Anatomy of Protest in the Digital Era: A Network Analysis of<i>Twitter</i>and Occupy Wall Street

TLDR

Activists used Twitter to organize and spread the Occupy Wall Street movement two months before its first protest in September 2011. The study seeks to identify the central hubs, emergence pathways, and key dialogue points in OWS Twitter discourse that facilitated the movement’s nationwide scale. Researchers applied network analysis to the earliest #OccupyWallStreet tweets to answer these questions and link social‑movement theory with network‑centrality metrics.

Abstract

Two months before the first Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest in September 2011, activists were using Twitter to organize and spread the movement. In this study, the earliest Twitter messages regarding #OccupyWallStreet were subjected to network analysis to answer these questions: What were the central hubs in the OWS discourse on Twitter in the summer of 2011? How did OWS emerge from among several social movement organizations to lead a nationwide series of demonstrations? What were the key points in the Twitter dialogue that aided the process of scale shift? By addressing these questions, this research connects social movement concepts with network centrality measures to provide a clearer picture of movements in the digital era.