Social Media and Social Movements

WHAT IS DONE 

· Performed a conceptual analysis and literature search on how social movements are formed on social networking sites

· Based on existing theories about social movements in the literature, developed a new theory named Theory of Online Mobilization

ABSTRACT

In this study, initial stages of social movements is investigated in a Social Networking Site (SNS) context. Based on the recent events such as Gezi Park protests in Turkey or Arab Spring, different features are observed, which could be caused by communication medium, which is a SNS (Twitter, in particular) (Ozturkcan, Kasap, Cevik, & Zaman, 2017). To explain this phenomena, existing social movement theories are analyzed and based on contemporary social movement theories and SNS contextualization, a new theory Online Mobilization Theory is proposed. To represent this theory, a model is also developed and associated hypothesis are formulated. This emerging theory will be studied in the future for validity, generalizability and representativeness with the help of empirical studies and comparative case analysis.

Keywords: Social Movements, Resource Mobilization, Online Mobilization, Social Networking Site Affordances