In less than a month, France’s gilets jaunes (yellow vests) have gone from being a celebrated example of Facebook’s ability to power a spontaneous revolution to a cautionary tale of how social networks can be manipulated by outsiders to provoke outrage and sow dissent. But in both of these extreme scenarios, the central actors lie […]
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Debate: The ‘gilets jaunes’ movement is not a Facebook revolution
Competing Twitter hashtags reflect divided response to Paris attacks
On Friday night, November 13, I had just left a movie theater near my home in Toulouse, France, when I received an e-mail from a friend asking me if I was OK. Curious, I went on Twitter and immediately saw reports from French news agencies that there had been a series of attacks across Paris. […]
5 reasons why online Big Data is Bad Data for researching social movements
I know, I know, it’s digital blasphemy to say that using Internet data is a terrible way to study social movements. What about all of those Twitter and Facebook revolutions of the Arab Spring? And Occupy Wall Street? #Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter spread like wildfire, for God’s sake. You may think that I’m a luddite who […]
From French Resistance to hashtag activism: How our obsession with the extraordinary masks the power of the ordinary
I’ve become obsessed with “Un village français.” No, it’s not an idyllic town in Provence. It’s a French television series set during World War II. The show follows the residents of one French town as they navigate the German occupation. I tell myself that I am already into the 6th season (thank you, Netflix) because […]