web-based political movements:

memetic transmission Yulia Lukashina, M.A.

Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science • Department of Communication Studies

© Lukashina

Media@LSE 5th PhD Symposium «Cosmopolitanism, New Media and Protests”. June, 15th 2012, London School of Economics.

Memetics:• Information =

• Memes can be transmitted, adopted, replicated, stored

• Interpretation of new information = replication of memes (Conte 2001)

• Niche construction (Laland&Odling-Smee 2001): changing environment to make it providing more opportunities for memes to spread further

meme 1 + meme 2 + meme 3

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New SMOs

• Able to overcome long distances to catch you• plurality of cultures in one group?

• Interactivity of communicational channel:• content (self-legitimation) created by

both leaders and ordinary users?

• BUT: active and biased information search homogeneity of on-line communities

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What makes the movement go onWhat partisans need to know (Gerhards 1995):+ issue as a social problem+ causes and causal agents+ goal and chances of success+ addresses of the claim+ movement as a legitimate actor______________________________= frame

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Memetics

•Frame as a deep meme•Contribution to the efficiency of the host•Phenotype

•Environment and niche construction (political opportunity structures)

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How mobilization looks like

•Distribution of information (Step A)•Adoption = prospective participants are starting to identify themselves with the group (B)•Protest activity in different forms (C)

A …A B C A B C A A BC A

Informational cascade

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“That’s how “repair” on Red Square now looks like. Tell me, doesn’t it enrage you that they lie and all just do not care? You do not care? Come to the zero point”. (Bold is mine – Y.L.)

If you don’t want to go to the meeting – don’t do it. If you don’t want a ribbon – don’t wear it. If don’t want to walk down the boulevards – don’t’ do it, nobody forces you to. But don’t pick to pieces those, who comes, wears, walks. ‘cause it turns out to sound unconvincing. From under the escapist and disdainful reasoning appears the mug of Philistine: “Ah are they not like all others? Don’t they have nothing to be done?”

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The concept of lie

Anger

Action © Lukashina

The concept of lie in action

“What Putin keeps secret, and about what cries the square”.

“Vesti Ru reports that nobody came to support Pussy Riot. It’s lie. …”

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Other memes poisoned with lie

Abstract from Kunanbayev whose monument became a symbol and place of “camping strike”. Abstract tells about innocent people arrested for false information who have to beg other dishonorable persons to help with discharge”.

“Let send it link to all friends. Let them new how this idiot look like”. Article by United Russia about obstacles and inconvenience that meetings create to other citizens of Moscow. Supposed to be intentionally falsified.

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Failed niche construction?

Russian Winter ’11-12 + Dissentients ‘05-08

Railway wars ‘98 + Antimonetization ‘04-05 + Again car import tariff increase ‘08-10

Stuttgart-21

• The government lies to us

• And?

• We loose money• Government

must solve this problem

• We loose money• Government is

inefficient

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Operationalization and methods

Variables (estimated for each time interval): - frame - X;- density of hyperlink structure - Y;- action potential (from event analysis) –Z.

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Yt=AXt+EZt+BYt-1Xt=CYt+FZt+DXt-1Zt=GXt+HYt+IZt-1

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Aberle’s classification

Amount of ppl involved

Scope of change

Stuttgart 21

Russian Protests

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Web presence of movements

Social networks

communities

communities

Thematic web-sites

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Diffusion in WWW (Chakrabarti et al. 1999)

Hubs Authorities

social networks “normal” sites

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arise initial event

coalesce burocratize decline/stabilize

time

Political movement cycle

Issue transformation

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References

• Aberle, D. F. 1966. The Peyote Religion among the Navaho. Chicago: Aldine.• Castells, M. (1996). The Information Age: Economy, Soceity and Culture Volume I: The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.• Chakrabarti, S., Dom, B.E., Gibson, D., Kleinberg, J., Kumar, R., Raghavan, P., Rajagopalan, S.&

Tomkins, A. 1999. “Mining the Link Structure of the World Wide Web”. Journal Computer 32(8): 60-67.

• Conte, R. (2001). Memes through (social) minds. In: Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science. Ed. by R. Aunger. Oxford University Press. Pp. 83-120.

• Gerhards, J. (1995). Framing dimensions and framing strategies: contrasting ideal- and real-time frame. Social Science Information, 34: 225-243.

• Friedland, J, Rogerson, K. (2009). How Political and Social Movements Form on the Internet and How They Change Over Time. Literature Reviews prepared for the Internet Radicalization Workshop. Research Triangle Park, North Carolina: Institute for Homeland Security Solutions. Stable URL: https://www.ihssnc.org/portals/0/IRW%20Literature%20Reviews%20Political%20and%20Social%20Movements.pdf

• Laland, K., Odling-Smee, J. (2001). The Evolution of the Meme. In: Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science. Ed. by R. Aunger. Oxford University Press. Pp. 121-142.

• MacDonald, K. (2002). ‘From Solidarity to Fluidarity: Social Movements beyond “Collective Identity” – The Case of Globalization Conflicts’. Social Movement Studies, 1(2): 109–28.

• Tarrow, S. G. 2011. Power in Movement. Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Third Edition, Revised and Updated. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thank you for your attention!