Advocacy and civic engagement in protest discourse on Twitter: an examination of Ghana’s #OccupyFlagstaffHouse and #RedFriday campaigns

ABSTRACT

This article examines tweets produced by Occupy Ghana during its #OccupyFlagstaffHouse and #RedFriday campaigns. It sheds light on how activist discourses are most persuasively narrativized when they capitalize on local sentiment and language features characteristic of local communities and audiences. The findings reveal three mechanisms employed in the tweets: constructing the Ghanaian government as insensitive, representing Ghanaians as the suffering masses, and exploiting stance for sociopolitical objectives. The article highlights the synergy between social movement theory and social media critical discourse studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• critical discourse analysis
• identity and solidarity
• online activism
• social movement

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the editor, Greg Dickinson, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

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