Social Media and Activism

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A Research Paper for JR 17Xavier Institute of CommunicationsMumbaiA Research Paper for JR 17Xavier Institute of CommunicationsMumbaiAishwarya Sawarna Aishwarya Sawarna Social Media and ActivismSocial Media and Activism
A Research Paper for JR 17
Xavier Institute of Communications
Mumbai


A Research Paper for JR 17
Xavier Institute of Communications
Mumbai


Aishwarya Sawarna

Aishwarya Sawarna

Social Media and Activism
Social Media and Activism
March 10th 2015March 10th 2015

March 10th 2015
March 10th 2015
Table of contents

Foreword – Pg.No.3
Abstract - Pg.No.4
Methodology - Pg.No.5
Introduction- Pg.No.7
Nirbhaya Rape case- Pg.No.13
Occupy Wall Street- Pg.No.24
Conclusion - Pg.No.39














Foreword

"I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity."
― Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope
I would like to dedicate this research work to those billion voices struggling to be heard across the world. In this technologically advanced age that we are living in, we maybe taking technology for granted. Facebook and Twitter have become platforms to share personal pictures, relationship statuses and network with friends but intentionally or unintentionally their developers added "what's on your mind" tab to the news feed .It is this tab that has revolutionized the protest culture, the exchange of opinions and ideas across the world. The following research work is an attempt to understand the nature of activism being carried on in social media and the role that social media plays in modern day activism.
I would like to thank my mentor Ms. Nayantara Hidyatullah for her continuous support and help in compiling, understanding, supplementing and creating this research body. I would also like to thank my father Mr. Niraj Kumar Nir and my mother Ms.Gunjita Nir for continuously reviewing my work and suggesting necessary changes. I hope you enjoy reading this.






Abstract
The following research deals with the relationship between social media and modern day activism. As our means to network virtually have begun to grow so too have our platforms for voicing our opinions. In this scenario social media such as 'Twitter' and Facebook have become important forums for one to not just sustain a protest activity but also inform and organize activism around a cause.
Tweets relating to Occupy Wall Street and the Nirbhaya Rape case , both causes which generated headlines and widespread activism have been analyzed on the basis of the nature of their content, using pre-defined codes . Another crucial aspect to this is if people just voice out their opinion like a slacktivist giving birth to the notion of armchair activism or are they engaged on ground as well. In both cases it has been found to be true. In addition to that the tweets in case of both Occupy Wall Street and the Nirbhaya rape case had political as well as emotional content. Therefore an attempt has been made to analyze the role of social media in contemporary protest culture and the scope of it as well.
The scope of this research is that it can help readers in determining how and why social media is influential as a tool for modern day activists. Earlier it was banners and posters, which helped activists, organize a crowd for a certain cause. However now, with social media at their disposal it hasn't only increased their reach, but has disciplined and enhanced their functioning to ensure visibility and influence for a given cause.
Keywords: social media and activism, modern day activism, Occupy Wall Street, Nirbhaya rape case and social media



