Personal grievance sharing, frame alignment, and hybrid organisational structures: the role of social media in North Africa's 2011 uprisings

Abstract

The paper develops an analytical framework for understanding the role of social media in the 2011 North African uprisings. It argues that analysis of the role of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools should be broken down into two distinct phases: a pre-mobilisation phase and a collective action phase. Using frame analysis and the notion of connective action, the paper demonstrates that during the pre-mobilisation phase social media allowed for the enlarging of the public sphere to new non-political actors, and permitted the sharing of grievances and the emergence of broad and resonant frames. During the collective action phase, mobilisation was able to occur thanks to a collective action frame based on the cultural norm of social justice as well as the emergence of hybrid organisational structures that relied on a cross between social media-based entrepreneurial networks and more traditional social movement organisations.

Keywords:

• Arab Spring
• connective action
• frame analysis
• grievances
• social justice
• social media

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Limerick for the invitation to participate at the conference ‘Social Movements and Political Change in Africa: Shaping Technologies for Change’ out of which this special issue emerged.