The Dynamics of Protest Recruitment through an Online Network

TL;DR

This paper investigates how online social networks, specifically Twitter during the 2011 Spanish protests, facilitate protest recruitment through social influence and complex contagion, highlighting the roles of early participants and spreaders.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence linking online network positions to recruitment dynamics and tests formal models of collective action in digital contexts.

Findings

Early participants are not topologically distinct but are influential.

Spreaders tend to be more central in the network.

Social influence and complex contagion drive protest recruitment.

Abstract

The recent wave of mobilizations in the Arab world and across Western countries has generated much discussion on how digital media is connected to the diffusion of protests. We examine that connection using data from the surge of mobilizations that took place in Spain in May 2011. We study recruitment patterns in the Twitter network and find evidence of social influence and complex contagion. We identify the network position of early participants (i.e. the leaders of the recruitment process) and of the users who acted as seeds of message cascades (i.e. the spreaders of information). We find that early participants cannot be characterized by a typical topological position but spreaders tend to me more central to the network. These findings shed light on the connection between online networks, social contagion, and collective dynamics, and offer an empirical test to the recruitment mechanisms theorized in formal models of collective action.