Methodology
The reason for undertaking this research work is to understand the abstract concept of opinion being shared by people and how it is being acted on, how this opinion on twitter shared by one person can fire the imagination of millions, to understand what were these opinions consisted of and why were they consisted of it, what did they lead to, to understand the difference between these opinions on the same issue then and now.
The following research work will be divided into two case studies, one being that of Occupy Wall Street and the other being Nirbhaya rape case. These two incidents were selected because they both represent contemporary protest movements wherein social media played a crucial role.
The research will meet the traditional paradigms of being supplemented with both qualitative and quantitative information collected through primary and secondary resources.
The main goal of research being to qualitatively analyze and understand the role played by social media during these protests . In addition to this its an aim to quantify the data retrieved from tweets on the basis of groups and see if the groups planned to or actually took action. This will also help to provide an understanding, if the participants for discussion on twitter planned to take action on ground. This will in turn help in establishing if the people were merely tweeting their support or actively participating on ground , or if they were indulging in armchair activism.
The tweets were taken up over a period of one month through the website Topsy analytics which is a database for social search and analytics in latest order . On the basis of these tweets groups were filtered and analyzed on the simple paradigm of action proposed or not proposed.
The rationale behind it being to understand does social media merely provide as a discussion outlet for a given protest movement or does it manifest into a organization tool more powerful than a discussion platform.
This research will help in testing the theory that more armchair activists are present on social media that serious activists
Since these tweets were taken up after a lot of time had passed after the incident it would be suitable if the tweets from quantitative analysis database were compared to a random selection of live tweets that were made when the protest was ongoing and which have also been used in the body text to supplement qualitative information. This would help in reflecting on the difference of content then and now, and how do people continue to discuss an incident after it has passed .It was chosen not to zero in in on specific sample category (demographic/age category etc) because then it would have complicated the research process and restricted the findings to a particular section of the society only. The tweets that have been used for quantitative analysis have been attached in the appendix.
In the manner that it has been done , the study can be replicated easily . Even though social media is highly advanced and has shrunk our world in terms of networking , yet it is also undeniably easy. Armchair activism will continue to exist for the simple reason that now sharing your opinion with the entire world on a burning issue has become phenomenally easy. You don't need to make a pla-card and go to the street or camp out on government property or brave police action against you, all you need to do is type it out and press share.
Therefor just like junk food even opinions today are becoming 140 character short, quick, standard easy and ready for consumption.


Introduction

Our world is shrinking because of Internet, everyone is just a message away! A message that can reach anyone in any corner of the world within minutes , sometimes even seconds! Vladimir Putin , the Russian president calls internet a medium of American propaganda , but those who restrict internet to a face , country or government do not understand , it does not belong to this world, it is another world just parallel to ours.
The Internet during its infant stages in 1969 was not intended for civilian use, it was meant for military. Heavy hardware and tough programming language restricted it to be used only by technology enthusiasts.
(Digital trends,2014)
It was only in because of Apple, Microsoft and IBM did the computer finally reach civilian homes through personal computers and the wonder of Internet became widely accessible.
Social media is a fragment but an important one, in this vast world of the Internet. It is any website or an application that allows its users to interact and share information or messages with each other.
One of the first origins of social media can be dated to the BBS or the bulletin board system. Here one could download files and games and send messages to other users. However these were text only exchanges and became incredibly popular during the 80s and the 90s. Another very famous concept of social networking in the infant Internet days was the CompuServe. Not only could you exchange messages here but also join forum discussion on important issues. This shaped Internet as a platform for people to speak on issues they wanted to speak about. And then there was the AOL or America Online, here you could even search for member profiles. By mid nineties Yahoo, Amazon and Google had appeared on scene.
Later it was with the launch of Friendster or an online community of actual friend space that the concept of modern social networking as it continues to exist today came into fore. In 2003 it was LinkedIn that made its entry onto the playground but with a more serious approach, it was envisioned to help professionals setup connections. Along with Linked in there was a prequel to Facebook, MySpace that was launched in the same year as LinkedIn. And then there was Facebook, it was launched in 2004 but became accessible to general public in 2006. Google also launched its Google Plus in 2007 but that failed to actually challenge Facebook.
Social media can also be omnipresent on the fourth screen or the mobile phones. Sharing of public images (Instagram), private images (Snapchat), augmented reality (Foursquare) or location based connections (Tinder) are some ways in which mobile social networking is picking speed.
(Digitaltrends, 2014)
The time has come , due to rapid investment in virtual reality that social networking has become more of an experience than an activity, it isn't restricted to our screens anymore. Right now we have access to audio visual telecommunication but due to rapid research and development in this field professionals are envisioning it to be so capable that it may engulf our five senses and make us experience interaction just like in the real world. The lines between virtual and real will then blur.
Internets' effectiveness, accessibility, feasibility and reach make it an ideal platform for people to voice out their opinion which often foray into topics of public discussion and leads to activism.
Activism can clearly be defined as any type of effort that seeks to enforce, direct, inform, or promote social, political, societal or cultural change.
(Wikipedia , 2014)

