Title: Protest in the Age of Social Media | by Carnegie Corporation | International Peace and Security Program | Medium
Headings: Protest in the Age of Social Media
Protest in the Age of Social Media
TECHNOLOGY AND UKRAINE’S #EUROMAIDAN
Posting, Tweeting, and Protesting
Understanding the #Euromaidan Protests
Facebook and the #Euromaidan
Twitter and the #Euromaidan
Retweet Networks: How Information Spreads
Lesson of #Euromaidan
Endnotes

Content: Likewise, social media can make it easier to transmit and receive messages that convey a sense of moral outrage or group efficacy or that link current political developments to socially shared grievances. Before the advent of social media, on any given day an individual might have had the opportunity to share his or her feelings about an unfolding political event with, at most, 10 or 15 people. Now with a few strokes of the keyboard or swipes of a mobile phone, people can make their thoughts known instantly to hundreds or thousands of others. Moreover, the fact that these thoughts are spread through social networks that individuals have constructed themselves, such as friend networks on Facebook or follower networks on Twitter, means that informational and motivational appeals received through these channels could be far more influential than if they had been encountered in other contexts, such as the evening news. Posts on social media are also pre-vetted: we learn not simply that there is a protest (or that there is moral outrage fueling the desire for a protest) but that our friends, relatives, or respected colleagues have endorsed this particular course of action or share a common sense of moral outrage. Thus, first we would expect social media to affect the development of protests by providing a forum in which opposition can be organized. This organization could simply take the form of general discussions among people who are dissatisfied with the regime and learn that they are not alone, or more concrete forms such as websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts that serve as focal points. As the movement quickly evolves from its early stages to the organization of protests, social media can impact an individual’s decision to participate. This can be accomplished through various mechanisms mentioned previously: