662180

research-article2016
SMSXXX10.1177/2056305116662180Social Media + SocietyNeumayer and Rossi

SI: Media, Participation and Social Change

Social Media + Society

15 Years of Protest and Media

July-September 2016: 1­–13
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/2056305116662180

A Sociotechnical Timeline sms.sagepub.com

Christina Neumayer and Luca Rossi

Abstract
This article investigates the relationship between the invention of new media technologies and scholarship concerning protest
and political engagement. Building on an innovative approach that moves beyond a systematic literature review, this article
contributes to our understanding of scholarship concerning digital communication technologies and how they may have
been adopted and shaped protest movements and political engagement. Based on visualizations, we draw a sociotechnical
timeline of protest and media technology scholarship within three dimensions: technological development, methods and
techniques, and the social phenomena under investigation. The article concludes by identifying major trends in protest and
media technologies scholarship over the past 15 years. The sociotechnical timeline enhances our understanding of academic
discourse at the intersection of protest and media technologies by highlighting shortcomings and potential for future research.

Keywords
collective action, protest, visualization, timeline, academic discourse, media technologies

Introduction
The relationship between technology and sociopolitical Visualizing the development of academic discourse over
change has been a major topic in academic discourse con- time enhances our knowledge about academic research,
cerning political engagement and protest. This development makes us aware of discourse’s consequences, and facilitates
can be traced to the logics of academic publishing, academic our understanding of media technologies and protest by
research, the representation of social phenomena such as highlighting their shortcomings and potential. By focusing
political activism, and technological innovations. This article on media technologies and media practices related to politi-
takes its point of departure in the misconception that new cal activism, this article makes visible and tries to avoid the
media deterministically foster political engagement and problematic dynamic in a field in which technology can
spark protest, a misconception that can be traced back to the become a potentially reductive defining frame. In the follow-
invention of radio in the pre-digital age (see Brecht, 1967). ing, we will discuss the academic construction of technology
The development of the Internet in particular was inspired by and protest. Based on this discussion, we will identify three
countercultural ideas (see Turner, 2006), which still frame dimensions of protest and media technologies scholarship,
the ways in which we talk and think about web technologies. which form the point of departure for the sociotechnical
This resonates with journalistic and public discourse con- timeline of how digital communication technologies have
cerning new media technologies for protest, such as “Egypt’s been adopted and may have shaped research concerning pro-
Facebook Revolution” (Smith, 2011) and “Iran’s Twitter test movements and political engagement.
revolution” (“EDITORIAL: Iran’s Twitter Revolution,”
2009). Although understanding and informing public dis-
course are important tasks of scholarship, we need to gain IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
insight into how academic discourse is constructed and how
Corresponding Author:
the discourse evolves over time as well. Christina Neumayer, Culture and Communication Group, IT University of
Aided by visualizations, this article draws a sociotechni- Copenhagen, Rued Langgaardsvej 7, 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark.
cal timeline of protest and media technologies scholarship. Email: [email protected]

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2 Social Media + Society

The Academic Construction of persuasion across different groups and with different social
Technology for Protest forces at play: “Reality is the consequence of debate, follow-
ing each twist and turn in the controversy as if it were the
We argue that studying academic discourse concerning tech- shadow of scientific endeavour.” Audiences, they argue,
nology and political action has three essential components: accept these facts as reality because of the mystifying man-
(a) technological development, (b) methods and techniques, ner in which they are constructed. Through this acceptance,
and (c) the social phenomena under investigation. The inter- academic discourse plays a major role in attaching values to
relationship between these components resonates within the technology and consequently in easing societal acceptance
academic discourse concerning sociopolitical protest. In the of the technology.
following, we will identify each of the dimensions of a socio- One related aspect that has gained prominence in aca-
technical timeline in order to explore the interplay of actual demic discourse is the hegemony of English-language publi-
technological development and academic research methods cations, which excludes scholars from (non-English
in the study of activism and political participation. speaking) developing countries due to their “detachment
from Western academic literacy” (Canagarajah, 1996).
Social Phenomena Evaluation by the research community (peer-review) fosters
this exclusive character to ensure the quality of academic
The way in which society adopts a technology is closely publications and their alignment with English-language aca-
related to the values that we, as individuals and a society, demic culture. Hegemony is reproduced and maintained in
attach to this technology. For users to accept a technology, an “ideological complex” through publication practices that
they must believe that the technology adheres to their social subsequently enter into the academic practices of non-
values. In other words, Toscano (2012, p. 36) argues, “people English-speaking academics (Tietze & Dick, 2013). Ranking
define a technology’s values and uses by the socially con- systems and the hierarchical indexing of academic publi-
structed heuristic or frame between themselves and the tech- cations for purposes of evaluation within the research
nology, that in turn, helps to define a technology.” This community usually foster the hegemony of international
describes the dialectic relationship between technology and (English-language) academic journals.
society. The values attached to Internet technologies, The first aspect we must consider thus concerns the cri-
Christensen (2011) suggests, reflect a “liberation technology teria by which we select the social phenomena (i.e., cases
view,” which is co-constructed through policy documents of political engagement) for investigation in the context of
and public statements. These play important economic roles, academic publishing concerning media technologies and
for instance, in financial support for technology develop- protest. This academic selection process and the criteria
ment. As a continuation of this, academic discourse is influ- behind it represent the first dimension of our sociotechnical
enced by public discourse and vice versa, but academic timeline, which we identify as “social phenomena.”
research is also largely dependent on external funding, which
might cause these positive discourses to resonate in aca-
demic research. Between the social values inscribed within Methods and Techniques
specific technologies and the focus of attention of academic Research methods are important in reaching scientific results
research lies a complex and unsolvable relationship in which and are thus also important in academic discourse. Over the
academic discourse might be expected to focus on technolo- past decades, social science research methods in particular
gies that society co-constructs in a positive way. have moved away from a solely quantitative account, where
In this article, we understand the production of scientific results are written up in a report, toward more qualitative
research and its output in the form of publications within a approaches, including new and experimental methods in
larger social framework of knowledge production. Latour interdisciplinary fields of research. As a result, the academic
and Woolgar (1986, p. 32) study the construction of knowl- language in research publications has changed as well. In a
edge through “the process by which scientists make their study on academic discourse, Hyland (2005, p. 173) argues
observations” in the laboratory. They describe technical that, especially over the past decade, academic writing has
papers as a form of discourse that is not the product of one become less of “an objective, faceless and impersonal form
scientist but instead of terminology and concepts as well as of discourse” in its traditional sense and more of a “persua-
“a community of fellow observers” (i.e., reviewers) who sive endeavour involving interaction between writers and
decide upon the validity of the research. These groups play readers.” Academics not only objectively write up results
an important role in persuasion about the value of research. and produce text, they also build solidarity with their readers,
The stabilization of facts is thus a process that is carried out which becomes part of their self-representation and credibil-
through discourse. Once facts are stabilized, they appear as if ity as academics (Hyland, 2005). The text itself is central for
they were there all along until their discovery by scientists. the development of a convincing and coherent argument.
According to Latour and Woolgar (1986, p. 182), however, This becomes particularly challenging in emerging or
this discovery is a result of an ongoing process of discursive interdisciplinary fields that lack a clear set of methods and
Neumayer and Rossi 3

techniques of study. Already in 1988, Bazerman (1988) 2013). These waves of studies follow the adoption of a new
argued that interdisciplinary research is limited by “the con- (social) media platform in society. This is reflected in a
struction of text, as it is impossible to understand what con- change in terminology in academic discourse concerning
stitutes an appropriate text in any discipline without these technologies and their associated societal impacts.
considering the social and intellectual activity which the The idea that technology may encourage a more demo-
text was part of” (p. 5). The text is a construct of a larger cratic, participatory environment, fostering grassroots
framework of meanings, and to understand the text, we must engagement can be found with the invention of earlier media
understand the world (or the discipline) in which the text is technologies (see Brecht, 1967). Tracing the cultural roots
representative of a significant activity. Understanding the of the development of Internet technology or digital media
words that people use to describe what they are doing also in general is an endeavor undertaken to debunk myths con-
helps us understand their scientific practices. Academic cerning technology’s emancipatory potential and its role in
writing within this framework is part of a discussion, which society today (see Carey, 2005; Coleman, 2007; Curran,
is based on its own goals, terms, issues, lexicon, and argu- Fenton, & Freedman, 2012; Turner, 2006). Several authors
ments. In disciplines such as political science, “uncertainties have traced their origins in order to reach a conclusion as to
over the consequences of findings and methodological pro- why the potential of Internet technology and social media
priety lead to an uncertainty over the reality and meaning of for grassroots action, political engagement, and participa-
results” (Bazerman, 1988, p. 285). This is partially a result tion was generally so positively evaluated. One argument is
of a lack of disciplinary coherence in methods, techniques, that these statements were insufficiently rooted in media
and academic writing, with the result that such problems history (Allen, 2012; Carey, 2005), and another involves the
attain even greater visibility in new interdisciplinary fields lack of social, cultural, and political context (Carey, 2005)
and emerging subfields. in the discussion as well as a failure to understand the ratio-
The second dimension in which we draw a sociotechni- nality built into the hardware and software of the technology
cal timeline involves the “methods and techniques” used in (Coleman, 2007, p. 365). The positive discourse concerning
scholarship concerning protest and media technologies. technology also legitimizes technological innovation, fos-
This includes the questions that can be asked and the con- ters technological implementation (as argued above), and
tributions that can be made by employing certain methods may result in collaboration with tech companies that can
and techniques. provide data and technical knowledge for studying these
new phenomena, with this latter result having become par-
ticularly important in the era of big data studies. This leads
Technological Development to flawed understandings of the interaction between tech-
The complexity of academic discourse production becomes nology and political engagement.
evident when we focus on academic research on protest tech- The way in which technological development is addressed
nologies. The relationship between technology and sociopo- in academic discourse is consequently an important compo-
litical change has been a major focus in academic discourse nent of a sociotechnical timeline concerning protest and
concerning activism. Fisher (2010) argues that the discourse media technologies scholarship. We identify technological
concerning technology as democratic, participatory, and development as the third dimension, which comprises the
emancipatory for the individual supports and legitimizes a wording used to discuss media technologies in academic
new phase of capitalism, with consequences such as with- scholarship concerning protest as well as the consequences
drawal of the state from the market, decentralization, flexi- attached to these (new) media technologies.
bility of production and labor, and privatization. Technology’s
emancipatory potential is particularly reflected in concepts A Short Note on Academic Archives
that stress the active user and the potential liberation of the
market (such as Benkler, 2006; Shirky, 2008). Especially
and Ranking
problematic, Christensen (2011) argues, is the technology Today, scientific publishing is sorted, filtered, and archived.
discourse based on the theoretical foundation of “liberation Scientific databases such as SCOPUS, Web of Science,
technology or technologies of liberation,” referring to the PubMed, and more recently Google Scholar play a central
role of social media in the so-called Arab Spring. From this role in archiving, storing, and making searchable academic
perspective, there is “a causal relation posited among spe- publications. While scientific databases allow access to the
cific forms of technology, the expansion of rights, and other growing corpus of academic research, their archives and
forms of economic and social development” (Christensen, libraries of academic publications are constructed through
2011, p. 237). This techno-determinist reasoning in main- algorithms that are grounded in a certain logic that is not iden-
stream media has resonated across numerous publications tical with the academic citation system or with other digital
concerning the role of social media in these events and later archives. Following Foucault’s (2003) Archeology of
in the Occupy Movement and the Indignados Movement (see Knowledge, the archive consists not only of shelves and arti-
Bruns, Highfield, & Burgess, 2013; Castells, 2012; Dahlgren, facts that the historian can investigate but also involves a
4 Social Media + Society