In a world or society where people are divided on the basis of various sects or classes it is indeed surprising to see contemporary protest cultures to be so populist in nature.
Social media divides and unites people at the same time. On one hand the Internet is eating into the communal or social life of human beings whereas on the other hand it is also becoming a platform for them to share, talk or socialize. It seems as if it's withdrawing from the real world and adding to the virtual. It is here that people where can talk to someone according to their own wish and want of distance. It allows people to retain flexibility in their communication, allows them to generate content and not merely produce it. (Pablo Gerbaud,2012)
However another very crucial aspect of contemporary protest movements apart from their percolation into social media , is their struggle to acquire a physical space .Almost all of the contemporary protest movements which are popular online have tried to assemble in a public space to demonstrate strength for the cause and to resist authority. Even during this assembly social media helps people coordinate , and sustain the movement.

Figure 1 Twitter,2014

Figure 2 Twitter 2014

During the 2012 Delhi gang rape case social media garnered all the collective anger coming from Indians cutting across social barriers. A young medical student travelling with her male friend in a bus , was raped by six men and left to die on the road with an iron rod sticking out of her body. This generated a lot of public anger. People were out on the streets voicing concern for women safety. When the authorities barred protest rallies people took to social media to express their frustration, the victim was given heroic names like Nirbhaya and Damini, many campaigns like the black dot of shame campaign was started on social media to create awareness about this incidence. When it comes to a case study on social media one cannot simply choose to overlook the Nirbhaya/Damini/Delhi rape case in India , perhaps one of the few incidents that united the entire country and for the first time on internet. Even here we see a manifestation of struggle for public space as people kept shifting places from Jantar mantar to Rashtrapati bhavan, trying to attract the attention of authorities.

The second most relevant and latest activism activity that has taken place via social media would be Occupy wall street where social media has played the role of an organizer, it also happened to take place in one of the most technologically advanced countries of the world which automatically makes social media accessible to a lot of residents thus it was impertinent to do the second case study on this. Even this remains an ideal case study as both the venue of the protest camp and the organization of the protest by the social media here are representative of contemporary protest movements.

When one talks about social media and activism, one must mention the grey zone or wedge that falls between them. Armchair activism or online activism cannot be equated with activism through social media , except that this is merely activism through social media. Where the sympathizers on the internet do not turn up as participants on the street. Eg.When Ad Busters gave its first call to Occupy Wall street, almost 20000 people confirmed participation on Facebook page but only 300 turned up for it.

Figure 3 Nick Daudelin ,2012
The above tweet clearly reflects the ignorance on the activist's part , who is merely inquisitive about the movement and his ignorance is reflective in this tweet because he is asking about the protest rather than informing about it.

Any person whose space of activity for the cause is restricted to pressing the like, share, comment or blog button while sitting on their armchairs , is an armchair activist. It is also known as slacktivism or clicktivism , reducing the support that people have for a cause to merely a click. However as we move along the content we will observe that it is not necessarily a bad development .
In my following research work I will try and explore the various ways social media has led to activism in Nirbhaya Rape case and Occupy wall street and I will try and do so by placing them in their respective geographical and cultural context .I will also try and understand the role of various social media handles likes Facebook and Twitter in these protest encampments along with how armchair activism is gaining ground.
Now let's understand activism and social media in the Indian context , via the Nirbhaya rape, case study.



