‘Together we can break the silence’

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Anne de Vries S2870746 October 25, 2020 MA Journalism Thesis University of Groningen Supervisor: prof. dr. M.J. Broersma Second reader: R. Prey, PhD

‘Together we can break the silence’

A Critical Discourse Analysis of users’ online (political)

participation in effecting a #MeToo narrative

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Abstract

Over the years technological advancements have granted proliferating possibilities for interaction and discourse online. Modes of organization and participation such as social movements as well as political participation have slowly migrated to the online sphere to capitalise on the new features available. #MeToo provided a suitable case study for research on narratives of contemporary social movements and online political action. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis this research looked at the construction of a narrative and consequent public opinion on #MeToo in online user interaction on Twitter and in the comment sections of the _{New York Times and the Washington Post. The} prevailing narrative of #MeToo on these platforms centres around the question of power, and the role of powerful men in particular. Though the platforms diverge in forms of communication. While both are identity based, Twitter contained a networked ingroup of ‘victims’ and ‘women’ connected through solidarity and sympathy, directed by celebrity super-participants. The comment sections, contrarily, fostered a strong sense of outgroup and a politics of resentment, making up their own narrative. The findings suggest that the makeup of social movements and their potentiality for action is thus subject to the struggle of identity politics if online fragmentation continues without eye for intersectional identities.

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CHAPTER 1: Introducing the #MeToo movement

“I was 13 sleeping over at a friend’s house. I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and when I came back, her cousin was lying there. We chatted for a bit before he forced himself on me. He held my mouth shut when I cried and begged him to stop. Afterwards, he bragged about it to his friends, and I was suddenly this 13 year old slut” (@christinab3210, 25-10-2017). 1.1 A plight for the denouncement of sexual assault

On October 15th 2017, Alyssa Milano decided it was enough and she took to Twitter. She wrote that the silence on sexual assault needed to be broken. Women should show the world how often they experienced sexual assault or harassment, so this display of prevalence could change matters. In the days leading up to Milano’s decision to publish one of the most influential tweets of the past two years, sexual assault in Hollywood had been a major topic in the media. On the 5th of October, the

New York Times published the stories of sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein, who

was then an industry-leading film producer in Hollywood. Five days later, _{The New Yorker followed} with even more detailed accounts. Weinstein would have harassed actresses such as Milano’s Charmed co-star Rose McGowan as well as Ashley Judd and Asia Argento. He was accused of forcing actresses to watch him as he was naked, or promising them to boost their careers in return for sexual favours (“How the Harvey Weinstein Scandal Unfolded”, 2019). 1

The week after this first publication saw a whirlwind of accusations and consequences. Many other celebrities expressed their disapproval of Weinstein’s behavior, Weinstein was fired from his own company, and he was shunned by the organisation behind the Oscars. So far, all without any formal conviction of Weinstein’s actions. Increasingly more women came forward with allegations. Not just in Hollywood, as merely a few days after the initial article by the _{New York Times,} allegations came in from Europe, with women in the UK and France speaking out as well. Hence, ten days after the _{New York Times publication, Milano took up a friend’s suggestion to take to social} media to show how pervasive sexual assault and harassment truly are, and how this extends beyond Hollywood. Hundreds of thousands of tweets ensued, among which the abovementioned Twitter user @christinab3210, and within the first 48 hours over one million tweets used the #MeToo hashtag. A year later this number had grown to 19 million (Anderson & Toor, 2018). Across Europe,

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During the time of writing, Harvey Weinstein was on trial for five charges of sexual misconduct in New York City. He was found guilty of two sex crimes on February 24th 2020. Because Weinstein was accused of multiple counts of sexual

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multiple hashtags sprouted, such as #BalanceTonPorc in France, and #QuellaVoltaChe in Italy. The world could not avoid #MeToo.

What Milano had at first thought was an original attempt to shock the world - and predominantly men - with the extent to which sexual and gendered assault occurs, was actually a follow-up of activist Tarana Burke’s initiative in 2006. Burke coined the “me too.” movement as a woman of color, intending to provide a platform for other women and girls of color to share their experiences and learn that they are not alone in this (“About - Me Too Movement", 2018). Though, now with the accompanying hashtag, the attempt became significantly more widespread.

The reason it reached the scale it did is also attributed to the work of other women who used social media before to spread their message, a process Jackson et al. (2019) call digital feminist activism. In 2014, #YesAllWomen trended for two weeks, and the hashtag had been tweeted 1 million times within the first four days. In its message it was quite similar to that of #MeToo, as it also sought to stress how many women encountered sexual and gendered violence in their lives. Similarly, #WhyIStayed opened up the discussion for women who continued relationships with men who abused them, to show that this matter is not as clear-cut as people often presume. Then, #BeenRapedNeverReported stressed the extent to which women who have been raped have actually not sought justice for a multitude of reasons, which these women could now share with this hashtag. Hence, women have been laying the online groundwork on the topic years before #MeToo.

Nevertheless, #MeToo remains unique in its magnitude. It may be the only of such recent digital activist efforts to have gained the traction it did and to have developed into a wider social movement. It was able to stretch the momentum beyond those initial months, reaching the 19 million tweets within the year. More than two years after its conception the hashtag is still used on social media, in mainstream media such as print, radio and TV, and has become a household concept. 1.2 The New Power of #MeToo

#MeToo is illustrative of a larger trend in digital and social media activism, beyond feminism. Increasingly people take to the online sphere to express themselves and find opinions and communities to which they feel they belong - and a place where they can perhaps change something in the world. More and more opportunities are created to do so, from Twitter to TikTok. Users take to social media to find “people like me” (Bennett, 2012, p.23). which has become both increasingly more important and easier, through for instance the “easy-to-digest” (Jackson et al., 2019, p.18) shorthands of hashtags. On social media users find a form of power that operates like a current; “made by many [...] open, participatory, peer-driven.” (Timms & Heimans, 2018, p.2). This ‘new

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power’ allows many separate individuals to contribute. New power distributes, like water or electricity that spreads. It is fed by a proliferating distrust in ‘old power’; the media as well as traditional forms of politics (Hay 2007; Fenton 2008; Bennett 2012; Blumler 2015; Graham et al. 2015).

