 120
algorithms or something. We use the mainly live events mainly for live events, there and 121
then. and that's kind of all we need at the moment. 122
XX: Ok, so you've talked about going through the Coalition of Resistance, and all the likes 123
they've got as a kind of strategy for reaching more people.. do you ever do anything else? I 124
guess I am asking about paying for ads.. do you ever promote your posts on Facebook? 125
RR: We've never done it, uh.. we have only just started discussing it recently. And.. the 126
national secretary was suggesting it for smaller events running in London, um.. so like we 127
have lots of volunteer meetings where we try and get 100 people in the room? And we have 128
a lot of contacts, but they probably wouldn't call themselves volunteers in London, they're 129
rather local group organisers or activists or friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends. 130
But the office is attached to that, there are lots of obviously political groups in London that 131
are friends of friends of friends of friends.. and they all know each other. Whereas the office 132
acts sightly apart, because we're not necessarily either all from London, like I'm not for 133
example. So we struggle to organise close knit things? Like small, like a 100 people to come 134
to a meeting. 135
XX: That's really interesting. So just overall, with regards to general questions of social 136
media, in summary I guess, what would you say the People's Assembly mainly aims to get 137
from social media and how successful do you think this is? 138
RR: I think they aim to use social media as a build for action. I think they use it well to 139
advertise events but they don't use it well to celebrate their actions or wins online, or using 140
their actions to bring people in afterwards. For example we had the major national 141
demonstration on June 20th. We had a few people online on the day taking pictures, but the 142
day afterwards.. Facebook, Twitter.. I was the only one posting, because I felt we had to, 143
and I think that's really poor, but I think you need to be posting exactly how the day 144
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unfolded online, the different photos other groups have taken, um.. They want more people 145
to actively involve themselves, and not just online. In fact their main focus is getting people 146
out on the streets. They don't think that using Facebook alone is an end in itself, just more 147
of a means to an end. 148
XX: With regards to the follow up, why do you think it isn't so good? 149
RR: Um, they're used to having action.. I mean as long as it gets to the papers they feel like 150
that's probably good enough. They don't think Facebook is a bad thing, and they would've 151
been.. I mean I said to them I think it was really crap.. our social media after the demo was 152
awful, when we didn't get back online until 2 in the afternoon the next day. Because there is 153
no single person that is responsible for it.. so uh.. it becomes a shared burden [laughs].. so 154
even after that we had.. so on the day itself we handed out 30,000 flyers that had 'What's 155
next?' and People's Assembly underneath. And 'text this number', underneath. So you had 156
to text your name, address and email to this number for free, and we will send you more 157
information. So the idea was to try and get these people hooked into local groups by 158
postcode.. um.. and we still haven't done that as far as I know. And really they should've 159
received a text the next day. Even if it was just to say, thank you so much for texting us, we 160
will email you shortly with d-d-d-duh. And we didn't do that and that's because one we have 161
a small capacity and two I don't think.. I think they expect people to actively get involved, 162
rather than work on building a movement from scratch.. like they've all been involved in 163
very left wing groups for a very long time, in which it's very easy to grab favours from 164
people, and just people to turn up because they always do because they're on the left. You 165
know? 166
XX: Yeah. 167
RR: And because they're not used to like reaching people that still don't call themselves 168
political.. that kind of thing. Like on a local level, that still needs to happen. Like if you speak 169
to Claire Groom, I think she would be a very useful person to speak to. Because she is 170
someone who doesn't class herself as political.. [laughs]. She joined the People's Assembly 171
saying, 'I don't even know who Trotsky is! I just care about what's happening'. Her opinion 172
of how everything works is um, extremely skewed from the national organiser I think, which 173
is quite telling. Um, but yeah maybe if you had.. if you could speak to him and her that 174
would be fascinating. But he's on holiday at the moment. I'll try and get you in contact 175
though! 176
XX: Thanks that sounds really interesting! Great, so just generally, with End Austerity Now, 177
why would you say it was organised by the People's Assembly? 178
RR: We were planning it from February time, because we had organised one national 179
demonstration, in the previous June, so it was time for another one. And we noted that no 180
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matter what happens in the election, we're probably going to end up with the same thing? 181
Whether it's.. well I mean Labour would've been the happy ending.. but like, they still had 182
austerity on their main agenda, so.. we knew the battle wasn't over. And we knew that our 183
