Open-Source Networks and Secret Facebook Groups: Exploring the Use of Social Media in Student Activist Groups"

This paper uses recent anti-cuts student campaigns in the UK against fees and cuts as a case study for exploring the impact of online network technologies on grassroots campaigns. In recent years, authors such as Shirky (2010), Mason (2011) and Castells (2012) have argued that user-oriented social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have helped democratise activism organisation: not only do they enhance a group’s capacity to coordinate large dispersed networks, they can also mobilise large numbers of people at little cost into participating both in online and offline forms of protest. At the same time, however, critics such as Morozov (2011) have voiced their scepticism, claiming that in the most part social media encourages a tokenistic form of political participation (or ‘slacktivism’) that is limited in efficacy and social value. Using original survey and interview data, this paper analyses how student activist groups use Facebook and Twitter as a means of organisation, a tool for mass-mobilisation, and as a platform for activist participation. Findings indicate that as a tool for activism social media is extremely malleable: on the one hand, it has helped visualise campaigns’ range of support as well as extending the reach of information access to individuals lacking in ‘offline’ activism network links. On the other hand, existing cores and cliques within groups can also be strengthened by social media platforms. As a tool for activism, social media facilitates the intentions of its users, both as a means of enabling and limiting aspects of network openness.