Old power is like a currency that is held and hoarded by few, who guard it fiercely. Those who are powerful have a lot of it, and keep it inaccessibly close, acting as its owner and leader (Timms & Heimans, 2018, p.2), just as historically done in the informational and gatekeeping realm of professional journalism, as well as politics. Blumler (2015) asserts that this old power has cultivated a ‘media malaise’. The way the media have been portraying, criticising, and incessantly featuring failures of politicians, has not only caused the public to distrust the politicians the media feature, but the media themselves (Blumler, 2015, p.428). The public is moving away from this old power, actively seeking alternative platforms for, and news ways of expressing themselves politically. This has led to a decline of traditional group loyalty (Bennett, 2012, p.20) and an increasing inclination towards a politics users can participate in. It is centred around lifestyle values where issues such as climate change, environmentalism and feminism, direct the political behavior of the individual on a single-issue topic, rather than a party programme (Graham et al., 2015, p.1375).

#MeToo started out as such a single-issue topic, with a typical old power leader: Weinstein. He could make or break a star, by wielding his power “like a currency” (Timms & Heimans, 2018, p.2). This is why the women he assaulted kept quiet, as there were real fears for career consequences. It made him and perpetrators like him the perfect villains for a new power social media movement like #MeToo.

1.3 #MeToo, the moment

Consequently, #MeToo has achieved several offline political effects in the past two years. In France, a law was passed in August 2018, a year after Milano’s initial tweet. This law declared that outrageous sexist remarks or acts of assault in public can be fined on the spot, for up to 750 euros ("France harassment law hands out 447 fines in first months", 2019). In the Netherlands the parliament is developing a law that would make any kind of explicit or implicit non-consensual sexual act illegal ("Seks tegen de wil en seksuele intimidatie worden strafbaar", 2019). In the United States, several states have put limits on nondisclosure agreements (Beitsch, 2018), the kind that Weinstein had signed by the women he allegedly assaulted. Despite these laws, however, the true effects seem to mostly be ‘toppling the powerful’. In Europe as well as in the US, it is mostly major

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entertainment moguls and national politicians that receive blows (Taub, 2019), such as American movie directors Harvey Weinstein and Roger Ailes, and U.S. Senator Al Franken.

In previous research, I have argued that the narrative as constructed around the hashtag and the movement could influence this development. Considering the mechanisms of traditional media power and the proliferating influence of social media discourse, I looked at the discourse situated in news articles and tweets. I used Critical Discourse Analysis to scrutinize the discussion of #MeToo in articles by two newspapers, the _{New York Times and the New York Post, and in the tweets of three} central agents to the movement, Alyssa Milano, Tarana Burke, and Rose McGowan, during three separate time slots over the first half year of the #MeToo movement.

While I hypothesized to find a horizontally organized social media movement, as supported by McCurdy (2013), as well as the possibility for content and narrative co-creation on social media (Papacharissi 2016), what I found was quite the opposite. As Veenstra et al. (2014) argue, especially on social media such as Twitter, features such as retweeting and liking create a centrality, a leadership in the discourse on a topic, in the case of #MeToo directing attention and authority towards the three central agents. Additionally, I considered the performative power of mainstream media and looked at the predominant vocabulary, cited examples and imagery used by all these actors. A single narrative unfolded. #MeToo, in this way, seems to centre around wealthy, white females, preferably employed in Hollywood, who fell victim of rape by rich and powerful Hollywood men. Hence, I argued, to have such a limited narrative connected to the #MeToo movement, might consciously or subconsciously deter others - such as women of color, men, or transgender people - from identifying and feeling represented, and thus acting on behalf of the movement. As such, fewer (offline) political action would ensue, rendering the #MeToo movement less effective, dubbing it the #MeToo moment instead. Ergo, despite the adamant new power efforts, old power crept in and hampered horizontal development.

1.4 Zooming in on the user

Notwithstanding, more than two years later #MeToo is still frequently discussed in the media, and on social media by regular users. And the political developments in Europe and the United States point to an offline political effect of the hashtag. Therefore, more research is needed to validate the extent of my previous conclusion. If I state there was leadership attribution to the creation of the #MeToo narrative which would cause the narrative to be less open to public ownership, I need to establish how users actually engage with #MeToo online.

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User research is still relatively new in the field of media studies, following in the footsteps of audience studies in response to technological developments that morphed the passive, homogeneous consumers of the mass media into the active users and produsers of web 2.0 (Bruns 2007). Before digitalization, the audience was often thought of as just that, a passive, homogenous audience that soaked up the information provided to them (Bird, 2011, p.489). More and more, through digitalization and the rise of social media, there are myriad opportunities for the audience to become producers and users themselves (Livingstone 2003; Picone 2015) and the younger generations implement this most of all (Fortunati et al. 2017). People have more influence on traditional media and engage with both mainstream and social media continuously (Costera Meijer & Groot Kormelink 2015; Ghersetti & Westlund 2016; Swart et al. 2017) to publicize what they have to say. So too do reader comments on online news articles contribute to reporting, as these discussions and discourses can reveal the meanings and interpretations of ‘laypeople’, beyond those of political and informational elites (Koteyko et al. 2012).

Thus, users have agency. Instead of merely receiving the #MeToo narratives, they can participate in producing one themselves, or their user contributions can complicate the narrative as is. Hence the question is, do ordinary social media users implement their opportunities to personalize and ‘own’ the #MeToo narrative?

To investigate this, I have formulated the following research questions:

1. How is public opinion on #MeToo discursively constructed in online user interactions on Twitter and in news outlet comment sections?

2. How is this public opinion similar to or different from the narrative purported by mainstream media outlets online and by central actors on Twitter?

3. How does online user engagement with #MeToo exemplify the (role of) identity relationships in online political participation?

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CHAPTER 2: The keyword is ‘participation’

“I was 18 working as a kitchen helper in a restaurant. One day the cook came up to me and said ‘Why are you doing this? Didn’t you know pretty women don’t need to work’ not flattered by his misogyny #MeToo” (@keytiabiackel, 7-12-2017). 2.1 A New Power world

Society is changing, as purported previously, due to the development of new technologies that alter our social interactions as well as our understanding of and the availability of knowledge. And our expectations of these have adjusted accordingly (Gerbaudo 2012; Papacharissi 2016; Timms & Heimans 2018). Many users have come to expect that anything they want or need, or want to talk about, is at their fingertips, a mere click away. By way of social media, users feel so close to others who are actually far removed, and these others they interact with are greater in number than the amount of individuals they usually interact with offline. Nevertheless, the interaction feels direct and personal (Gerbaudo 2012, p.138), as if they can touch another individual by just one comment, tweet or post. Hence many active online users have come to think of their own contributions online as important, as well as expect to be able to participate in this authentic way on all other platforms they come across. This mindset thus shapes today’s society, a ‘new model’ of society, a ‘new power’ that guides it, if you will (Timms & Heimans 2018).