main message was 'no matter what happens in the election, we're still going to need a 184
movement, and we still need to be fighting stronger than ever'. 185
XX: So what were you hoping to get out of the demo? 186
RR: So we were hoping to send a strong message to whoever got into parliament, to make it 187
the first thing they had to receive. So as soon as their bottoms were in the seat basically, 188
um.. they have this huge wave of thousands of people.. outside parliament, saying 'look, you 189
need to deliver!'. And that was kind of our main thought. We never expected obviously a 190
Tory majority, so we knew that if this was a Labour majority we'd struggle to get the 191
numbers, because it seems like an odd angle to take, but we were going to try and then 192
switch the message to a kind of celebration against austerity as well? Because we have so 193
many trade unions involved we have to be careful about how hard we hit the Labour party? 194
We don't mind slagging it off, but we have to slag off all major anti-austerity parties at the 195
same time, not just pick on one kind of thing. We try to remove ourselves from party 196
politics, um, in many ways but not in others, it's a very odd line to tow. 197
XX: And when you used social media to prepare for End Austerity Now, was it different to 198
how you used it at the last protest, the year before? 199
RR: The June demo before? I wasn't there, but I have seen many things done the same.. we.. 200
I think we had an awful lot more people working on it this time round. And oddly enough 201
like I think what happened was the event itself was made in March I think even.. and it had 202
about 2000 people attending online from the very beginning, for a really long time, which 203
was obviously very embarrassing, and if you look to the year before, it has about 2000 or 204
may 3,4,5000, no more than that. So it was actually quite worrying, like how on earth.. well 205
obviously social media was not the thing that mobilised people the year before. The year 206
before it was trade unions organising coaches, it was us calling up trade unions and local 207
groups organising local coaches, or us doing stuff face to face, or over the phone, or handing 208
out flyers in the street. And I think actually, what happened this time was, on the day of 209
the.. the reason why we caught social media at that time was not only because of the 210
election, but on the day of the election was an event that the People's Assembly shoved up, 211
called Demonstrate against the Tories, or like they're going to make a coup, or something. I 212
can't remember exactly what the accusation was, but it was like 'the Tories are lying, even if 213
they don't get a majority they're going to try and steal the seats, or whatever'.. and that was 214
supposed to be a very small event.. I think they were expecting maybe a few 100 people 215
outside Downing St., that's what they wanted to host. And then suddenly during the day it 216
went up, 3000, 4000, 5000, 10,000, then suddenly it had reached 12,000, maybe even 217
20,000 people. But it all happened in a day and The Guardian caught wind of this and even 218
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wrote an article about how even during the day of the election this event had reached tens 219
of thousands. And then or course the majority won, and the People's Assembly decided to 220
put up a post, saying 'Vote on these options: would you like us to push back the 221
demonstration, or still have it? Would you like us to instead mobilise people for the June 222
20th demo, d-d-d-duh. The petition was online and also made by the committee that were 223
organising people for the June 20th demo, who were hoping people would vote to just focus 224
the People's Assembly's efforts on the 20th June, since we'd already put so much effort 225
behind that, organising coaches etc. What happened on that was that we were able oddly 226
enough to transfer all those people to the June 20th demo, because so many people were 227
waiting to find out what had happened? So we had everyone's attention on that date and 228
we were able to put it up when it was reaching like another million people or something, 229
and so we transferred everyone over. 230
XX: So you said that last year that there were the trade unions organising the buses etc., 231
presumably that was the case this year as well? So how much do you think the offline 232
mobilisation played a part this year? 233
RR: It's difficult to tell. We estimated about 250 coaches before the event. And then on the 234
day I was managing the coaches and I didn't see that many at all. But I think they were 235
parking at places all over London. So I think it would've been about 150 to 200 coaches, and 236
that was as many as they'd had on the TUC demo which had half a million people there, so, 237
in 2011 I think. So were expecing big numbers and we knew that trade unions weren't the 238
only ones booking coaches but because we'd started to get their support by writing to them 239
and asking them to donate etc. In terms of asking them how much money went here and 240
there, £20,000 came in from Unite the Union and then others gave maybe like £5000 or less, 241
you know the other national unions. So basically they paid for the staging and everything. It 242
was kind of a commitment from some unions, and I think we had about 16, maybe 18 243
national unions affliated by that point, which was about January this year. I think most 244