Nirbhaya Rape Case
On December 16, 2012 , Nirbhaya (Identity of the victim has been with held) took a bus with a male friend from Munirka , New Delhi. Along with them there were six other men in the bus including the driver, all of whom (Except her male friend) raped the woman. One of the alleged rapists was six months away from becoming a major and thus a juvenile in the eyes of the law., It is claimed that he was the most brutal of them all.
They raped the woman, inserted an iron rod inside her body and threw her out of the bus , naked. Her male companion was gagged, beaten up and thrown out along with her. It was almost an hour before the police came and help arrived. This brutal attack and apathy of the system led to public protests particularly by Delhi's youth. People decided to stage protests on public property or near national monuments to attract attention. They were resisted by the authorities through use of water cannons, tear gas shells etc . There was rising anger in the minds of Indians across the nation with regards to women's safety. It was this frustration that made people take to social media , to vent their feelings(It just took a click after all), minus any consequences, and to voice their views to their family and loved ones and still get noticed.
Some of the tweets went like this :

Figure 4Ashutosh Lall, 2012

Figure 5 Richa Singh 2012
While on Facebook many campaigns were started to protest the rape case in Delhi, one of them being ,The Black Dot of Shame , where people changed their display pictures on various social media platforms to a black dot to protest against the system, and the rape case.
"The agitation over online social media platforms intensified greatly after the Delhi police isolated the key areas like India Gate in a bid to prevent protestors from gathering and voicing their anger."
(EFY times News, 31/12/2012)

A group called #IamNirbhaya was started on twitter with the sole motive to keep the movement for women's safety and empowerment up and running and remind people of the heinous crime committed on 16th december2012
This group creates awareness about various happenings that reflect on women's safety issues or point out how the system can be modified to help the people.
Figure 6 I am Nirbhaya, 2012

Figure 7 I am Nirbhaya ,2014

Figure 8 I am Nirbhaya , 2014

Figure 9 I am Nirbhaya, 2014



The Nirbhaya rape case made a strong impact on the system, laws were moved to ensure justice to a rape victim .
"Delhi Gang Rape case of 16/12/2012 made Indian government and Indian Judiciary conscious about their lacunae as media ensured to make the masses and society aware of the changes needed in law and order."
(Shefali Tiwari and Ruchira Shandilya,2013)

However social media was not practical and concrete enough for creating awareness, according to Mriganka Dadwal , founder of SLAP or street level awareness programme which is an initiative to empower women, was interviewed by SPAN magazine an initiative by US consulate in India ,"we wanted to go beyond Facebook and create awareness about this." Therefore there is some evidence to suggest that the discussion on social media made led to direct action by people too.
The public outburst on social media create pressure on the government too. According to a Topsy Analytics report Nirbhaya has been tweeted about more than 35oo times in past one month (december21st2014-january20th2015), if this is the popularity of the topic two years after the case, one can reasonably conclude that even arm chair activism contributed to putting pressure on the government.

The protests and reaction to the case on social media led to the Supreme Court setting up the Verma Committee under justice JS verma to establish the Criminal Amendment Act 2013. (Shalu Nigam,2014)
This law further defined what can be classified as sexual violence and unacceptable towards women and stated clear punishments. It was an effort to fill the loopholes in the existing system. , However certain important clauses like Armed forces special powers act and marital rape were left out of the act.
Given that one of the rapists was juvenile, according to the existing law he would have been let off easily after three years in a juvenile home; however the people are pushing to change the juvenile age from 18 to 16 so that the rapist can be given capital punishment.

Two years after the incident the system continues to evade justice, in a recent interview by Deccan Chronicle in 2014 as quoted by the site www.merinews.com on 17th January 2015, Nirbhaya's father said,
"Nothing in India has changed all promises made by our ministers are shallow. Our suffering gives them their moment in limelight. My child asks me what have I done to help her and I wake up and realize how helpless I am."
It is perhaps this feeling of helplessness that drove people towards social media.
Nirbhaya's father recently met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi for amendment of the Juvenile act to ensure adequate punishment to the juvenile rapist

Figure 10 Free press Journal, 2014
Some of the tweets on this incident went like:

Figure 11 Vandana Singh , 2014

Figure 12 Harit Mehta ,2014

Essentially all these tweets talk about changing the system or about the mistakes of the system, they all emphasize on "change". Sympathy for the rape victim manifests into modification of the system and people are up with suggestions and criticisms. The government can use this platform to crowd source ideas for making this a people friendly system.

