Over the past decade, there has been a drastic change in the way we do protests.
The very catalyzers which were once deemed important for strong protests have changed.
Be it Hong-Kong, India, Lebanon, or the USA they all have witnessed this year something that is called ‘Leaderless protests’.
These types of protests came to prominence in 2011 during the ‘Arab Springs’ which engulfed Islamic nations which ultimately led to regime changes in countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya. The political and social impacts of these uprisings are still significant even years after when many of them have ended.
This tweet from Faeaz Rashed shows how people started using the internet to make their protests more effective.
But what brought such a change? There’s no doubt in how effective social media has been to facilitate the exchange of information, it has made it easier for people to connect with like-minded individuals, we see one-sided content curated specifically to emotionally target a group. Since many people identify with the issues being raised they naturally come out without the need for a face for the protest, it also made it easier for one to raise their voice on social media because of the anonymity factor.
What shines about these leaderless protests is that one doesn’t have to identify with a person/leader but only with the cause to participate. This also enables them to define the protest in their own way. Without any leader or face, the government has no one to negotiate with, no one to arrest or pressurize, making it hard to deal with the uprising.
This is something that worked for the Hong Kong protests, after the arrest of Joshua Wong, one of the key players in Hong Kong’s Pro-Democracy movement and the ‘Umbrella Movement’ in 2014, the protests still continued and the authorities found it difficult to suppress it as they did not have a leader to pin out anymore.
Social media only helped the movement as the issue did not stay within the border but gained international support.
There is something really special about this movement in the fact that how well social media was used to coordinate the protests.‘End to end encryption’ of the messaging apps like ‘Whatsapp’ and ‘Telegram’ made it easier to share protest-related info with thousands of people at once, police hotspots were regularly updated. The protesters had made clear their demands and made sure they did not disrupt essential public services.
Moving back to the leader protests, ironically their strengths are also their weaknesses, without a leader it is easier for a movement to lose its aim and end up on a violent path which only gives the government an excuse to forcibly suppress it. Also since there is no one to lay down clear goals, everyone joins the protest with their own definition of it and demands. The key aim of the protest becomes blurry and keeps on changing.
This happened with the BLM movement where the initial demand of the majority was to arrest the officers responsible but later it changed into a campaign to defund the police and also diverged into a campaign to bring justice to the other past victims, making it weaker with time.
Social media has indeed increased participation but has also brought about ‘Slacktivism’, these virtual protests die out as fast as they gain momentum.
This screen capture from google trends shows how fast the #occupywallstreet movement from September 2011 died out.
Another problem with social media protests is that it focuses more on ‘instant justice’, they overlook the broader issue.
In the Hyderabad rape case, it didn’t take time for people to ask for the death penalty for the rapists but, no one talked about the root causes of crimes against women, this is because it can seem satisfying to ask for the death penalty but it takes time and efforts to fix the root issues which unless fixed will bring no change.
It is also very easy to manipulate people on social media with a one-sided take of events and the algorithm only worsens the problem by creating a wall between you and people with different opinions. You hardly get to view the complete picture online.
Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis is an example of that.
Myanmar in August 2017, a deadly crackdown by Myanmar’s army on Rohingya Muslims sent hundreds of thousands fleeing across the border into Bangladesh.
They risked everything to escape by sea or on foot a military offensive which the United Nations later described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, the refugees were then denied entry in Bangladesh and the pandemic multiplied their problems. Facebook was used to spread hate among people (U.N. investigators cite Facebook's role in the Myanmar crisis).
However, overall leaderless protests have proved to be more effective, faster, and stronger and governments have been trying to find ways around it by using internet shutdown which is something the Indian government used the most this year to curb CAA-NRC protests and after the abolition of article 360 in Jammu & Kashmir.
Overall Jammu & Kashmir and Rajasthan saw the most number of shutdowns.
But the only way forward is on the ground protests along with the use of the internet.
This Data was taken from Internetshutdowntracker.
Citations
University, Stanford. “Leaderless Protest Is a Strength and Weakness.” Stanford News, 5 June 2020.
https://news.stanford.edu/2020/06/04/leaderless-protest-strength-weakness/
Saleh, Heba. “Leaderless Rebellion: How Social Media Enables Global Protests.”| Financial Times, Financial Times, 25 Oct. 2019.
https://www.ft.com/content/19dc5dfe-f67b-11e9-a79c-bc9acae3b654
Bohen, Celestine. “Protest Movements Without a Public Face”. The New York Times, 7 Oct. 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/opinion/international-world/protest-movements-public-face.html
Jost, John T., et al. “How Social Media Facilitates Political Protest: Information, Motivation, and Social Networks.” Wiley Online Library, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 13 Feb. 2018, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/pops.12478.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/pops.12478
Yeung, Jessie. “The Hong Kong Protests, Explained.” CNN, Cable News Network, 20 Dec. 2019, edition.cnn.com/2019/11/15/asia/hong-kong-protests-explainer-intl-hnk-scli/index.html.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/15/asia/hong-kong-protests-explainer-intl-hnk-scli/index.html
“Internet Shutdowns in India.” Internet Shutdown Tracker.
Rashed, Fawaz (@FawazRashed) Tweet about using the internet for spreading protest awareness, March 19, 2011. Tweet.
