Digital Activism and Social Movements

Digital activism encompasses the strategic use of online platforms, social media and mobile applications to organise, mobilise and amplify collective action. Over the past decade, social movements have harnessed the affordances of networked publics—such as rapid information dissemination, peer‐to‐peer coordination and real‐time feedback—to shape public discourse and influence policy. These practices range from hashtag campaigns and viral petitions to live streaming of protests and decentralised decision-making via encrypted messaging groups. Digital networks facilitate both horizontal collaboration among grassroots actors and vertical pressure on institutions, enabling campaigns to transcend geographic boundaries and engage a global audience. At the same time, activists must navigate challenges such as platform moderation, misinformation, surveillance and digital divides. Recent work emphasises how online repertoires of contention intersect with offline demonstration, examining the emotional dynamics, connective action frames and algorithmic environments that sustain momentum. As movements evolve, they increasingly blend curated digital storytelling with embodied protest, fostering resilient transnational solidarities and reshaping the contours of civic engagement in the twenty-first century.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Digital Activism and Social Movements publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in digital activism and social movements across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Digital activism: The use of digital technologies and online platforms to initiate, organise and promote social or political change.

Connective action: A form of collective engagement characterised by personalised content sharing and lightweight organisational structures enabled by digital networks.

Hashtag activism: The strategic deployment of hashtags to aggregate discourse, signal solidarity and amplify campaign messages across social media.

Emotional contagion: The spread of affective states through online interactions, which can intensify group identity and sustain mobilisation.

References

1. Mobile Internet and Contentious Politics in Nigeria: Using the Organisational Tools of Mobile Social Networking Applications to Sustain Protest Movements. Journalism and Media (2023).
2. Far-Right Digital Activism in Polarized Contexts: A Comparative Analysis of Engagement in Hashtag Wars. Media and Communication (2022).
3. Conspiracy Beliefs, Misinformation, Social Media Platforms, and Protest Participation. Media and Communication (2022).