This new power is enabled by the participation of the crowd, and so are social movements such as #MeToo. It cultivates in every individual, ultimately preventing the hegemony of one group or one voice. That is at least what is expected of it. Accordingly, for any social movement to succeed in effecting change, it has to call upon these individuals not just as ‘soldiers’ that follow orders, but as equal partners. Merely promising participation, does not suffice. Fenton (2008) argues that the general public can feel disillusioned with traditional party politics that promise participation but fail to deliver, because of the value people attribute to actual interactivity, such as having a say in a cause’s story and contributing to its narrative and goals, rather than working for a party policy that was set in stone before they jump on the wagon. Rather, a movement or cause should devise an “iconic impact story” (Timms & Heimanns 2018, p.74) to build up their brand, one that is based on values of openness, sharing and connectedness. But most importantly, it should be spreadable among a fragmented audience and speak to all, causing all to feel an urgency to participate to effect the movement’s cause.

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Timms and Heimanns introduce the principle of ACE, the three elements a movement’s story should have, to enhance its chances of success. It should be: Actionable, be a call to action, designed to make you do something starting with sharing, but often progressing from this; Connected, promoting a connection with peers that share your values and create a like-minded community that spreads throughout members’ networks; Extensible, the story is easily customized and shaped by the participant. While it has a common stem, individuals can alter and extend the movement’s story to fit their own experience and values (2018, p.38). Especially the latter is paramount to participant engagement, as it speaks to their emotions and their sense of urgency without being directed by any kind of formal authority. Consequently, people feel part of the cause and do not participate merely for others, but because they believe in a positive aftermath for themselves, as well.

Notably, enabling individuals to adjust a movement’s story and cater it to their own desires means loosening the reins and relying on these individuals to make the movement a success. Thus Timms and Heimanns argue “it’s only really a movement if it moves with you” (2018, p.47), because of the personal stake individual participants have to make the movement a success.

The case of #MeToo displays an example of creating an iconic impact story, in harnessing the revelations of Weinstein’s alleged assault and the stories of the women that spoke out against him. These experiences captured the imagination of others online, playing on their emotions and on a desire to be recognized and heard. As mainstream media picked up this online emotion, in turn it enhanced the sense of urgency for the general public, which played out further in the online sphere. Social media, because of its spreadability, speed, and interconnectedness, theoretically afforded the public with the tools to make a message one’s own, due to its features of retweeting or reposting with added personal context, as well as creating whole communities around a single topic. It allowed individuals to, theoretically, become full and equal participants in the #MeToo movement. But does everyone get to share in this new power?

2.2 Hashtag activism

Social media enable co-creation. They cause instant gratification and satisfy the public’s participation needs. A main organiser for this, is the hashtag. A short phrase preceded by this symbol ‘#’, is all it takes to create a hashtag. The way hashtags have carved out their place in digital society, is exemplary of a deeply seated need for co-creation, and taking part in a larger conversation. Originally, the hashtag was not a feature of Twitter, rather it emerged out of collective practices of Twitter users (Nahon 2015, p.46). This practice rapidly spread and became a commonplace function of Twitter, as well as other social media applications such as Facebook and Instagram.

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Creating or applying a hashtag is a way of placing yourself in society. Your opinion can be found by anyone who is looking in the same place. When more and more people apply the same hashtag to their own posts and tweets, a community of like-minded users is created. They can be organised towards a common goal, increasingly faster and on a wider scale (Shirky 2012; Tufekci & Wilson 2012; Veenstra et al. 2014; Papacharissi 2016). Hashtags function as signifiers, ‘catchy’ phrases that resonate a deeper meaning among the audience, based on certain political standpoints or events, as well as everyday experiences. Hashtags are thus open to definition, dependent on who creates them, but especially on the context of their use. Because everyone can use a hashtag, it allows users to find other like-minded individuals that apply a hashtag similarly, providing them with a specific group identity, as well as a structure for collaborative storytelling (Papacharissi 2016, p.308). This structure enables users to create their own narrative, away from the mainstream media. Finding a community of like-minded people with similar narratives can create a strong, emotive bond between users that offers and requests sympathy and empathy, fostering a sense of belonging (Papacharissi 2016, p.310). Especially merited by hashtags, it is increasingly easier to uncover others with similar sentiments, reducing the risk of being singled out and receiving punishment. Due to the multitude of voices one can find that now feel free to express similar dissent, or support topics previously off-limits, users can feel a diminished risk of taking part themselves (Tufekci & Wilson 2012; Jackson et al. 2019). Combined, this provides users with a power that was previously out of their grasp. Xiong et al. (2019) call this “the power to establish the salience of particular issues” (Xiong et al. 2019, p.12). Such issues are generally framed differently by mainstream media, or are not represented at all. Social media, and hashtags in particular, are therefore a perfectly suited tool for activism, to broadcast those voices traditionally underrepresented in mainstream media.

2.2.1 Digital feminist activism

Consequently, often those marginalized or seen as a minority adapt to this new power quickly, clinging to these new methods to put pressure on achieving social or political change. Historically, women’s voices are part of those excluded and marginalized, while the internet now provides an alternative space for participation that they have taken to gladly (Mendes et al. 2018, p.241). And so feminist activism has transformed into digital feminist activism, also known as ‘hashtag feminism’. According to Jackson et al. (2019) this can mostly be ascribed to the historical belief in society that gendered violence and inequality are individual problems. It has been silenced and victims have consequently been marginalized, because it is assumed private, something the law cannot reach (2019, p.1). Social media, contrastingly, opens up the space for women to direct their own narrative

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and seek the public eye. In the digital age this public spreads beyond geographical boundaries, and allows consciousness-raising across the world. The networks that are consequently created around the “easy-to-digest” (Jackson et al. 2019, p.18) shorthands of hashtags can spur widespread, off- and online, social and political debates on a feminist counter-narrative.

Thus, while it is still aimed at raising a feminist consciousness and creating solidarity around the idea that gender inequality is a structural social problem, feminists can now do so online with a speed, immediacy and visibility to spread a shared understanding across the globe (Mendes et al. 2018, p.237). The internet has as such contributed to a ‘fourth wave’ of _{digital feminism, one that} deems digital calling out practices critical to instigating social change. Prime examples are #MeToo and the international parallels (among others) #QuellaVoltaChe (‘that time when’) and #BalanceTonPorc (‘name your pig’) especially. While sharing these hashtags can be both triggering and comforting to users (Mendes et al. 2018, p.238), the main soothing element is that users feel heard when seeing others apply the same hashtags accompanying similar stories.

