Anatomy of Protest in the Digital Era: A Network Analysis of Twitter and Occupy Wall Street

Abstract

Two months before the first Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest in September 2011, activists were using Twitter to organize and spread the movement. In this study, the earliest Twitter messages regarding #OccupyWallStreet were subjected to network analysis to answer these questions: What were the central hubs in the OWS discourse on Twitter in the summer of 2011? How did OWS emerge from among several social movement organizations to lead a nationwide series of demonstrations? What were the key points in the Twitter dialogue that aided the process of scale shift? By addressing these questions, this research connects social movement concepts with network centrality measures to provide a clearer picture of movements in the digital era.

Keywords::

• Network analysis
• Occupy Wall Street
• social media
• social movements
• scale shift
• social networking
• Twitter
• diffusion

Notes

^1. According to Twitter's Developers page, https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1/get/search.

^2. The network is asymmetric because the messages (and the resulting network) are directional and bimodal (or two-mode) because there are two classes of nodes, users and hashtags. Both node types were important in the spread of OWS. A one-mode network would only reveal groups when cluster density was high.

^3. Adding new @mentions can also help spread the message. Inferring whether these instances represent diffusion or brokerage cannot be determined without knowing the prior relationship between sender and receiver.

^4. According to usdayofrage.org.

^5. According to her Twitter bio; retrieved 16 February 2012 from http://twitter.com/#!/gemswinc.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Tremayne

Mark Tremayne is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington in the Department of Communication. Tremayne's research focuses on the intersection of new technologies and mass communication, with particular emphasis on interactivity, networks, online journalism, blogging and citizen media.