The mobile phone in street protest: Texting, tweeting, tracking, and tracing

Abstract

This paper examines the role of information provision through mobile communication in mass street protest. The argument is based on two case studies: (a) the civic outrage of young people concerning the destruction of a youth centre in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2006 and (b) the use of mobile phones in antifascist protests in Dresden, Germany in 2011. The cases are analysed across three dimensions that are relevant to mobile communication tactics for providing information in protest: Actors, power relations between the actors, and goals. By identifying the affordances of the mobile phone for providing information across these dimensions, we argue that mobile communication can be appropriated to increase activists’ repertoire of actions, foster resistance, and shut down opportunities. The ways in which the affordances of mobile phones limit and empower resistance are located at the intersection of coordination, mobilisation, and the creation of counter narratives as well as of the surveillance and maintenance of existing power relations.