While pushing feminist hashtag activism further into the public eye, #MeToo benefited from its origin in the involvement of celebrities such as Alyssa Milano, as well as advocacy organizations picking up such hashtags, illustrating that they can and do respond to the narratives and discussions that ordinary citizens purport. This shows a legitimization by the mainstream of these narratives, fuelling further discourse on the topic. Thus, #MeToo encloses “a loud chorus of voices that has, for years, been using Twitter and other social networks to tell women’s stories” (Jackson et al. 2019, p.19), confronting us with a display of marginalized emotions that have been boiling underneath the surface for years. It seems to resemble a broader trend of discourses on injustice that have opened up a new sphere online, where it looks like everyone can participate with an air of well-deserved freedom.

2.3 Feelings of (political) injustice

Internet and social media users have thus appropriated the freedom of this medium to fight for recognition. Much as feminists have fought for decades, even centuries, to achieve equality with and for other members of society, so too has every member of any group fought for the rights and recognition of their own. Either as an equal or rather to be acknowledged as different from the mainstream (Fukuyama 2018, p.107). Social media has contributed to creating solidarity and finding one’s community, but it has done so while adding the costs of polarization and fragmentation. Because everyone is spreading their own narratives and asking for recognition, there seems to be a

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limited supply of rights and recognition to go around. As everyone participates in the online sphere and is confronted with other people’s identities, the more people can feel affronted by these others.

Namely, while finding your own group may feel secure, such partisanship and solid social identities can shape what people accept as true (Kreiss 2017, p.3). The harder people dig themselves into their own point of view and establish a safe space amongst ‘their own’, the more adamant they will deny the rights of others for fear of losing their own. The identity that people fear to lose, is established from a distinction they feel between their ‘true’ inner self and the social rules of society (Fukuyama 2018, p.25). Thus, how do you distinguish yourself from others and how do you position yourself in society? If one feels at odds with this supposed role in society, they can feel a sense of alienation or anxiety, a fear of the consequences of such deviance in relation to the normative expectations put on them from the outside world (Butler 1988; Fukuyama 2018). People fear such alienation, because their individual self-esteem relies on the esteem that is conferred onto the larger group that they identify with as individuals (Fukuyama 2018, p.107), for instance, sexual assault survivors. As such, the group’s esteem is shaped through politicized social norms, such as the shame put on victims of sexual assault and the legal fight for responsibility of the assault, which consequently can affect the individual’s self-identification according to these societal norms. If the group is seen in a bad light, the individual may be seen in a bad light. Ergo, the individual, the survivor, may try to claim rights and change their status in society. However, when another who does not identify similarly as oneself discusses their rights of recognition, one feels fearful of losing one’s own rights, and perhaps even one’s status, if the ‘opposite’ group gains perceptively more rights than they do.

This fires up a politics of resentment, the perception that one’s group’s dignity has been disregarded or attacked, causing them to seek restitution, often at the cost of the other (Fukuyama 2018, p.7). Notably, this goes beyond economic grievances and touches upon emotions and feelings of indignity and disrespect, which make action much more acute. Such as in the case of #MeToo, which started off with the economic power Harvey Weinstein had as a director over the actresses that wanted to be in his movies. A power that he allegedly abused when demanding a quid pro quo in (non-consensual) physical and sexual acts. These actresses were not only offended by not obtaining the job, they were affronted in their capacity as women, and sexual harassment survivors. Especially when the general public and the legal system was geared against them when they publicized their report of events. #MeToo is thus geared towards changing the social narrative about sexual assault survivors and the political system that prevents many women from obtaining justice. It

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circles around to a matter of agency, over aforementioned economic grievances, as the ability to share in the exercise of power over one’s own identity, story, and in this case, body (Fukuyama 2018, p.47).

Nevertheless, as every group vies for the same recognition, deeming this a finite pool, the conversation polarizes, as if one group’s experience should be valued over another. These groups feel like they need to cordon off one clear identity to make the fight easier and more comprehensive in the public eye, and as such “retreat into ever narrower identities” (Fukuyama 2018, p.165). Even though, effectively, they are only hampering progress. People forget their shared characteristics, and most importantly, that one person can have multiple identities. Even one person hardly fits into the narrow description of one identity group. This is what Crenshaw dubbed the intersectionality of people, that one’s lived experiences on the basis of their separate identities can overlap, intersect, and are thus all unique in their own way (Crenshaw 1991, p.1244). Especially for women of color who are sexual assault survivors, it is difficult to fight for the recognition of one identity element, without hampering the other, ending up damaging both. Hence, people have overlapping traits with others, and we are only harming ourselves when we try to curb others’ empowerment. We cannot ask someone to “split one’s political” (Crenshaw 1991, p.1252) into either one gender, one race, _and whether or not one is a sexual assault or harassment survivor. Doing so, or rather assuming someone’s similarity to others based on one identity marker, would create a commonality and/or a normativity problem. These terms were coined by Haslanger (2000) to argue that we cannot define gender in one way. A commonality problem includes the failure of acknowledging that the category of ‘a’ woman, that all women supposedly subscribe to, does not exist. A problem that becomes normative, if the myth it is based on prescribes a norm that isolates those people who do not conform to it. Both the normativity and commonality problem are transferable to other identity markers as exemplified by Crenshaw’s intersectionality, pushing forth a preferred approach to matters of political injustice. Or one will always lose on one or the other battlefield, whether fighting racism, the patriarchy, or the perpetrator.

2.4 Rethinking the terms on which we participate

Such dichotomy is also evident in today’s politics and the public’s political engagement, surrounding binaries of left versus right, progressive versus conservative, or simply good versus bad. On the one hand society is significantly fragmented by these binaries, while on the other hand mainstream politics is losing its devoted followers to transient affiliations and ‘one-issue’ lifestyle

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politics (Bennett 2012; Ekman & Amna 2012; Graham et al. 2016; Timms & Heimans 2018) - at least in many western democracies.

Technologies have granted more transparency, through which the public has witnessed failures of authorities that are supposed to know better than the people (Ekman & Amna 2012; Timms & Heimans 2018). Hence instead of supporting a single party program, many have begun to flock from one cause to the next; think of environmental or feminist plights for social and political change. Modern politics has become “a politics of personal emotion” (Bennett 2012, p.26), in which people follow that which they want to believe is right, and plaster it on the outside of their identities for the world to see. In doing so, they create extremely individualized and personal political identities, coded through personal lifestyle values (Bennett 2012, p.22), making the personal political in an era of personalized politics.

