Criminalizing Abortions & Social Movement Response

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

Legislative changes across the United States are increasingly restricting access to and criminalizing abortions, with social movements consistently emerging in response. Social movements today still utilize the classic tactics from the protest cycles in the 1906s, particularly with marches and protests. However, the advent of social media created the ability to transform these tactics into a digital environments, coining terms like hashtag activism. The presented study examines the social movement tactics used online in response to the recent moves to criminalize abortion in Texas, focusing on two cases, the passage of the Texas Heartbeat Act and the arrest of Lizelle Herrera. Data are drawn from Twitter using associated hashtags with these cases and downloaded for analysis using MAXQDA. Utilizing content analysis, the tweets were coded using modified grounded theory with particular attention to tactics and motivations. Findings revealed that social media based social movements are incorrectly classified as one singular tactic, but rather social media is a platform for carrying out various social movement tactics and purposes. Results of this study display the need to investigate online activism more critically, especially as it relates to the criminal-legal system.

Authors

• Aditi Patil, Sam Houston State University

• Katie Ratajczak, Sam Houston State University