Figure 13 One India,2014

Nirbhaya continues to be a burning wound in the minds of the people and even though there are numerous rape cases being registered every day in India, due to the social media the Delhi Rape case has become symbolic of injustices, atrocities being committed against women in our society and how the system has taken a back seat. It was one of those moments, which brought people with the same anguish, frustration and helplessness on to the same platform and helped them voice it to the world. Whereas twitter played a crucial part in directing people to the protest sites in Delhi, in a vast country like India it was the social media which united them, their thoughts and their many voices that were was calling for justice for the rape victim.
Here it becomes essential to establish how keen were these people to utilize social media to propose action or were they merely voicing out their opinions? Also what was the nature of these opinions that were being shared , were they emotional, were they practical were they political?
The following quantitative analysis would help us understand the effectiveness and the nature of the content being shared on the social media.
Tweets have been looked at from December 21st 2014– January 20th 2015 filtered through the word Nirbhaya on the website Topsy Analytics which suggests tweets on the topic in the latest order
(Note: It must be kept in mind that the sample data of the tweets that were collected belonged to a timeline after the protest activity had passed)

-Incase of the groups were there any indication of action taken or proposed?
out of 14 tweets by groups that were analyzed , 4 hinted at taking action whereas ten did not hint at any action (note: the groups considered here were even media companies.)




Therefore on the basis of quantitative analysis one can suitably conclude that most groups did not support or indicate on ground participation but did contribute towards creating an awareness about the movement ..
Therefore the presence of armchair activism can be suitably concluded established here on basis of available evidence.

It is very important to understand that Nirbhaya rape case was unique in the sense that it is for the first time a movement that generated protest and anger from the people along with a lot of social media activity . Therefore it doesn't just help us in understand the role of social media in activism but also how India took to social media and activism on it .
In addition to this the content of those tweets have been analyzed on political, emotional or practical codes, to understand exactly the most usual nature of content being published by the people and the groups Here are the results

Political content :33 tweets
Emotional content: 12 Tweets
Practical content: 7 Tweets
Practical and emotional content: 5 Tweets
Political and practical content:3 Tweets
Therefore on the basis of suitable evidence it can be established that people preferred to tweets on political content related to the cause

Now let us try and understand how people overseas in one of the most developed democracies of the world that is the United States of America took to it.
Occupy Wall Street
In a blog on 13 July 2011 Ad Busters a Canadian pro environment, anti consumerist alternative magazine which was started in 1985 initiated a call for Occupying wall street peacefully to protest corporate influence on democracy
"We are democracy not corporatocracy." (Adbusters, 2011)
They did so by conceiving a twitter hashtag #occupywallstreet ,

So right from the start it became a twitter movement.

So what gave birth to this problem?

Figure 14 Business Insider,2011

As the above chart clearly explains that the assets of the "1%" or those who were the upper class in US had assets disproportionate to their numbers , whereas the entire country was deeply in debt. The one percent had only a miniscule 5% of their wealth in debt. As the US economy experienced an all time low the middle and lower middle class of the society became more debt ridden and deeply effected by it .It is this that led to rising discontent within the people

At the start of a movement and during its infancy ,Ad Busters even came up with a poster of a ballerina on a bull symbolic of the alternative culture
Alternative culture is a type of culture that exists outside or on the fringes of mainstream or popular culture, usually under the domain of one or more subcultures ( Wkipedia,2015)
However the movement soon grew to be more majoritarian in its nature as can be deduced through the tag line "we are the 99%".
The pictures below that have been sourced from the Adbusters blog, trace this transition :

Figure 15Ad Busters, 2011


Figure 16 Ad Busters, 2011

Figure 17 Ad busters ,2011
As observed by Pablo Gerbaudo in his book Tweets and Streets , 2012,
the initial Facebook page and Twitter handle of Occupy Wall Street were not very popular.
Here is a table on the number of likes on the main Facebook page and how it suddenly became popular. As the reader can observe that there is a lot of and infact an in proportionate range of difference between the initial number of likes and right almost twelve days after it . So what must have caused the page to become suddenly so popular?




