Social Media Use in the Dutch Occupy Protests

The next speaker at this AoIR 2012 session is Dan Mercea, whose work stems from an interest in the Occupy movement in the Netherlands. Activity peaked in October 2011 with a series of marches and the establishment of Occupy camps, but gradually dwindled thereafter; social media played a prominent role in the initial organisation of these activities, reaching politically unaffiliated (potential) participants.

Social media may play two roles in this context: bridging and bonding participants. Twitter is primarily useful for creating bridges between a variety of participants, for example, while Facebook seems more conducive to both bridging and bonding; this may contribute to its utility for the mobilisation of unaffiliated individuals.

Dan's group engaged in ethnographic studies of the Occupy assemblies, finding that most participants were there as individuals rather than as members of preexisting organisations or groups. Social media had played an important role in bringing them to the assemblies. But they were also sceptical of the platforms, suggesting that the information overload could put participants off or that people would just express their support online rather than attending the protests on person. Twitter was seen as useful for disseminating updates, while Facebook was more relevant for the interpersonal contacts.

One third of respondents had no prior or active affiliation with political parties; three quarters were male. Generally, there were few differences between protest and non-protest uses of social media platforms. Facebook may have contributed to the prefigurative socialisation of unaffiliated participants, grounded in their communication about attendance at the protests. Protesters did not use the platforms actively to recruit new participants to attend, even though they themselves had often been drawn to the protests by social media-based information.