larger apparatus and set of rules that allow the archive to studied as well as clearly enough defined to deal with a time
exist, including the institution and building in which it is span of 15 years.
located. The archive is thus a construction and product of dis- Academics have traditionally investigated pre-existing
course. We are capable of reconstructing the language that research through the established practice of literature review,
underpins it. This has important consequences for our under- as we have done in this article. Literature review can be
standing of academic databases as an archive. The archive briefly described as “a comprehensive overview of prior
that is constructed (such as Google Scholar) consists not only research regarding a specific topic” that “shows the reader
of the academic publications and a database, but the database what is known about a topic, and what is not yet known,
itself is a construct of algorithms that perform sorting, filter- thereby setting up the rationale or need for a new investiga-
ing, and ranking functions. These mechanisms are often a tion” (Denney & Tewksbury, 2013, p. 218). Creswell (1994)
black box, invisible, and we can only speculate upon how identifies several purposes for a literature review: to share
they are constructed through academic ranking systems, the results of other studies that are closely related to the
which are products of the research community, its funders, reported study; to relate a study to the larger, ongoing dia-
and publishers in interaction with the internal logics and sys- logue in the literature concerning a topic; and to provide a
tem of the database (Giustini & Boulos, 2013; Harzing, 2014). framework for establishing the study’s importance. All of the
To understand academic discourse concerning the inter- purposes identified by Creswell, as well as the description
disciplinary field of protest and media technologies over provided by Denney, require that a clear topic or specific
time, we employ Google Scholar as a digital archive. In this research area be the focus of the review activity.
context, Google Scholar is a sociotechnical platform defined A literature review would thus be an insufficient tech-
by the evolving academic practices, on one hand, and a spe- nique for this study, as the core interest is not a specific topic
cific (often opaque) technological infrastructure, on the but instead the academic discourse produced at the intersec-
other. Although we are fully aware of the impact and the tions of technological development, social phenomena (i.e.,
active role that such a sociotechnical platform plays in defin- types of activism), and research methods and techniques. For
ing our data, it has been noted that Google Scholar works in the three-dimensional timeline in this study, we needed to
a manner comparable to other electronic academic databases define how the actual data set would emerge from these
(Jacsó, 2005). If some aspects of Google Scholar—such as dimensions. In this study, triangulation refers to the necessity
the frequency of its updates or its relation to the more general of dealing with three independently evolving dimensions
Google algorithms—are opaque, there are other aspects that composing a single problem (other than triangulation as a
make it a more suitable platform than the alternatives for social science method as defined by Jick, 1979). To take
the purpose of this research. Google Scholar covers a wide these into account, we
and interdisciplinary range of subjects, mainly in the social
sciences, that are often under-represented in other digital •• Queried Google Scholar using the combination of
databases (Kousha & Thelwall, 2007). Giustini and Boulos keywords “collective action OR activism OR protest”
(2013) note that although Google Scholar cannot provide for every year from 2000 until 2014;
systematic review of biomedical fields, it remains the best •• Scanned the results and read the abstracts of the arti-
available tool for the interdisciplinary effort we propose in cles,1 looking for explicit mentions of media technol-
this article. Moreover, Google Scholar provides a less biased ogy or media practices;
comparison across disciplines than other systems (Harzing, •• Selected the first 10 academic articles per year that
2014). were returned using the selected keywords and con-
tained an explicit reference to media technology or
15 Years of Collective Action, Protest, media practices in the title or abstract;
•• Recorded for each selected article: the page on which
and Activism it was returned by Google Scholar, the media technol-
To describe the academic discourse concerning protest and ogy under investigation, the particular protest or col-
media technologies, we must take into account the field’s lective action that served as a case, and bibliographic
complexity. When describing how academic research has information.
dealt with a specific problem over time, we risk basing our
results based upon a poorly considered selection of research The resulting data set, a selection of 150 papers, has spe-
boundaries. After the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, a more cific characteristics: rather than focusing on specific tech-
systematic studying of the Internet became necessary and nologies, it focuses (through the initial selection of
“uses of the internet kept expanding and democratizing” keywords) on the academic discourse concerning social pro-
(Wellman, 2004, p. 126). Our sociotechnical timeline starts test and political activism, and it detects the internal rele-
with these developments and leads up to now. In this study, vance (based on Google Scholar’s ranking mechanism) of
the research boundaries needed to be sufficiently broad to papers from a media technological or practices perspective.
cover the possible intersections between the elements being We used the resulting data set, composed of bibliographical
Neumayer and Rossi 5