However, because people rely this much on their personal values, there are too many parts of their identity that they want to display to the outside world, in particular because people are rarely forever committed to one aspect of their being. One’s interests fluctuate, hence identities fluctuate, especially because people are exposed to a myriad of possibilities online. Consequently, they are guided by what Timms and Heimans (2018, p.25) call “transient affiliation”. They move from one cause to the next, from #BlackLivesMatter to #MeToo to #ClimateMarch, showing their commitment to multiple causes rather than just the one. This seems to suggest that they are less committed overall, even though they are devoted to plenty of separate causes. Instead of signalling a lack of engagement, users are constantly showing (off) their involvement with society to other people online. They use social media to affiliate with a range of causes, visibly, and seem to be enthralled by a new ‘opt in, opt out’ politics. According to this trend, it seems we have to rethink the system. Contrary to frowning about a decrease in political participation, we may have to consider less traditional and formal participation and, “reinvent the terms on which we participate” (Timms & Heimans 2018, p.252).

We have to rethink the system, the form of political participation. As Hay states, formal participation is too narrow for what today brings (2007, p.71), and widening the scope, the definition of political participation can make it more inclusive of other forms, in keeping with the participative values that people have taken up in a new power world. Manifest, traditional political participation often means voting in official elections, writing to politicians directly, being a member of a political party, or running for office. These are actions within the political domain, actions that, according to the definition of Ekman and Amna (2012) have as aim to directly influence the people in power.

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Though, this foregoes the more latent forms of political participation. Those actions that do require being involved in society and current affairs, such as discussing politics, donating money, boycotting or even recycling (Ekman & Amna 2012, p.288). We often think of these as civic engagement, pre-political, rather than political participation.

Within the literature there is disagreement on what actually classifies as traditional political participation and what would fall in the category of latent participation or civic engagement. Skoric et al. (2016) argue that protest activities, donating money and displaying campaign buttons online, are for instance also acts of political participation (Skoric et al. 2016, p.1824). They do categorize this as political participation on social media, because such personalized acts have a positive relationship with eventual offline participation (Skoric et al. 2016, p.1834). Others say that social media does not have that much influence on politics. Shirky (2011) argues that the tools of social media are ineffective in affecting politics, and most importantly, they do harm to democratization rather than good. Social media, Shirky says, promote “slacktivism”: casual, barely committed participants engage in social interaction at low costs, rather than being motivated to truly change something in politics (Shirky 2011, p.38).

According to Pontes et al. (2018) it has become a matter that is divided along generational lines. Old and young have different definitions of what they consider political participation, making it unclear what is what (Pontes et al. 2018, p.13). Their research into British and Portuguese youth showed that young people tend to not distinguish between online or offline when comparing one political act over another, whether this is signing a petition or sharing a political video (Pontes et al. 2018, p.13). Young people thus see the political value and engagement in both. Such online sharing has become a new political act that we should come to view in its own right, as opposed to considering online participation in the old terms of offline participation. Significantly, Pontes et al. (2018, p.9) do point out that sharing social media posts could indicate copycat behavior rather than political awareness, yet it could symbolize political action for youth. Such behavior could also signal a savvy awareness of the strengths and vulnerabilities of digital media (Chadwick et al. 2015, p.16). Especially considering that both political and media actors are increasingly ruled by social media.

What all do seem to agree on is the fact that social media have altered political mobilisation. For one, because the internet acknowledges diversity in political desire and because it delivers on the promise of participation and interactivity that party politics failed to, social media can make the public more motivated to engage in politics (Fenton 2008, p.42). Second, social media have brought new opportunities for activist groups and social movements like #MeToo. As social media offers

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diversified and personalised forms of participation and reduces the costs of organising, it has ameliorated the amount of social movements and other new participants in the political process. Theocharis (2015) even goes as far as stating that a new type of protester may be emerging. As befitting of a new power world, she is young, skilful and only occasionally mobilised by calls for action in her news feed. She is prone to participating in one-off mobilisation that expresses her values and identity preferences (Theocharis 2015, p.187).

2.5 Social movements’ media tactics

This new protester chooses to focus on one cause at a time, to feel like she’s truly participating, so she takes part in social movements, a characteristic of today’s politics. Social movements encompass the social and political elements of modern life, in their being an outlet for identity proclamation, as well as political affiliation. Social movements ultimately rely on the user and participant for their subsistence. But they are multiplying and have become more or less mainstream, in the shape of #BlackLivesMatter, #Occupy, India Against Corruption, Aganaktismenoi, and others. People want to depend less on traditional institutions, and not in the least because these institutions need to adjust to the opt in, opt out attitude of the people. It is up to the social movement to have the public attach and achieve a whirlwind of attention and effectiveness in a timespan of at least a month, only to know this public backing will die out in approximately four months, which seems to be the average lifetime of a social movement (Theocharis 2015, p.188). People engage with a social movement, so they can give (public) life to one of their social identities, before moving on to the next one (Della Porta, 2011, p.803).

Social movements exist because of the disagreements people have on certain aspects of social reality (Diani 1992; Bennett & Segerberg 2012; Fukuyama 2018). They are networks of different people that, together, engage in political or cultural conflicts (Diani 1992, p.3). What binds the networks of a social movement together, is a shared collective identity that relies on a feeling of resentment, as aforementioned, that this identity has not been properly recognized by society and politics. In keeping with this, social movements are typically informal, which means they do not require a certain hierarchy to move forward (Diani 1992; Fenton 2008; Bennett & Segerberg 2012). Instead, social movements are, ideally, horizontal in organisational structure (Diani 1992, p.3), making it easier for individuals to participate and have an equal say in how the movement operates and propagates itself. It seems this stems from feelings of underrepresentation and a desire for equal participation that these identity groups feel they did not have access to in traditional society.

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The non-hierarchical structure of social movements works its way down to the media strategies that these movements apply. The “repertoires of communication” (Mattoni 2013, p.42) - the entire portfolio of media used - of social movements used to be based on traditional methods, such as mailing lists to inform participants, or keeping contact with journalists to promote new events. Now, though, social movements chiefly employ social media (Mattoni 2013, p.46). They do so because of the impression they have of social media, their “lay theory of media” (McCurdy 2013, p.59). As aforementioned, social media are believed to be open to participation by all. And because the movement profiles itself this way as well - non-hierarchical network, autonomous, loosely structured (McCurdy, 2013, p.64) - it solicits social media to emit this to the public. Social media encourages the co-production of content, and there is no need for the involvement of traditional political institutions (Theocharis 2015, p.190).