people.. I mean for example inn London I remember the weekend before the 245
demonstration, there were 44 stalls that we knew about that were happening on one 246
weekend. So 44 places around London, either tube stations or some other public place, 247
were being flyered, just by people on the streets. So I think that kind of stuff reaches 248
people, and that was happening every weekend in so many citie and towns, but obviously it 249
was mainly in one or two places rather than 44. We noticed.. well we stopped definitely 250
trying to push local coaches about three weeks before the demo, and just focused on 251
London basically. We knew that most of any demonstration comes from the city you are in. 252
So we did that, as well. So I don't know how to way it up in a percentage but that's all I 253
know. We always say that you have to hear something three times, like, the fact that social 254
media had been there and had hit everybody so early meant that they had time to book 255
tickets or whatever as well, which was certainly very helpful. 256
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XX: Yes that's certainly very helpful. So, just looking back on the preparations for End 257
Austerity Now, is there anything you would've done differently? 258
RR: I would have created a much more structured communication plan [laughs] for a start! 259
But we.. yeah even in terms of information packs for trade unions or like um.. bits of 260
information that they can put out to their members.. I tried to create bits of these 261
throughout the time but it became very sporadic and not planned, and I think that we could 262
have.. I think that our social media could have been much more strategic in reaching 263
different people from different backgrounds. I think we are very good at reaching masses of 264
people all at once and we're good at reaching the left. I think that I probably would've tried 265
to target more.. Muslim communities and yeah those that don't call themselves politically 266
active, where we set up stalls, that kind of thing? Rather than going where everybody goes.. 267
the tube. I mean the places we find difficult to reach, and that would've been in terms of 268
encouraging, local groups to do that. And generally afterwards that would've been a really 269
interesting avenue to pursue too. And what's next? We didn't have a very strong message 270
on the day. We should've said 'right, the next thing is budget day. Or, the next thing is 271
Manchester. We need you all to go back to your cities and towns right now and start 272
organising. We need you to start thinking about your plans for what you're going to put on 273
in Manchester.' You know, there needs to be the next step in mind. But instead, what there 274
was the words 'Manchester' and 'budget day' but not a specific ask, and we didn't follow it 275
up properly, and now we've left it too late. The Tory party conference event only went up a 276
week ago, and it's very poorly attended so far online. And I think that's a mistake and 277
something we should've pushed on the day, maybe ask everyone to get their phones out up 278
on stage and click attending now, and start adding everyone you know. That would've been 279
incredible, but it didn't happen. 280
XX: The 20th June mobilised so many people from so many different groups each with their 281
own agenda. I mean you had everyone from Sisters Uncut who are obviously an anti-282
domestic violence, you had CND against Trident etc. Do you think the variety of agendas 283
present on the 20th of June affected how the follow up was executed? 284
RR: I think the one thing we did really well was organise these different groups into blocs, so 285
that everyone could be there with their own message. It was a great idea to let them 286
organise their own blocs so that they could do their own thing. But for example the girl who 287
organised the Sisters Uncut bloc called the office five or six times and I could give her no 288
information because we didn't have a very good plan for it until days before, when someone 289
very randomly knocked up a map.. whereas before we were saying we would have no map, 290
so I think that was poorly done. If we had given people very specific spaces earlier on all of 291
the education group for example could have possibly planned to work together a bit more, 292
and that kind of thing. Small campaigns could've worked together if they knew they were all 293
going to be meeting at the same place, and that kind of thing. In terms of afterwards the 294
next move would've been to.. I think it's good we got all those people on the demo, I think 295
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that's a good start to getting people involved, but the thing we should be doing now is 296
emailing everybody, calling up all those organisations that were on the demo saying 'we 297
want you to be a big part of Manchester, also would you like affiliate? We have a national 298
conference coming up in November, come along'. We actually had a national meeting on 299
the 11th of July of all our local groups, and had we really worked hard to get those people in 300
at that point, we could hook them into Manchester as an active partner, rather than just 301
'officially would you like to be an affiliate?' It doesn't really make any sense! But if we could 302
say to them 'look we want you actively to be a part of making decisions'. I don't know how 303
much you want to hear, but personally I don't think it's a very democratic organisation at all, 304