Figure 1. Relevance of articles on protest and media technology.

information and abstracts, to develop categories through a campaigns (see Bimber, Flanagin, & Stohl, 2005; Breindl,
qualitative coding process that we applied to the rest of the 2012; Neumayer & Svensson, 2016 for an overview).
data set (Mayring, 1999). Using this, we visualized how the The timeline we have developed offers the ability to
three analyzed dimensions have changed over the past assess the relevance of articles focusing on media technol-
15 years. In the visualizations, related categories (such as ogy in discourse concerning protest and collective action.
various qualitative methodologies) received similar colors This ability to assess relevance requires a definition of
to improve readability. relevance. We defined a relevance value as the simple sum
Time-series visualizations act as an exploratory tool of the page numbers in which the articles were returned by
Google Scholar, defined as Σ 1ri. This produces a theo-
n
for observing trends and tendencies over the years. Tufte
and Graves-Morris (1983) have noted that time series retical maximal value when all selected articles (with
offer a level of strength and efficiency of interpretation various media technological foci) are returned on Page 1
found in no other graphic arrangement, providing a large and a minimal value when the articles are returned by
amount of information that would be lost, or barely acces- Page 20 (which was the highest page number in our data).
sible, using a table. Time series also allow the comparison This formula provides a solid relevance value based on
of data both within the same visualization and between the ranking performed by Google Scholar.
different visualizations. Presenting our results in time- In defining the relevance of an article in the data set,
series visualizations permits comparison of data over time every citation is counted independently from the venue from
to detect trends and, on a more complex level, realizes which the citation derives. Although this prevents us from
how every single timeline represented in the figures repre- taking into account the academic prestige of journals and
sents one dimension of a multidimensional problem. other publication venues, it allows us to overcome potential
Among the possible strategies for visualizing time series, distortions caused by the convergence of academic disci-
we opted for 100% stacked area charts for two reasons: (a) plines represented by journals with varying levels of visibil-
the total number of publications analyzed every year is ity within their own discipline. The value of a relevance
known and defined by design (as described above), and index as defined in this study depends solely on how many
(b) the distribution of categories should be understood as citations a specific paper has received.
parts of a whole, namely, the academic discourse concern- Figure 1 shows the normalized value of the technology
ing technology and political action. relevance index we measured. Despite fluctuations, we
can observe a clear trend over the past 15 years. Starting in
2008, the relevance of technology-related papers grows
Toward a Sociotechnical Timeline steadily. This suggests an increasing centrality of media
Until recently, media technologies played a minor role in technologies and practices in contemporary academic dis-
studies concerning protest, activism, and collective action course concerning collective action and protest. The
from a social movement studies perspective. When media increasing centrality of media technologies creates the
technologies were discussed, it was mostly in the context of starting point for the sociotechnical timeline of protest
the concepts of how social movements were “framed” in the and media technology scholarship, which we will draw
media or were part of “opportunity structures” (e.g., see within the dimensions of the technology under investiga-
Della Porta & Tarrow, 2005; Gitlin, 2003; McAdam & Snow, tion, the social phenomena that are examined, and the
1997; Tilly, 2004). This has changed quite drastically during research methods that are employed. Next, we will observe
the past 10 years, as numerous studies have been conducted how the academic discourse within these dimensions has
on how activists use the Internet and, later, social media plat- developed over time and how the resulting timeline con-
forms to mobilize support and organize themselves and their tributes to our understanding of the increasing centrality
6 Social Media + Society