Date(2011)
Number of likes
September 12
374
September 15
449
September 17
891
September 19
3391
September 24
13585

A report by Attention firm as quoted by Pablo Gerbaudo,2012 , some of the earlier posts went like
September 6th :11 days until we visit wall street on September 17th. Like this video and then share it –(only one person liked it and nobody shared it.)
"Thus, Occupy wall street initially did not have the momentum required for it to be a popular protest movement as can be seen through the statistics, moreover the status messages that were being shared on the page weren't establishing any connect with the people."
On Twitter however one can actually trace how the movement began gaining ground
"In the first week, average mentions per day were an unimpressive 18.8 mentions per day .Not many people were talking about Occupy Wall Street. After the start of the occupation on9/17 and up, until 9/23, average mentions per day increased by a whooping 2004%. The following week had a 97% increase over the week prior, and the week after the Brooklyn bridge arrests saw a 216%increase in average mentions per day."

Thus we can suitably conclude that the movement wasn't popular initially but only gained momentum after on site happenings and became a topic of discussion for people and when the organizers shifted to "#wearethe99%"stance."

Figure 18 Occupy Wall street, 2011
Accessed from twitter on 16th December 2014


Figure 19 Anthony Mongelluzo and bellepants, 2011

In the initial invite that was created by Ad Busters on Facebook had around 1,50,000 applicants, from which 20000 RSVP'd positively but only 300 turned up on site.
(Pablo Gerbaudo,2012)
Thus there was significant gap between sympathizers and the participants. It was only after the group changed its stance from the alternative to a more populist one that it started gaining ground. It can also be deduced that happenings on street or live tweets from site excited people to join the movement.
Moreover the movement caught the attention of the Internet group called Anonymous who promoted the protest. This group is in fact a very powerful group oft hackers of the cyber space ,who in the past have been very anti authority and have remained staunch supporters of Julian Assange and Wiki Leaks.
All this contributed to the popularity of the protest .

In Occupy Wall Street both Facebook and twitter had different roles to play. While Facebook helped build momentum and create awareness about the movement, Twitter helped in the organization of it.
(Pablo Gerbaudo,2012)

People came up to support the activists during disasters or bad weather as they were distant sympathizers. For Example after Hurricane Sandy devastated the residents of Brooklyn city, many people turned up to help the occupy wall street participants, a tweet here by Zane zodrow on 4th November 2012 accessed on 16th December 2014 says:


Therefore twitter was actively being used to attract people to the protest site and inform them of the happenings.

It also helped in sustenance of the movement as people posted various things to keep the morale of the protestors up. The pictures below further represent this deduction:

Figure 20 Occupy Wall Street, 2011

Figure 21 Occupy Wall Street, 2011

While writing about the organization of the movement through Twitter we must understand if OccupyWall street was organized by someone, some people or was it just an agglomeration of the dissatisfied 99%.Was it a well organized protest movement or merely coincidently popular.

Figure 22 Occupy Wall Street, 2011
Through the above post one can conclude that there may be some type of organization by the people present on ground. Pictures were being tweeted to help the occupiers who were present on the protest site.

As the movement graduated from an alternative form of protest towards a more populist form of it , Occupy Wall street gathered momentum.
And this happened not because of live feeds or organization on Facebook, but because of live tweets and happenings on site. Also Twitter helped localize information to people, so a person living in Ferguson will get tweets of happenings in Ferguson!

The Occupy movement has matured on social media from merely informing of the happenings on site to infact organizing protest activity through social media.

