Tweeting the right to the city: digital protest and resistance surrounding the Airbnb effect

Abstract

Collaborative short-term accommodation rental platforms have grown enormously in Europe in the last decade and the resulting disruptive impacts are widespread in city neighbourhoods. Such impacts are increasingly linked to a growing socio-spatial inequality and have served to politicise civil society’s relationship with both platforms and tourism. As the more extractive platforms project themselves as sustainable, equitable “alternatives” to traditional accommodation business models, social protest and resistance collectives are increasingly vocal in projecting digital counter-narratives to this vision. This study analyses the impacts of Airbnb on the city of Barcelona and contextualises them within the digitally-networked narratives and counter-narratives that surround them. Different theoretical perspectives on traditional and digital activism are used to frame, on the one hand, the spatial distribution of Airbnb listings and on the other, an in-depth content analysis of Twitter conversations mentioning “Airbnb” and “Barcelona”. Findings show that the Airbnb effect reinforces broader touristification processes, mainly in relation to housing access and affordability issues and residential displacement. In parallel, digital counter-narratives underline this process and call for regulatory intervention. Both resistance and advocacy narratives tend to be “choreographed” by a range of actors other than Airbnb itself; particularly online press outlets, individual activists and political decision-makers.