Figure 2. Media technologies.

of media technologies in academic research concerning particularly when addressed as media practices, are not
political protest, activism, and engagement. clearly identifiable machinery or tools developed from scien-
tific knowledge but are semantically rich concepts in which
the technical aspect (the technology itself) is entangled from
Technology: From Cyberspace to social expectations regarding the technology, research meth-
Twitter odologies, and a common academic language.
They [new technologies] do new things. They give us new This semantic entanglement creates challenges when
powers. They create new consequences for us as human beings. mapping technologies over time. It makes it necessary to
They bend minds. They transform institutions. They liberate. juxtapose generic expressions such as Internet (or even
They oppress. (Silverstone, 1999, p. 10) more obviously, the term cyberspace, which enjoyed a brief
flash of glory at the dawn of the millennium) with specific
In 1999, in an introductory essay to the first issue of New sociotechnical platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
Media & Society, Roger Silverstone asks, “What’s new about From this perspective, and acknowledging these unavoid-
new media?” The answer, he reminds us, must be found in able limitations, Figure 2 maps the evolution of the
the relationship between continuity and change and through researched technologies addressed in conjunction with
inquiry into the complexities of innovation as a social and sociopolitical change. Rather than giving us the opportu-
technological process. In our timeline of technologies being nity to follow a specific technology or platform over time,
studied in academic scholarship concerning protest, collec- Figure 2 should be understood as a way of observing how
tive action, and activism, we categorized the technological specific semantic areas have emerged and consolidated
terminology researchers use in a process that takes into over the years through words used to represent technologi-
account new aspects as well as continuity. The relationship at cal change. One can see a shift from a general, unspecific
the conjunction of technologies and sociopolitical change use of words representing digital technologies toward a
has been expressed not only in various technologies that more technology-specific set of keywords. In the visualiza-
have been studied as relevant (and new) over the past 15 years tion, based on codes and categories from the publications in
but also in the large variety of names and labels used to iden- our data set, we can observe a gradual disappearance of
tify specific technological innovations or (new) technology- “Internet” as the technology under investigation and (par-
based practices. Media technologies in academic discourse, ticularly after 2010) in favor of a shift to specific platforms,
Neumayer and Rossi 7

