Social Media and the Activist Toolkit: User Agreements, Corporate Interests, and the Information Infrastructure of Modern Social Movements

Abstract

The uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere have been credited in part to the creative use of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Yet the information policies of the firms behind social media can inhibit activists and empower authoritarian regimes. Analysis of Facebook's response to Egypt's ''We Are All Khaled Said'' group, YouTube's policy exemption for videos coming from Syria, Moroccan loyalist response to the online presence of atheists, and the activities of the Syrian Electronic Army illustrate how prohibitions on anonymity, community policing practices, campaigns from regime loyalists, and counterinsurgency tactics work against democracy advocates. These problems arise from the design and governance challenges facing large-scale, revenue-seeking social media enterprises.

Using social media in the news reportage of War & Conflict: Opportunities and Challenges

“…Some agents may take advantage of the openness of social media, spreading misinformation or by undermining the credibility of their opponents. For example, the ''Syrian Electronic Army'' is a hacker group whose aim has been to bring down, deface, or otherwise target sites that host anti-regime content, as well as targeting news websites (Youmans & York, 2012). One of the participants gave an example of how social media can be used for propaganda.…”

FCJ-188 Disability’s Digital Frictions: Activism, Technology, and Politics

“…In particular, a tension exists between the socio-political use of social media as a platform for activism and 'the commercial interests of the platform owners' (Youmans and York, 2012). This is something that has been widely acknowledged and discussed elsewhere, in critiques from different perspectives (such as Andrejevic, 2007;andFuchs, 2014a &2014b).…”

Social Media Materialities and Political Struggle: Power, Images, and Networks

“…Although corporate social media platforms have not been designed for bringing about a new social order grounded in the commons, they may enhance citizens' agency by enabling activists to rapidly connect in street protest, coordinate their actions, report their perspectives, and share protest slogans and visual materials to produce public visibility. Social media can also hinder protest movements, as they algorithmically privilege spectacular images over content about activists' larger societal and political cause, prioritize visual and textual content disseminated within centralized networks, censor and survey activist social media accounts and content, and disrupt community formation [1][2][3][4][5]. This research enhances our understanding of activists' social media tactics and how these tactics materialize at the intersection of social media materialities and protest.…”