What has become unique to these social media movements, is the “viral solidarity” (Fenton 2008, p.50) they can create. While social movements can have a significant backing on the ground, these online movements can generate a worldwide following. Because it can bring together people from such various backgrounds, it fosters a solidarity in multiple perspectives, as these people find their own identity within this social movement. Fenton (2008) argues that this kind of solidarity, as created online, has power offline, as the struggles fought for online have real lived resonance offline (Fenton 2008, p.52), uniting a whole public to push forward.

Similarly, Papacharissi and Blasiola (2015) state that differentiating between online and offline mobilisation has no real use. The one or the other is not more real or more impactful, they argue, because all types of activism are fuelled by people. Hence the impact of this activism is cumulative, and online efforts on multiple platforms as well as offline efforts work toward a combined result (Papacharissi & Blasiola 2015, p.218). Rather, they argue, it is the collaborative storytelling at the root of social media movements that grant it power, no matter if this is done online or offline. Social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, are always-on social environments that foster conversations between people with disparate perspectives, who can bond together over the same experiences and emotions and it is the collaborative narrative that ensues that gives the movement a voice and “amplifies the potential of the movement” (Papacharissi & Blasiola 2015, p.211). Thus, it is the collaborative narrative, whether devised on- or offline, which grants the movement visibility and potential in the social sphere.

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2.6 Media power, narrative building and morality

While it is true that such a narrative can empower a social movement in the eye of the public, and grant it the visibility it needs for mobilisation, it is exactly this ‘collaborative’ storytelling in which the problems lie. Social movements now use social media to be in control of their own narrative, to subvert mainstream media and put their own message out to the public, as well as allow everyone to have a part in making it. They consequently have a stake in making the social movement effective. Social movements often have the aim to disrupt the dominant narrative and purport underrepresented viewpoints (Papacharissi 2016, p.318). Collectively, they aim to reimagine society and allow for symbolic change in people’s minds, before real-life change in traditional institutions (Papacharissi 2016, p.320). This disruptive narrative is often very emotional to the people who engage with it, for instance in the case of #MeToo, users shared deeply personal stories of sexual assault and harassment, together with others they did not even know. All together, these individual stories formed a “collective chorus” (Papacharissi 2016, p.318) of similar experiences surrounding sexual assault, with the aim of breaking the silence on this topic often considered taboo, as well as creating lasting changes in policies and attitudes.

This is where the problems come in. Because of this collective chorus, the narrative of the movement as collectively created by all participants, becomes progressively more narrow. Logically, you would think that if everyone shared their own experience, this narrative would do the opposite, and generate an inclusive message to the outside world. However, collaborative storytelling such as this concerns a form of norm creation. Consider, for example, the hashtag and retweet features of Twitter. If more and more people retweet a single or similar tweets, or use the hashtag in one specific way, this is what other users come to see as the ‘trending’ way of interacting with the topic (Veenstra et al. 2014, p.492). Consequently those who perceive themselves as a minority, whether in society, in lived experience, or in narrative, may experience a similar position within the social movement, despite the advocacy of social movements in favour of such underrepresented voices. Hence, these voices may be careful in sharing their opinion, because they still believe they will be alone, or be part of the minority within the minority, and be singled out from the rest or not fully represented by the movement. Thus, these minority voices can be drowned out by the majority of similar stories out there, limiting user affiliation in the future, as fewer ‘deviant’ voices may feel connected to the movement’s narrative and stop participating, that is, a normativity problem (Haslanger, 2000).

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This process is not limited to social media; a similar process occurs in mainstream media. Despite their desire and tendency for freedom on social media, social movements are still dependent on the coverage of mainstream media of the activities and message of the movement. Social media has not touched everyone’s daily life to the same extent, and mainstream media is still highly relevant, as people recognize and (usually) respect them. Social movements thus need both to reach their full potential (Chadwick et al. 2015). Nevertheless, such coverage is never by nature objective in reflecting social reality as is. The subjectivity of each individual journalist as well as the ideology of the news outlet informs the selection and presentation of any event, thereby impressing a specific meaning upon it (Broersma 2010, p.16). This shows journalism as a performative discourse, as it provides the public with a certain reading of the social world. The performative power that the journalist holds is influenced by the forms, practices, structures and styles that journalists adhere to, as only when these are recognized by the public, can they affect the public (Broersma 2010, p.17). The journalist thus, when adhering to the constraints of form and style, retains the authority on the meaning making in society and can affect how the public views and experiences reality (Broersma 2010, p.30). Therefore, the narrative of a social movement that mainstream media purport, affects how the public subsequently appraises this movement. If the media discuss only a narrow narrative, this is what the public will believe about the movement, once again dismissing the minority voices, sustaining the lack of such voices in the collaborative storytelling process, adding to this cycle.

Then, when reviewing the outrage people feel about not being recognized in their identity as discussed before, why do people not push their way into the discussion and put their point of view forward? The answer to this question is a matter of morality. The media are, in some ways, an authority on morality (Ettema & Glasser 1988; Kreiss 2017). As Broersma (2010) presents that the information journalists spread relate to the meaning making of society, so do Ettema and Glasser (1988) argue that the narrative that journalists publish is the form that such a meaning comes in (Ettema & Glasser 1988, p.9). Considering that the author decides to write only the one narrative, making choices regarding what to in- or rather, exclude, this is the way in which the author “asserts his moral authority” (Ettema & Glasser 1988, p.10). And it is precisely this in or exclusion that influences the public, as what is spoken about, communication, creates a moral code in democratic life, directing political action (Kreiss 2017, p.4).

There is power in discourse, as merely naming something creates an identity and builds up boundaries around this identity (Butler 1993, p.17). If this naming practice is repeated, thus included in the (journalist’s) narrative, these boundaries become more solid (Butler 1993, p.19), making it

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harder for anyone to puncture these boundaries and change the narrative. A journalist’s moral authority thus does not rely on an “overt display of moral force” (Ettema and Glasser 1988, p.11). Rather, like Broersma also states, it relies on the conventions of language. And it is such small, seemingly innocuous intrusions in people’s daily thoughts that affect them the most. For example, the absence of public discussions on sexual assault has long rendered it an issue of low moral importance, even an immoral topic to discuss. This is the power of representation: when something is not talked about, it becomes taboo and remains obscured from public discourse. Hence when someone desires to discuss it, they refrain because they feel underrepresented and fear to be shunned by association. #MeToo broke this spiral by bringing the topic to worldwide attention. Nevertheless, in the case of sexual assault, matters go beyond broaching a topic, its narrative also rests on, once again, who is included in or excluded from the discussion. If only certain aspects of sexual assault are discussed, the discussion centers around this. Anything out of the ordinary is judged more harshly on its moral basis, as people rely on a “stable, shared moral horizon” (Fukuyama 2018, p.56) and anything that might disrupt this stability renders people insecure and alienated, causing them to lash out at the ‘perpetrator’.