such as blogs, microblogs, and social network sites. choosing a phenomenon or case to study from a particular
Moreover, the category “social media” enters the academic academic disciplinary perspective, the researcher co-con-
discourse with increasing relevance from 2010. structs the field under investigation. This becomes particu-
While technologies are defined by specific social values larly visible when trying to map the past 15 years of research
that frame their range of potential action (Toscano, 2012), into cases of collective action, activism, and protest with a
this process appears to co-evolve with the specific parts or focus on media technology or media practices.
practices of the technology itself. In our data set, the Internet The second dimension of the sociotechnical timeline con-
and, later, social media and Twitter in particular have been cerns specific cases of sociopolitical protest that have
referred to from a deterministic perspective as enablers, attracted researchers’ attention. Identifying and categorizing
facilitators, vehicles of democracy, forces for social change, topics for each paper require several iterations of coding,
and catalysts as well as (in reaction to the deterministic hype) grouping, and re-grouping. Many papers focus on a very spe-
from a functionalist perspective as mere tools or channels cific aspect of a broader phenomenon, whereas others frame
that activists can use. The higher level of specificity reflects multiple protest events together while aiming for a compara-
the emergence of specific words in journalistic discourse tive perspective. Nevertheless, it has been possible to reach a
ranging from “Facebook revolution” (Smith, 2011) or sufficiently stable categorization for two dimensions: the
“Twitter revolution” (“EDITORIAL: Iran’s Twitter geographical area in question and a broader typology of
Revolution,” 2009) relative to early policy papers with refer- activism, protest, and collective action.
ences to terms such as “the information superhighway,” Interpretation of the first dimension is rather straightfor-
which may indicate the interdependency of academic dis- ward and defined by the geographical location with which
course with public discourse. At the same time, “Internet” the paper is concerned. The timeline in Figure 3 shows the
has never been a single technology but has always referred to focus of academic research concerning protest and media
a broad set of specific technologies, transmission protocols, technologies over the past 15 years. It becomes evident that,
and social practices ranging from WWW browsing to email. up until 2008, most studies focused on the United States and
Nevertheless, during the early 2000s, academics and journal- Canada. Although the field of study becomes more diverse
ists alike thought and wrote about the Internet as a single from a geographical perspective after 2008, we can still see a
technology in relation to political protest, despite referring to relatively high number of studies focusing on North America.
particular functionalities. This relative centrality of the United States and Canada as
The more recent trend of focus on platform-specific prob- sources of examples and relevant cases can be related to
lems is important for understanding platform-specific media accessibility due to language advantages (i.e., English lan-
practices, such as their contradictory role in social change due guage) as well as the general dominance of the English lan-
to commercial impact or state influence. Focus on a single guage in academic publishing (Canagarajah, 1996; Tietze &
platform (such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace), Dick, 2013). The increasing geographical spread of protest
however, suffers from novelty enthusiasm and might describe and media technology scholarship from 2009 may be a result
technology (and technology-enabled practices) as a series of of the transnational awareness of protest in Iran (as the first
novelties instead of as a more nuanced and stratified set of “Twitter Revolution”), the Middle East (and the so-called
co-existing ever-evolving practices and their entanglement “Arab Spring”), China (due to censorship issues), as well as
within the wider media ecology. Focus on “trending” plat- renewed forms of protest, such as the waves of protest in
forms can create blind spots in academic research concerning Europe as a result of the economic crisis.
protest, activism, and collective action. Does (encrypted) There are several developments that we might relate to
email communication still play a role in political activism? Or increasing geographical diversity. Besides the obvious diffu-
can we generalize from Facebook and Twitter studies to other sion of information and communications technology (ICT)
forms of communication, activist tactics, and practices? This across new parts of the world (and as a consequence, the
leads us to the next dimension in our sociotechnical timeline. increasing relevance of media technologies for political
action), we might argue that digital technologies make cer-
tain processes more transparent and traceable, and conse-
Activism: From Issues to Networks
quently, publicly mediated communication becomes more
Activists today navigate media technologies to re-define accessible to researchers. Scholars have access to a wider
reality, mobilize, develop collective identity, attack, and pro- range of sociopolitical movements (regardless of location)
duce visibility. According to Melucci, “contemporary move- due to the permanent nature and searchability of digital data.
ments strive to reappropriate the capacity to name through While this might appear obvious, it highlights the complex
the elaboration of codes and languages designed to define nature of academic discourse and its dependency on data
reality [ . . . ] thereby escaping from the predominant forms availability in terms of research questions and theoretical
of representation” (Melucci, 1996, p. 357). The researcher, development.
Melucci argues, plays an important role in the process defin- The centrality of what researchers identify as relevant
ing reality by escaping predominant representations. By becomes even more evident when visualizing the issues and
8 Social Media + Society

Figure 3. Geographical location.

forms of activism studied over the past 15 years. Figure 4 centrality of technology in these events becomes an identifi-
shows the evolution of various types of sociopolitical actions cation criterion for the relevance of these cases. This is in
over time. Collapsing the great variety of protest movements line with the introduction of digital methods for studying
or cases that were analyzed into a limited number of catego- these phenomena, which leads us to the next dimension in
ries is problematic if we seek to visualize them in an absolute our sociotechnical timeline.
sense. In order to deal with this complexity, we grounded our
categories in the authors’ words, trying to summarize in a
Methodology: From Essays to Digital
single label both the nature of the social movement (in terms
of goals and ideology) and the focus of the researchers (in Methods
terms of which aspects of the sociopolitical movement have Research methods are indicative of a particular academic tra-
been analyzed). dition, usually within a particular discipline, and conse-
In Figure 4, it is relevant to highlight how, alongside the quently a relevant dimension for constructing academic
stable presence of long-term societal issues (environmental discourse. The evolutionary development of methods over
activism, human rights activism, civic engagement, etc.) the past 15 years highlights the way in which research meth-
from 2011, we observe the emergence of the “networked ods are not merely a set of tools but also define which kinds
activism” category. This category includes the recent protest of activism and social participation can be observed as well
movements (Arab Spring, Indignados, Occupy) around the as which kinds of research questions can be addressed. To
world, which Castells (2012) discusses as Networks of observe this evolution, we re-coded our data and grouped the
Outrage and Hope, stressing the centrality of networked research methods used in the articles into larger categories.
technologies in these movements. The main connection While some level of grouping was necessary to facilitate
between these movements is that journalists and academics identification of relevant patterns, we sought to maintain a
alike have stressed the central role of social media technolo- high level of methodological specificity framed within a
gies in waves of protest around the globe. This differs from general and well-accepted distinction between qualitative
earlier works (mainly essays) focusing on media activism, and quantitative approaches (Booth, Booth, & Falzon, 2003).
digital activism, online activism, or cyberactivism in a gen- Figure 5 shows the evolution over the past 15 years of
eral sense, which we categorized as technology-based activ- research methods to study protest and media technologies. To
ism. This introduces a new perspective on technology-based increase general readability, different methods belonging to
protest movements. Unlike in earlier studies, the presumed the same macro-approach have been visualized in similar
Neumayer and Rossi 9

