Social Media and Informal Organisation of Citizen Activism: Lessons From the Use of Facebook in the Sunflower Movement

Abstract

The literature embraces several arguments regarding the influence of online communication platforms and practices on communicative, semantic, affective and organisational elements of citizen activism. Although organisational matters are inherent in most discussions in this area, there is a need for empirical insight into under-explored cases of citizen activism that can contribute toward addressing questions about the informal organisation of citizen activism and the associated role of social media. This paper presents an interview study of the role of Facebook in the informal organisation of the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan. The study found that participants in the Sunflower Movement engaged more with Facebook’s information-spreading and information-sharing functions than with its networking affordances. They used these functions to enhance the public’s engagement with the movement and recruit new participants, as well as to initiate, support and coordinate offline action. In addition, in the context of the Sunflower Movement, Facebook appeared to support the largely self-organised and loosely structured character of the coordination of offline action. It also fostered movement participants’ actions and feelings of ‘altruism’ toward other participants as well as their desire to ‘awaken’ other groups and the public at large. Regarding leadership, the study shows that leadership structures still exist in technologically mediated citizen activism, but they are often challenged by activists, while decision-making is a lot more complex and multi-layered than in the past.