A Social Networks Approach to Online Social Movement: Social Mediators and Mediated Content in #FreeAJStaff Twitter Network

Abstract

The movement to free Al Jazeera journalists (#FreeAJStaff), imprisoned by Egyptian authorities, utilized social media over almost 2 years, between 2013 and 2015. #FreeAJStaff movement emerged as a unique blend of social movement and news media, taking place primarily on Twitter. This study applied a social networks approach to examine patterns of information flow within the #FreeAJStaff movement on Twitter: the emergence of information siloes and social mediators, who bridge them. Twitter data of 22 months were collected, resulting in social networks created by 71,326 users who included the hashtag #FreeAJStaff in their tweets, and 149,650 social ties (mentions and replies) among them. Analysis found social mediators to be primarily core movement actors (e.g., Al Jazeera) or elites (e.g., politicians), rather than grassroots actors. Furthermore, core actors exhibited more reciprocal relationship with other users than elite actors. In contrast, elite actors evoked denser exchange of messages. Finally, this study identified the mechanism used to create a Spillover Effect between social movements (such as #FreeAJStaff and #FreeShawkan), finding that mediated content, which travels across clusters, was more likely to include non-FreeAJStaff movement hashtags, than siloed content, which remains within a cluster. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.