Figure 4. Type of activism.

colors: theoretical papers with no empirical data analysis are investigation. While these articles tend to make a very broad
represented in green, quantitative approaches in various shades contribution, the development of digital methods also results
of orange, qualitative approaches in shades of blue, literature in more narrowly defined research gaps, which the authors
review papers in gray, and mixed-methods papers in purple. try to bridge through their investigations. In the future, the
We can observe that theoretical papers have declined in rele- art will be to find the right balance between using established
vance since 2011 when empirical research began to dominate. methods (from disciplines, for instance, in the social sci-
Until 2007, qualitative methods were the main technique of ences) and leaving room to explore the potential of interdis-
empirical inquiry, and it is only within the past 5 years that ciplinary digital methods.
quantitative methods have become the major technique. We
can also observe the emergence or temporary disappearance of 15 Years of Protest and Technology: An
certain methods. Social network analysis has become
extremely relevant since 2012, whereas qualitative case stud-
Overview
ies were the main approach between 2002 and 2003 but have Through visualizations of a timeline of the past 15 years,
had a rather limited presence over the past few years. we have observed how academic discourse has focused on
A possible explanation for this development is the con- various technologies and forms of activism and how it has
solidation of a research field composed of different disci- been based on various research methods. Table 1 summa-
plines, including media studies, communications, political rizes these trends, highlighting various phases. While our
science, and computer science as well as the development of data collection showed how academic literature about pro-
specific interdisciplinary methods for studying digital socio- test and participation increasingly stresses the relevance of
political phenomena, particularly through the integration of media technologies, the visualizations allow us to observe
computational methods. Even more evident is the develop- in details three major underlying dynamics: (a) increasing
ment away from essays as the most relevant publications to focus on specific technological platforms rather than the
more empirically driven results. Taking a closer look at the larger media ecology (Figure 2), (b) increasing selection of
contributions that authors are seeking to make with their cases of protest based on the relevance of media technolo-
work, it becomes clear that the earlier attempts to understand gies (Figure 4), and (c) increasing use of quantitative digi-
the potential of Internet technologies and protest give tal methods and a decline in theoretical papers and
policy recommendations or indeed call for more empirical qualitative research (Figure 5).
10 Social Media + Society

Figure 5. Methods and techniques.

While these trends go in hand with a natural focus on communication and activist tactics that are less traceable and
“new” phenomena, they take insufficient account of continu- accessible than Twitter), and theorizing and conceptualizing
ity and established methods and theories, as Silverstone on the basis of past findings. Similarly, while the increasing
(1999) reminds us to do. The move from qualitative explor- automation of data collection and analysis might be a natural
ative studies and theoretical essays toward quantitative stud- process (particularly considering the close collaboration with
ies might appear natural as we begin developing methods computer science), we should bear in mind the issues we face
and techniques for studying phenomena that have been too when seeking to generalize about activists and their media
new to be understood within the larger protest ecology. practices and tactics.
Nevertheless, abandoning theoretically grounded research, Returning to the argument that Latour and Woolgar (1986)
development of new theoretical concepts, and in-depth anal- put forward regarding observations in the laboratory, we sug-
ysis of specific case studies in favor of technologically gest that the discovery of facts as a result of co-construction by
defined examples can result in the prioritization of research the academic community is made easier by a focus on phe-
conducted within a short period of time and favoring novelty. nomena and technologies that are new and thus “undiscov-
For example, over the past 5 years, there has been a prioriti- ered.” What might be problematic in this particular field of
zation of protest and media technologies research combining research is that we lack an established set of methods and theo-
social network analysis with quantitative digital data analy- ries upon which we can build and instead build upon loose
sis to focus on how Twitter or Facebook, as a platform, has interdisciplinary ground. One example of this might be the
permitted the emergence of specific network structures. unrepresentativeness of digital data when seeking to under-
Although the development of interdisciplinary methods for stand societal phenomena (and maybe even predict protest)
studying digital media and political action certainly has its through platforms such as Twitter. While the interdisciplinary
merits, we should be cautious about granting absolute prior- nature of the study of media technologies and protest might be
ity to sense social media data over established methods from a strength, we need to have a basic understanding of the meth-
social movement studies. ods we put into action, the phenomena we study, and the
The trend toward focusing on “new” technologically empirical and conceptual findings upon which we theorize.
defined phenomena could potentially lead to the develop-
ment of digital methods for studying political action. The
Challenges Ahead
emergence and the consolidation of a new research area is
undoubtedly a positive outcome. This development might, It is vital to develop interdisciplinary methods and theories
however, be accompanied by an increasing use of big and for studying contemporary phenomena of political action
digital data at the expense of investigating the larger media and media technologies. If we are to avoid ontological and
ecology, established research methods, long-term ethno- epistemological pitfalls, however, this research must be
graphic studies (which also take into account forms of grounded in the knowledge we have gained over time. By
Neumayer and Rossi 11

Table 1. Overview of Sociotechnical Timeline.