but please don't tell my boss! [laughs] It's committee is oddly stuck, it's been the same 305
committee since it started and they should be up for election, but it'll be interesting to see if 306
they actually are, and if they actually hold an election, in November. The committee are 307
mostly made up of trade unionists, some organisation signatory members, and the left of 308
the Guardian, when it was all set up. But I think only half of those people actually turn up for 309
meetings, alledgedly.. although I've never been to one. [laughs] Sorry for my bitch, you can 310
tell that I've left the organisation! 311
XX: [laughs] Don't worry I won't tell your boss! On the day itself, you've mentioned 312
previously that you used social media on demos themselves. Did you use social media on 313
the 20th of June, and how? 314
RR: Uh, yeah we used Twitter on the day mostly, we had three people, so two volunteers 315
who we knew had some kind of experience in social media and who knew the tone of the 316
organisation. One girl was on my course, and both of them had volunteered for us before. 317
And they were pretty sound, and so we just asked them as people we could trust whether, if 318
we have them our details, like they could be coordinated by Claire Solomon, who was 319
usually the person who is paid one day a week to do our social media, and who actually is 320
doing the social media all week around and about but doesn't necessarily come in to the 321
office. So she had a hold on those two, and the three of them.. I'm not sure what they did 322
before they must've put up some videos of the beginning of the march and that kind of 323
stuff. But we didn't have any photos during it and we should've put up photos the whole 324
way through. But we had quote, and misquotes from the speeches going up live, and I think 325
basically one person was writing down what was said and who they were, and the other 326
person was Tweeting them, like copying them from the piece of paper. Someone else was 327
taking pictures here and around the place. So basically there were two volunteers and the 328
coordinator on the day. I don't think there was much else. As I said, small office team, so we 329
all had a megaphone and a walkie-talkie and were managing volunteers as part of the 330
march, and so we didn't really plan ahead too well. In fact I was calling round friends the 331
night before to try and get some more people to volunteer! [laughs] We wanted about five 332
or six people on social media on the day but we ended up with only two. And I approached 333
one of them on the day! [laughs] I mean I saw them stewarding and was like, 'um.. would 334
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you mind?' [laughs] And they were happy to help out and do that. Yeah I don't think 335
Facebook was used at all. But we've noticed that moving away from YouTube actually has 336
been useful for us, because we have more reach on Facebook anyway, and if you.. So we 337
used to, maybe put a video up on YouTube and then share it from YouTube onto Facebook. 338
And now we would never do that, because you get so much more reach on Facebook 339
because Facebook's algorithms much prefer its own videos to YouTube. 340
XX: Do you know if last year People's Assembly did the same type of live Tweeting? 341
RR: I think so, it doesn't seem to be something that we've newly done. I think at least they 342
would've done at least certain quotes, so I don't think it was a brand new idea, I think it just 343
increased. It was good that it all happened straight away, rather than filming something, 344
then editing it, then putting it up later. It's much better to just take a quick picture on your 345
phone. For example when I was at Downing St I took a quick picture of the crowds. I just 346
stood up on the top of a wall and took one picture on my phone and put it up on the 347
People's Assembly's Twitter, and it had a bunch of retweets. 348
XX: Ok great. So my last set of questions is on the follow-up strategy which we've covered 349
quite a lot already. I guess the only thing I haven't really asked you about it is to what extent 350
do you feel the follow up strategy has been initiated by People's Assembly, as opposed to on 351
the ground activists or groups themselves. Do you think a lot has happened without your 352
guidance, or do you think that without you it wouldn't have really gone anywhere? 353
RR: Um, what's been fascinating is that about 20 new local groups have gotten in touch, or 354
people that want to set up a local group, whether they have done or not. about 20 different 355
places in the UK have come to us saying 'we want to start up a group' and that was just 356
before and after the demonstration, so within about two or three weeks. And that's all of its 357
own accord, so people just coming to us from scratch. I think lots of groups have been really 358
energised, and have started coming together and getting more people to their meetings, 359
and that's of their own doing as well, or off the back of the demo itself naturally. I think in 360
terms of budget day we called that at a bit of an odd time as well, but we had, God knows 361
how many, but more than fifty of sixty actions happening on budget day, and they were not 362
necessarily by our groups, but local trade unions did things, and other anti-cuts groups that 363
still call themselves, whatever 'Birmingham anti-cuts group' rather than People's 364
Assembly's. And they did that without much of a kick, but we put it out there as a day of 365