An article that appeared on occupyferguson which happened recently in 2014 in protest of the shooting down of a black boy by a white police officer without suitable evidence and was a part of the occupy movement details on the organization of the protestors:
"Last week, activists armed with untraceable "burner phones" used social media and online bulletin boards to stay one step ahead of city cops and create mayhem after a grand jury cleared Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
The anarchists clearly won the game of "Whac-A-Mole'' — shutting down major roads including the FDR Drive, Lincoln Tunnel and West Side Highway"(NY post,2014)

Figure 23 Ben Norton,2014
One has to observe the difference between tweets going live in 2014 and 2011 when occupy movement started. While the picture below which was tweeted in 2011 informs people of what the movement is about , the picture above tweeted in 2014 informs people of the protest route! It is here that the maturity of the movement on social media can be traced.

Figure 24 Occupy wall street, 2011
The successful manifestation of the tweeters on ground and in public space helped the movement retain its momentum and become a success. We have also observed how the movement has matured from its initial stages on social media.
However as discussed earlier, there are always two types of activists on social media, those who voice the happenings on the site or act on the opinion they establish on social media and those who just talk about it .
Thus in the above paragraphs we saw the building up of occupy movement with the help of social media and the reasons why it got popular, now let us try and look at how many participants who tweeted about it were willing to take action on it. It will help us understand the presence of arm chair activism in this case study .
Tweets analyzed from December 28th 2014 to January 27th 2015
Total 2329 tweets were tweeted on this topic ,
Number of tweets analyzed : in total 66 tweets were looked at for a month with the help of the website Topsy Analytics which suggests tweets in the latest order.
((Note: It must be kept in mind that the sample data of the tweets that were collected belonged to a timeline after the protest activity had passed)
The tweets were then filtered to establish how many groups were tweeting and out of these groups how many had tweeted proposed or taken action the issue and how many had not taken any action.

Incase of the groups were there any indication of action taken or proposed?

Action taken/proposed: 3 tweets
Action not taken: 22 tweets



So even in this case groups did not talk much of organizing action on ground but instead primarily tried on create awareness on the cause.
Therefore the presence of armchair activism on the basis of suitable evidence can be established here.
Now let us look at the nature of content of these tweets

Emotional: 29 tweets
Political: 16 tweets
Practical : 21 tweets


Through the above pie chart it can be concluded that most of the tweets that were shared on this topic were emotional in nature.

There are different ways in which social media has evolved and various roles that it has played across different causes.
Through the above quantitative analysis we have also understood the presence of armchair activism and the nature of the content of the tweets that were being shared on this topic. It has helped us understand the nature of activism being carried out through social media
It must be noted that the tweets that has been used to supplement information in the text is different from the sample database that was collected at a much later stage after the protest had already happened. So at the end of it we have two samples of tweets, one which are live tweets from the protest activity and one from the quantitative database itself, so in the concluding chapter the difference of content between these tweets have been analyzed .the difference between the content of tweets during the protest activity and after the protest activity.





Conclusion
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
― Anne Frank


Armchair activism is a negative term that really doesn't do justice to the concept of it. Sharing opinions and not acting on them isn't always a bad thing. The above quote very aptly applies to the world we are living in today. After utmost development and innovation in technology we have internet with us today. A world so unregulated unlike ours, a world where you are free to speak, opine and share what you deem suitable. A world not divided into national territories, a world where everyone is equal. Perhaps that is why one cannot deny how powerful a tool social media is. It's easy, its free and most importantly when we press share, it takes our opinion to million other people across the world, who may not know us but agree with us. We may not take action on them, they may take action on it. Social media really is a revolution in the sense that it has empowered ideas, opinions and emotions as a separate body itself. Once you press share you may become the author of that idea , but the idea in no way becomes restricted to you. It travels on its own across the news/live feeds of various telephone/laptop screens , it travels through the minds of people influencing them in various ways and therefore its not meaningless.
That is why it is important to understand how social media is capable of voicing a demand by people, how it gives voice to everyone who is a part of the collective.
Through various chapters we have understood how internet has shrunk our world. How a simple development meant for military communication has evolved into a parallel method of networking and the scope that internet holds now because of the invention of virtual reality .We have also understood how internet divides and unites people at the same time. How we may be sitting together in a café but too busy on our phones and aloof from each other , and how we may be aloof about each other's existence yet know each other online. How and why protest movements have percolated into social media and how it has garnered more ground on social media because of the participants struggle to occupy a definite physical ground for protest activity.

