Past Events

EURYKA Seminar on ‘Social Movement Organizations in the Internet Age’, December 2017

The seminar was organized by EURYKA and the Spanish project partner, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), on 15th December 2017. Research on digital protest has shown that some uses of digital technology can dramatically lower organization and participation costs. As a result, social movement protests and campaigns have been able to hold with little to no involvement from traditional social movement organizations (SMO).
This talk assessed the developing debate around SMO involvement in several ways. First, the talk assessed the extent to which SMO-centric understandings of social movements’ influence depend on a specific model of power and the talk suggests that new models of power may have been opened up using digital technologies. Second, the talk assessed the literature on SMO involvement in the organization of protest, which includes assessing the day-to-day contributions of SMOs (including in terms of youth engagement and movement inclusivity) as well as the ecological impact of SMOs on movements. Third, the talk assessed evidence on shifts in the so-called “demand side” of protest, represented by preferences of potential and actual protest participants for SMO-organization. Finally, the talk identified important horizons for future research on this topic.

spanish seminar.png

Check out UOC’s EURYKA page here: euryka.rdi.uoc.edu/

Euryka