Tweeting from Gezi Park: Social Media and Repression Backfire

• In Event: 336 - Section on Political Sociology Paper Session. Citizenship and Protest in the 21st Century: #Blacklivesmatter and Other Recent Movements in Context

Abstract

We examine the role social media may plan in increasing the chances that violent repression of protest will backfire. Prior research demonstrates that violent repression can either decrease protest participation through raising the costs of participation, or can generate outrage, and result in "backfire" and an increase in mobilization. Many recent mass mobilizations have garnered attention from scholars and journalists alike as instances of repression backfiring and because of the widespread use of social media in these mobilizations. We make a case for why these two trends may be related and use logistic regression analysis on data from the Turkish Gezi Movement in summer 2013 to examine this relationship. We find supportive evidence for a causal relationship between being recruited to participate in the protests through social media and joining the mass mobilization as a reaction to police repression.

Authors

• Heidi Reynolds-Stenson, University of Arizona

• Meltem Odabaş, University of Arizona