They all seemed to come out of nowhere and grow rapidly, leveraging the power of digital technology. Strengthening social media has allowed movements to bring important but largely ignored issues to the forefront of public discussion – as Occupy did for inequality – but it was also crucial to handling the logistics of a major protest: raising awareness, coordinating and curbing official narratives and even the contempt and rejection that often emanated from traditional media.
As I studied many of these movements, I noticed more common patterns. The large movements that quickly developed often faltered in direction once the inevitable pushback came. They didn’t have the tools to navigate the insidious next phase of politics because they didn’t have to build it to get there.
In the past, a really big march was the culmination of lengthy organization, an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence, indicating advance planning and strength. Large numbers of people had come together and had worked for a long time, coordinated, prepared – and taught each other and made decisions. So not only did they manage to hold a protest; in the absence of easier ways to organize, they eventually had to build organizational capacity, which then helped navigate what came next.
But since the early 2000s, a major protest has begun to feel more like a sentence beginning with a question mark. Newspapers still comment on their size – and many of them are very large – but I am now less impressed by size alone: the global Occupy demonstrations, the Arab Spring protests and the Women’s March in 2017 could all be can claim to be greater than any. previous protest. Maybe they would continue to build more lasting power, but maybe not.
So I came to the conclusion that, while today’s major protests may look similar to those in the past, the various mechanisms that trigger them – particularly the internet and lately especially social media – help determine whether governments or other authorities as a real threat or just something that can be dismissed as a focus group.
This does not mean that I have come to think that protests are futile or that large marches mean nothing. They do. I still think that demonstrations, marches and other forms of mass mobilization matter; they build solidarity, change lives and emphasize dissent. Only now they have different trajectories and dynamics.