Years Technology Activism Method

2000–2005 Focus on Internet; Focus on unspecified activism; Focus on theoretical papers (essays)
Others: ICTs, websites, blogs, Others: technology-based activism (media, and qualitative methods (case
print media, TV news, mobile digital, online, cyberactivism); studies, ethnography, frame analysis,
phone Issue-based cases: environmental, human interviews, analysis of online data);
rights, event-based (summit activism). Few quantitative studies (survey,
content analysis).
2005–2010 Focus on Internet; Increasing focus on technology-based; Focus on theoretical papers and
Others: ICTs, blogs, websites, Others: unspecified, civic engagement; qualitative methods;
print media, TV news. Issues: human rights, critique of capitalism; Increase in quantitative methods
event-based, environmental (declining). (digital data analysis, survey).
2010–2015 Focus on emerging category of Focus on unspecified technology-based Focus on quantitative methods
social media; and emerging category of networked (SNA, digital data analysis);
Others emerging: microblogging, activism; Decline in qualitative methods (case
SNS, smartphones; Declining focus on unspecified and civic study, digital data analysis);
Declining focus on Internet. engagement; Drastic decline in theoretical papers.
Issues: event-based, human rights,
environmental (declining).

ICTs: information and communications technologies; SNS: social networking service; SNA: social network analysis.

acknowledging the “new” in continuation of previous media activists navigate in their struggle, we also need to follow
technologies and research concerning their use in political Gerbaudo and Treré (2015) in creating links between areas of
action, we can take into account the larger media ecology, previous scholarship. By making visible these needs for con-
media tactics and strategies, and their changing role in the solidating research into political action in today’s variable
over-mediated environment through which activists navigate media and communication ecologies, we also uncover the
today. It is in this environment that activists develop new tac- construction of academic discourse concerning these phe-
tics and renegotiate the meaning of established forms of com- nomena. This article, rather than claiming to tackle this issue
munication, transforming them into activist practices (see in itself, instead encourages us to put the “hunt for the new”
Gerbaudo, 2012; Mercea, 2011; Treré, 2015). On the basis of on hold and take the opportunity to look back. By reviewing
our empirical studies, we can conceptualize and theorize by the findings on protest and media technologies, we can begin
building bridges between the old and the new (see Bakardjieva, building upon that knowledge—methodologically, empiri-
2015; Dahlgren, 2013; Gerbaudo & Treré, 2015) and between cally, theoretically, and critically—in order to understand
various fields and disciplines (such as social movement stud- social change and hopefully to use media technologies for
ies, media studies, communication studies, Science and social change.
Technology Studies [STS], political economy, critical theory;
see Cammaerts, 2012; Cammaerts, Mattoni, & McCurdy, Declaration of Conflicting Interests
2013; Mattoni, 2012). In addition, we must further develop The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
(digital) methods for studying activists’ media practices and to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
tactics in these complex communication environments by
drawing upon established sets of methods and understanding Funding
their potentials and limitations (Giglietto, Rossi, & Bennato,
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author-
2012). We must learn about our own bias, as it is entrenched
ship, and/or publication of this article.
within the unobtrusive structures of academic publishing, to
sculpt a more reflexive field of research into protest in today’s
variable communication ecologies. Finally, we must investi- Note
gate further how academic factors influence scholarship con- 1. We excluded books from our collection due to their different
cerning protest and political engagement. publication process.
Aided by visualizations of trends in protest and media
technology scholarship, we have highlighted the loop created References
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Paradigm Publishers.
Christina Neumayer is Assistant Professor in the Communication
Toscano, A. A. (2012). Marconi’s wireless and the rhetoric of
and Culture research group at the IT University of Copenhagen.
a new technology. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Her research interests include digital media and radical politics,
doi:10.1007/978-94-007-3977-2
social media and activism, social movements, civic engage-
Treré, E. (2015). Reclaiming, proclaiming, and maintaining collec-
ment, publics and counterpublics, and mediated political
tive identity in the #YoSoy132 movement in Mexico: An exam-
communication.
ination of digital frontstage and backstage activism through
social media and instant messaging platforms. Information, Luca Rossi is Assistant Professor in the Communication and Culture
Communication & Society, 18, 901–915. research group of the IT University of Copenhagen. He is active in
Tufte, E. R., & Graves-Morris, P. R. (1983). The visual display the field of digital methods for social sciences. His research is inter-
of quantitative information (Vol. 2, No. 9). Cheshire, CT: disciplinary trying to connect traditional sociological approaches
Graphics Press. with computational approaches. He is working on extending social
Turner, F. (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart network analysis techniques for social media analysis, new
brand, the whole earth network, and the rise of digital utopia- approaches for unstructured communities detection, and mapping
nism. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. based on the study of multiplex networks.