After the #Keyword: Eliciting, Sustaining, and Coordinating Participation Across the Occupy Movement

Abstract

Networked social movements (NSMs) are hybrid forms of social organization that rely on the platforms of the Internet to connect multiple individuals and groups to address a social justice issue. I mapped the communication infrastructure of the Occupy Movement from July 2011 to June 2013 to demonstrate how changes in protesters’ forms of communication reflected transformations in the organization of the movement and its capacity to mobilize participants. Through ethnography, I show how internal and external pressures—the high density of connections through social media, a desire to coordinate across locations, and police raids on encampments—led to the development of a virtual organization, called InterOccupy. InterOccupy is a communication platform owned and operated by participants in the Occupy Movement. InterOccupy took infrastructure building as a political strategy to ensure the movement endured beyond the police raids on the encampments. I conclude that NSMs create virtual organizations when there are routine and insurmountable failures in the communication milieu, where the future of the movement is at stake. My research follows the Occupy Movement ethnographically to understand what happens after the keyword.