Correspondingly, there are multiple factors that would inhibit a plethora of narratives on sexual assault to exist. And in their research, Xiong et al. (2019) discovered that multiple non-governmental and social organisations do indeed use the #MeToo hashtag in specific contexts. For instance, the words ‘women’, ‘sexual harassment’, ‘survivor’, ‘movement’, and ‘story’ were most associated with #MeToo and used on social media by these organisations (Xiong et al. 2019, p.15). They also added their own hashtags, #SexualHarassment, #SexualAssault, #RapeCulture (Xiong et al. 2017, p.17). All of these show the associations with #MeToo that these organisations draw when confronted with the topic. Note that none of these mention people of color, transgender individuals, or men. Historically, women of color have been erased from feminist histories, and Tarana Burke, the woman of color who first coined the Me Too movement, wanted #MeToo to also go in a different direction than it turned eventually (Jackson et al. 2019, p.5). The voices that argue that #MeToo is more than female victims of rape, can be shadowed over by the hardcore feminists focused on white female pain. Ergo, while it may be technologically easy for people to engage in online activism, there are still many barriers that legitimate some experiences, perspectives and voices over others (Mendes et al. 2018, p.237).

This is fundamental to political action, as morality is guided through the narratives that exist in the public consciousness, and people evaluate political action through this morality. What is

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subsequently legitimate or illegitimate shapes the possibilities for social and symbolic action (Kreiss 2017, p.4). To return to Papacharissi’s (2016, p.320) concept of reimagination, this is narrowed, limited, when only a handful of moral narratives prevail, requiring only limited action for social change.

2.7 Online interaction, leadership and super-participants

Nevertheless, this consists of ‘creator’ related theory, while the media are not all-powerful, and we can ascribe a certain degree of agency to the public, the users. Hence, how do they respond to such narratives? How are they affected by this and what effect do they have on each other?

Research tends to focus on the positive attributions of technological advancements such as social media. The internet provides a “public forum function” (Schudson 2008, p.12), allowing people to engage in critical political discourse with people from all walks of life. It fosters “news talk” (Bird 2011, p.494), allowing people to discuss the world’s events of the day and is increasingly catered to do so, think of social plug-ins that let you share a news article on social media (Almgren & Olsson 2016). News talk, and thus political talk, has moved to online (Della Porta 2011; Boulianne 2015; Wihbey 2015; Wright et al. 2015) and to platforms that offer immediacy and interaction, such as Twitter. This has not only allowed for politicians to stand in direct contact with their constituency, but for said constituency to contact their elected officials as well (boyd et al. 2010; Blumler 2015). Therefore, politics do not only influence the media, as social media have come to influence politics and political discourse in turn.

Moreover, social media have become inherently political spaces, as every decision with regards to technology and online interaction is made by people (Nahon 2015, p.40). Its basic structure is non-neutral, and so are its affordances and rules. On its own, it can favor one type of content over another, making the one thing seem more ‘natural’ than the other (Nahon 2015, p.42). Leading to common user practices not decided on by the users themselves, but provided by the platform. Consider Twitter, which has upped their 140 character limit to 280 in 2017, but still cordons off how much people can share at a time. Or consider the ‘liking’ buttons on Facebook, that afford only six options of quick responses. Social media have thus affected people’s relationship to the public sphere and how they (inter)act within it. Rather than being passive consumers, they have become creators (Fuchs 2014, p.57). Though, while we like to think of social media allowing these creators to be free from private ownership and censorship, and promoting sociality through connecting all people in a network (Fuchs 2014, p.60), is this true?

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Timms and Heimans write about the #MeToo movement that “no one was the boss of this movement, #MeToo was ownerless” (2018, p.4), touching upon the source of the strength of #MeToo, which was giving a sense of power to the participants, and courage to stand up and share their story, to be part of the current. Later on, however, Timms and Heimans (2018) state that their concept of new power - in which agency lies with the participant, all participants - can actually have the opposite effect of less equal representation (Timms & Heimans 2018, p.21). Rather, as Gerbaudo (2012) also argues, “social media do not magically introduce a level playing field” (Gerbaudo 2012, p.140), but it is precisely these social media that create new forms of leadership, through their organisational structures, in line with the argument presented by the aforementioned Nahon (2015). Accordingly, despite the egalitarian ideology of social media, new forms of leadership ensue.

There will always be a select few that lead the conversation and information flow (Gerbaudo 2012, p.135), especially if no clear official leader and rules have been designated. This separation in minority creators and majority consumers is envisioned through a “disparity in followers and followed” (Gerbaudo 2012, p.144) on social media. Features such as followers, but also retweeting practices, mentioning, and taking over certain hashtags indicate leadership formation (Fenton 2008; Veenstra et al. 2014; Papacharissi & Blasiola 2015; Papacharissi 2016). For instance, in a previous moment of digital feminist activism, the network on #WhyIStayed, centered around the creator of this hashtag, who was retweeted and mentioned double the amount of times as the other most popular contributors (Jackson et al. 2019, p.11). In the case of #MeToo, Xiong et al. (2017) discuss the uses of the hashtag by NGOs and other topical organisations, and note that the third most common use is to celebrate celebrities’ leadership online (Xiong et al. 2017, p.17). These organisations acknowledge that without the involvement of these celebrity ‘leaders’, the movement would probably not have garnered the same amount of attention. This process is easily explained, as it seems that those with the most social and financial resources often have the ability to mold a movement (Fenton 2008, p.47). Especially in capitalist society, Fenton (2008 p.47) argues, the online is severely rooted in the offline, where social constraints led by cultural and economic capital are ever prevalent. Ergo, online (opinion) leadership is unavoidable.

Those who hold this leadership are also called “super-participants” (Graham & Wright 2014; Timms & Heimans 2018). These super-participants are the most active contributors, and often considered agenda-setters. They have a disproportionate influence on the information flow and “the nature of the debate” (Graham & Wright 2014, p.628). The “core assets” of these super-participants power the movement (Timms & Heimans 2018, p.89). With regards to how #MeToo unfolded on

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Twitter, Alyssa Milano and Tarana Burke may be considered such super-participants. While they intended to profile themselves as part of the crowd, Milano’s initial tweet propelled her status forward, which later happened to Burke as she was recognized for her earlier contributions. Even though Milano and Burke are central figures and it appears much of the communication on #MeToo centres around these two, as people replied to their tweets with their own stories, the question remains whether they - and their consequent narrative - circulated in the general opinion amongst the other users.