action, so it was definitely a call from the top of the organisation which then.. well people 366
were allowed to do whatever they wanted to do. And just to send in as much information 367
and pictures as possible, but it was sort of a call from the top.. I think again Manchester has 368
been a call from the top.. the committee decided, and that wasn't sort of something that 369
came from anyone on the ground, it wasn't something that local groups came to us with, it 370
wasn't something that was put forward by someone at a meeting. We had a meeting in July 371
and that.. nothing came out of that it was more like, 'this is what we've decided, it's going to 372
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happen, off you go and start mobilising.. and let us know if you have any ideas'. But there's 373
no structures for local groups to feed in, just anecdotal phone calls etc. It's more like put 374
your hand up if you have an idea, so not really like motions and that kind of stuff. They've 375
done it once before. So on its own accord the movement has grown, but in terms of next 376
steps its calls from the top that have instigated action on those days. Mind you on the 8th 377
June, you saw the DPAC stuff, which was quite impressive, and that's a group that should be 378
affiliated with us, but I think there's some friction between the groups, and I don't know 379
why. But I expect that it's because we don't take them seriously enough [laughs] but they 380
actually really do very well. We don't do very well properly engaging other organisations, 381
especially ones further afield such as Friends of the Earth or People and the Planet, or the 382
Fossil Fuel Divestment, the sort of climate movements, that sort of stuff. 383
XX: Why do you think that is? 384
RR: Because mostly it's a difference between the old left and their ways of organising 385
clashing with new youthful, direct action, some more radical some more.. I mean the LBGT 386
movement has snowballed recently, the fossil fuel divestment movement has snowballed 387
and they're mostly led by young people. The left is mostly held up by old trade unionists, at 388
least officially, and structurally, and those groups tend to be very bureaucratic in some ways 389
whereas what Counterfire do, they're more aligned.. I mean they're the same people that 390
run Stop the War, they're the same people that run some parts of the CND, and Counterfire, 391
and most of them are ex-SWP, and that's a lot of the structures in all these organisations, 392
they're all made up of ex-SWP, which are people very fond of A to B marches, rallies, strong 393
links with trade unions, but all tend to be quite male dominated, white, more working class 394
than, for example, green movements, which is where they fall down, so it's a bit of an odd 395
mix of people that don't necessarily agree on tactics, and that probably comes from their 396
experience and involvement and age. But also I don't think the People's Assembly.. if it's 397
supposed to be a coalition, it doesn't strongly on its side. Around the committee table, it's 398
mostly trade unionists, and the old left if you see what I mean.. or at least the Stop the War 399
type groups, that are fans of sort of traditional means of protest. So I think that this.. this is 400
quite an in depth chat! [laughs] 401
XX: Great. That's basically it for my questions.. do you think there is anything with regards to 402
the People's Assembly, their social media usage or End Austerity Now that you'd like to 403
add? 404
RR: Hmm, what else do we do..? I don't think so, I think that's it. Because we are just very 405
simple with it, basically. Yeah, we do completely mixed things. We do do one of kind of 406
trials, but the main sort of.. hmm.. 407
XX: One off trials? For what? 408
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RR: Normally the use of memes? We've also tried to get as many famous celebrities and 409
well-known people to hold up posters of the demonstration, and to say 'I'm marching for bla 410
bla bla reason, what will you be marching for?' And we try to do a series of those, we also 411
did a series of memes, saying, 'Why would you be marching on June 20th?' or 'Seven 412
reasons to march on June 20th'. And then we also did a series of memes mocking the people 413
behind the budget. And all of these things have been great, and targeted, and even if they 414
don't have massive amounts of shares, one off random things, they at least get us ready for 415
the next thing. I think you need a mixture of random memes that say 'George Osborne, 416
what an idiot' or whatever [laughs] and some that sort of say 'this is why and this is what 417
we're doing'. [laughs] So we did do that kind of stuff and we did do some things that were 418
quite successful at strategic but they're usually short lived. We don't tend to discuss how 419
successful they were we just tend to give it a go and see if it works or not, then move on to 420
the next [laughs]. We don't tend to build or learn from our mistakes [laughs]. 421
XX: [laughs] Well on that note.. 422
RR: But but! I'm sure the movement will get a lot better at this kind of stuff and I think it's 423
an incredible movement and it's done an incredible lot organically and it's mobilised a lot of 424
people on the ground. 425
XX: Definitely. Well great thanks so much for talking me, honestly you've given me a huge 426
amount to work with. 427
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