To further emphasize my conclusion two case studies of the movements selected for the conclusion has been undertaken.
Apart from exploring these two case studies to determine the role played by social media I have also observed through them the concept of arm chair activism through quantitative analysis and on the basis of substantial evidence I have concluded of its existence in contemporary protest movement culture.
Even the nature of content of these tweets were adjudged using pre defined codes to understand the type of tweets being shared on the topic.
The Occupy Wall Street movement was a protest movement organized by the people who were against capturing of resources by the 1 % or the privileged class that had access to immense wealth and power in the states. However it started as an alternative movement, it was started by an alternative magazine , only later through social media was it publicized as a mass movement. It was Twitter and Facebook that gave enough ground to the Occupy movement

Nirbhaya rape case has been analyzed on the basis of when it started being talked about in social media , how social media fired the imaginations of many in this case. How it was used to crowd source ideas for launching unique initiatives for women safety.

Therefore one cannot possibly deny the role of social media in organizing, staging, sustaining and informing a protest activity in the contemporary world. It's role has gone far beyond that of a catalyst and it's gaining ground as a fundamental and alternative space .You can shun the people in front of Jantar mantar, or on Wall street but you cannot do so on Twitter or Facebook!

The most important aspect however would be to compare one tweet from during the protest activity and one tweet from my sample data for the quantitative research and analyze how their content differs.
However selecting an ideal tweet would lead to bias, therefore I have randomly picked up a tweet from both the timelines.

Occupy wall street

Figure 25 picture from during the protest

Figure 26 picture from the quantitative analysis sample data
Figue 25: talks about the purpose of the protest, the news paper articles that have been tweeted live from the site with the caption this is why we are here is encouraging people to join in the live protest activity on ground . It's helping the group sustain the movement and inform people that their voices are being heard.
Fiure 26: it's proposing a protest activity for Ferguson shootings along the lines of occupy wall street which clearly denotes the latter's success. Occupy wall street has gone down in the history as a strong example of people's movements in the modern history of united states of America.

Therefore one can clearly deduce from the above that social media today has evolved from being used as a weapon for information dissemination to a weapon for organization of a protest activity .

Nirbhaya rape case :

Figure 27 tweets from sample date for quanitative analysis

Figure 28 tweet during the ongoing movement
In figure 27 the tweet was taken long after the protest period , the person is questioning people on the details of the incidence , this maybe because of two reasons either she's checking the sincerity of the protest participants or she's sarcastically pointing out the then law minister for the people. There are more chances of her doing the latter as she is a political candidate herself from a rival party.
Essentially the tweet can be concluded as being practical, disseminating information and analyzing the details of the incident while at the same time detaching herself from it ,as there are no emotional appeals that have been made here.
However in figure 28 the tweet was tweeted during the protest activity and is directly questioning the sincerity of the regime , while at the same time it has an emotional attachment to the incident as well, as the tweeter is making an appeal to the people.
Social media till today as we have observed in the above case is more likely to be a platform where people are questioning the system, it helps them vent out their helplessness, the maximum practical usage that has been achieved generally is that of information dissemination. However as observed earlier in case of Occupy Ferguson it was also being used to organize a protest activity.
It cannot be denied that there has been an increasing sense of awareness as to the potential that social media holds and its power is being effectively utilized in contemporary protest culture.

Therefore on the basis of this work it can be suitably concluded because of available evidence that social media today has led to armchair activism, information dissemination on the given cause and is being increasingly used as an organizational tool for protest activity and its usage is evolving from merely informing to organizing and creating a protest activity.
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Appendix
Tweets used for Quantitative analysis
Occupy Wall Street































Nirbhaya Rape Case