2.7.1 Comment section behavior

Still, it is not merely celebrities who participate in online discussion. Generally, people who engage online, do so in environments that are closely tailored to them as individuals, to their tastes and interests (Bird 2011, p.495). Consequently, the opinions they are exposed to reflect the ones they have as well, the so-called echo chamber, in which one’s own opinion is continuously mirrored, leading to the strengthening of your beliefs (Flaxman et al. 2016). However, on platforms of a more general nature such as forums on lifestyle issues or even in the comment sections of major news outlets - despite people often consuming news from ideologically similar outlets -, the chance of being confronted with opinions other than your own increases. In this case, we often expect partisan shouting matches.

Notably, in third spaces - websites such as lifestyle forums where we would not expect political talk to occur - ‘everyday political talk’ grows out of topical conversations (Graham & Wright 2014; Wright et al. 2015; Graham et al. 2016). Through their following of a lifestyle blog on motherhood, Graham et al. (2016) witnessed how people create strong personal bonds and even organize collective action around common issues (Graham et al. 2016, p.1385). Moreover, the most common interaction in such third spaces is the sharing of personal information that fosters such bonds (Graham & Wright 2014, p.633). The users link their personal stories to real experiences in society, creating a reflexive political thread on a topic that other users recognize and engage with (Graham & Wright 2014, p.636). The sharing of personal information thus ranks first as online behaviors in third spaces, before giving each other advice, providing information and arguing over interpretations, to only have degrading comments and curbing others’ expression at the bottom of the list (Graham & Wright 2014, p.634). Political talk increased the likelihood of such degrading commentary, consequently fragmenting the discussion (Graham & Wright 2014, p.638).

Hence, in spaces where political talk is expected to occur, e.g. in news comment sections, how is the interaction shaped? And most importantly, what do users respond to in news articles, and

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one another’s comments? Initially, the asynchronous nature of such comment sections provides the right circumstance for deliberative communication to occur, which relies on mutual recognition of equality and interactivity (Freiss & Eilders 2015, p.329). Furthermore, comment sections rely on social capital in the forms of reciprocity and information provision, even trust, and when others use this currency, it fosters participation (Skoric et al. 2016). Nevertheless, while the anonymity afforded to users online increases this participation and quantity of comments, it negatively affects the quality (Papacharissi 2004; Bird 2011; Friess & Eilders 2015). As Bird states, “the internet frees people to talk in ways they would not face to face” (Bird 2011, p.500) because it removes social constraints. People fall back on stereotyping, name-calling and “mean-spirited characterizations” (Bird 2011, p.499). As such, online conversations often spiral and digress from the topic of the news post, rapidly polarizing instead (Peacock et al. 2019, p.754). Research then speaks of ‘incivility’, which Papacharissi defines as comments that deny people their personal freedoms, use stereotypes and display behavior that threatens democracy (2004, p.267). Such comments are often highly partisan, emotional and rude. Ziegele et al. (2017) argue that it is not the gender or age of a user that influence their comment behavior, but their education and most importantly, their party affiliation. Partisanship, especially in the American context - as also relevant to this research on #MeToo - is paramount in comment section behavior (Muddiman & Stroud 2017; Ziegele et al. 2017; Peacock et al. 2019).

Especially concerning news articles on sensitive topics such as immigration, race and sexuality, polarization across party lines is evident (Santana 2016, p.143-4). Because partisanship is fundamental for many people’s social identity, they tend to display this offline and online, and endorse comments that reflect their political stance (Muddiman & Stroud 2017, p.591-2). However, it also spurs on the formation of camps in control of emotional content, such as anger and indignation that further fuel uncivil commentary, resulting in the aforementioned shouting match (Muddiman & Stroud 2017, p.591). It is also precisely this type of content that increases the participation of others in a political discussion (Kalch & Naab 2017; Kreiss 2017; Muddiman & Stroud 2017), a type of action that we can classify as political participation if we ‘rethink the terms on which we participate’, despite this discussion being partisan rather than deliberative.

Strikingly, there is disagreement on whether noticing the underrepresentation of one’s viewpoints increases the likelihood of participation, or decreases it. Peacock et al. (2019) argue that people are more eager to engage in discussion when they believe their stance is underrepresented. Contrastingly, Zerback and Fawzi (2017) argue for the spiral of silence theory, stating that if there is

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a clear majority opinion that is backed up by other users, one will hold out on sharing their divergent viewpoint and stay silent (Zerback and Fawzi 2017, p.1035). The more people that behave in this manner, the more the majority opinion is represented and other voices will not be taken into account. This is in line with the above discussion on the influence of a movement’s limited narrative on others’ identification with this movement. Because, as Zerback and Fawzi also state, when the media depict only a certain opinion, public opinion can follow these exemplars, leading to further marginalization of diverging stances (Zerback & Fawzi 2017, p.1036).

Notwithstanding, the comments that we can read in comment sections, may not reflect all positions in political discussion, and more importantly, the online opinions that we do read, do not necessarily have to reflect people’s offline opinions (Zerback & Fawzi 2017, p.1038). Unfortunately, by limiting our scope to the comments we cannot deduce this possible difference. Moreover, political correctness has become an increasing issue in social interactions and subsequently in political debates. Such considerations of well-mannered discourse could lead to self-censorship on one hand, or the suppression of contradictory views of others (Kalch & Naab 2017, p.400). The mere mention by one user that they are offended by someone’s opinion can delegitimize this opinion and eliminate it from the discussion. This further decreases the quality of online discussions. Lastly, in many online communities, there are users that scroll and view, but do not actively engage. These passive participants are also called “lurkers” (Springer et al. 2015, p.799). For one, we cannot know what their opinions are. For two, these lurkers raise the question whether they are also politically engaged and participating, if they merely read and refrain from interacting with the other users.

2.7.2 Twitter behavior

Such interaction, as in comment sections, can also be limited to ‘liking’ certain posts, rather than posting your own. The same is applicable to Twitter, a medium which relies on easily replicated content, shared by one click on the ‘retweet’ button. A user does not even have to formulate their own opinion, but can share and endorse someone else’s. As such, retweeting on Twitter has shaped how conversations take place in the medium (boyd et al. 2010). Because of its character limits, the dialogue is rapid and concise (Gerbaudo 2012, p.151). This, and the structural form of Twitter does not facilitate deliberative communication (Wright et al. 2015, p.81). Though, recently Twitter has introduced ‘threading’, which allows people to respond to one another directly and on topic, fostering a real conversation. This gives Twitter the potential to be a better platform for political dialogue and political participation.

‘Together we can break the silence’