Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement
Social media have become crucial tools for political activists and protest movements, providing another channel for promoting messages and garnering support. Twitter, in particular, has been identified as a noteworthy medium for protests in countries including Iran and Egypt to receive global attent...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
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University of Illinois
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/45577 |
| _version_ | 1848757324545523712 |
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| author | Croeser, Sky Highfield, Tim |
| author_facet | Croeser, Sky Highfield, Tim |
| author_sort | Croeser, Sky |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Social media have become crucial tools for political activists and protest movements, providing another channel for promoting messages and garnering support. Twitter, in particular, has been identified as a noteworthy medium for protests in countries including Iran and Egypt to receive global attention. The Occupy movement, originating with protests in, and the physical occupation of, Wall Street, and inspiring similar demonstrations in other U.S. cities and around the world, has been intrinsically linked with social media through location–specific hashtags: #ows for Occupy Wall Street, #occupysf for San Francisco, and so on. While the individual protests have a specific geographical focus–highlighted by the physical occupation of parks, buildings, and other urban areas — Twitter provides a means for these different movements to be linked and promoted through tweets containing multiple hashtags. It also serves as a channel for tactical communications during actions and as a space in which movement debates take place.This paper examines Twitter’s use within the Occupy Oakland movement. We use a mixture of ethnographic research through interviews with activists and participant observation of the movements’ activities, and a dataset of public tweets containing the #oo hashtag from early 2012. This research methodology allows us to develop a more accurate and nuanced understanding of how movement activists use Twitter by cross–checking trends in the online data with observations and activists’ own reported use of Twitter. We also study the connections between a geographically focused movement such as Occupy Oakland and related, but physically distant, protests taking place concurrently in other cities. This study forms part of a wider research project, Mapping Movements, exploring the politics of place, investigating how social movements are composed and sustained, and the uses of online communication within these movements. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T09:26:17Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-45577 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T09:26:17Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | University of Illinois |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-455772017-09-13T14:23:35Z Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement Croeser, Sky Highfield, Tim Social media have become crucial tools for political activists and protest movements, providing another channel for promoting messages and garnering support. Twitter, in particular, has been identified as a noteworthy medium for protests in countries including Iran and Egypt to receive global attention. The Occupy movement, originating with protests in, and the physical occupation of, Wall Street, and inspiring similar demonstrations in other U.S. cities and around the world, has been intrinsically linked with social media through location–specific hashtags: #ows for Occupy Wall Street, #occupysf for San Francisco, and so on. While the individual protests have a specific geographical focus–highlighted by the physical occupation of parks, buildings, and other urban areas — Twitter provides a means for these different movements to be linked and promoted through tweets containing multiple hashtags. It also serves as a channel for tactical communications during actions and as a space in which movement debates take place.This paper examines Twitter’s use within the Occupy Oakland movement. We use a mixture of ethnographic research through interviews with activists and participant observation of the movements’ activities, and a dataset of public tweets containing the #oo hashtag from early 2012. This research methodology allows us to develop a more accurate and nuanced understanding of how movement activists use Twitter by cross–checking trends in the online data with observations and activists’ own reported use of Twitter. We also study the connections between a geographically focused movement such as Occupy Oakland and related, but physically distant, protests taking place concurrently in other cities. This study forms part of a wider research project, Mapping Movements, exploring the politics of place, investigating how social movements are composed and sustained, and the uses of online communication within these movements. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/45577 10.5210/fm.v19i3.4827 University of Illinois fulltext |
| spellingShingle | Croeser, Sky Highfield, Tim Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement |
| title | Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement |
| title_full | Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement |
| title_fullStr | Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement |
| title_full_unstemmed | Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement |
| title_short | Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement |
| title_sort | occupy oakland and #oo: uses of twitter within the occupy movement |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/45577 |