Social Movements and the Internet

Over the past few decades, social movements have increasingly relied on social movement participants leveraging internet technologies in mobilization, coordination, and public outreach to assist in their movement goals. How have new online tools such as social media and digital connectivity changed the processes of contemporary social movements? This course uses a sociological perspective to examine the ways social movements have adapted to online technologies to critically think about how the internet has altered traditional forms of social movement mobilization. The first half of the course is an introduction and review of traditional social movement literatures, while the second half is focused on different contemporary social movements where the internet played an important role, including the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ equality, feminism and the #MeToo movement, and most recently, the storming of the U.S. Capitol. Students will be encouraged to think about the ways in which social movement processes have been accelerated and/or changed due to the effects of online technologies.