In Digital Contention in a Divided Society, Paul Reilly examines how social media influences political engagement in Northern Ireland, analysing digital interactions during the Union Flag Protest (2012-2013) and the Ardoyne Parade (2014-2015) in Belfast. This valuable and detailed study illuminates the ways that digital media shape and fuel contentious politics, social mobilisation and citizenship in a polarised society, writes Panagiota Nakou.
Paul Reilly’s Digital Contention in a Divided Society: Social Media, Parades and Protests in Northern Ireland is a thorough and intellectually stimulating analysis of citizens’ digital engagement on social media within highly polarised societies, focusing on the case of Northern Ireland (NI). The book enables a wide range of readers – academic scholars and researchers, but also citizens and activists – to grasp the relevance of contentious politics and how these are articulated and disputed in the digital era, especially in our increasingly datafied social world. Considering the recent European Parliament elections (6-9 June 2024), the UK general election (4 July 2024), and French national elections (7 July 2024), Reilly’s book expands on a variety of pressing social issues that academia, media, political institutions and the general public face. Some examples include active citizenship (online and offline), the negotiation of contested ideologies over political rights, the electorate’s trust in (trans)national government(s) as well as in media organisations to portray news information and shape decision-making.
The book explores digital citizenship during the Union Flag Protest (2012-2013) and the Ardoyne Parade (2014-2015) in post-conflict NI. Specifically, it looks at the online interaction of antagonistic groups
The book explores digital citizenship during the Union Flag Protest (2012-2013) and the Ardoyne Parade (2014-2015) in post-conflict NI. Specifically, it looks at the online interaction of antagonistic groups, namely the Loyalists/Unionists who self-identify as Protestants and members of the UK and the Nationalists/Republicans who are largely Catholics and argue for the unification of NI with the Republic of Ireland (Ireland). The aim is to investigate how the use of digital platforms shapes the projection of cultural values and the inter-group relations to potentially assist in the peace-making process. This inquiry is examined based on thematic analysis of a large and diverse dataset comprising of comments on Facebook (56,260), Twitter (20,185), and YouTube (1,586) and complimented by semi-structured interviews (14) with political parties’ representatives, bloggers, community workers, and commentators. Additionally, the author draws on the content and framing analysis of national newspapers’ presentation of the flag (425) and the Ardoyne parade (44) disputes.
The breadth and depth of the data used is certainly one of the merits of this work. Nevertheless, as the methodological approach is predominantly qualitative, there is room for further reflection on the selection of specific platforms, stakeholders, and the analytical process overall.
Five key topics stand out that concern multiple academic disciplines and deserve public attention.
1. UK-NI Politics
This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the context of NI as a divided society, understanding the recent history of local protests and disputes (between 2012-2015) and the wider scene of the relations between NI, Ireland, and the UK. The recent win of Sinn Féin in the UK election (seven seats) as NI’s strongest voice in parliament followed by the Democratic Unionist Party (5 seats), demonstrate the significance of local politics in post-conflict NI and post-Brexit Britain. Reilly considers the recent political scene in NI and the online emergence of the 2021 ‘Brexit riots‘ (Afterword), which refer to the demonstrations and street-violence caused in response to the UK–EU Withdrawal Agreement and NI’s precarious status, and highlights the impact of social media’s toxicity on public figures and activists.
This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the context of NI as a divided society, understanding the recent history of local protests and disputes (between 2012-2015) and the wider scene of the relations between NI, Ireland, and the UK.
2. Digital media-led mobilisation
Reilly’s investigation centres on the use of digital media as a citizens’ assembly to organise offline social mobilisation and demonstration. On the case of the flag dispute, several rallies, marches, pickets and disruptive roadblocks during rush-hour were orchestrated to protest for the Belfast City Council’s decision to fly the British flag only on national commemorative days (Chapter Two). The Ardoyne parade dispute (2014-2015) sparked from the Ireland Parade Commission’s decision to re-route the Orange Order’s parades avoiding the nationalist area of Ardoyne in Belfast. Both decisions were perceived by Loyalists as favouring Republican’s cultural rights, while social media were used to co-ordinate the parade and (de-)escalate the intergroup tensions (Chapter Six). This empirical work contributes to existing literature and research on social movements (Chapter One) such as Occupy Wall Street, the Indignados movement in Spain and the Aganaktismenoi movement in Greece, expanding on the intersection of digital media technologies use and citizens’ participation in contemporary democracies.
3. ”Watching the watchdogs”: Fact-checking
Another noteworthy area of focus is the public’s widely held assumption that media is biased and partisan in their presentation of contentious political events. Citizens’ mistrust in news organisations and the confirmed circulation of mis- and dis-information has resulted in people taking responsibility to engage in fact-checking and counterbalance or reduce the spread of fake news, some of which could provoke violence. This rise of citizens’ journalism in the post-truth era becomes an emancipatory mechanism to disrupt media narratives and allow everyday actors to report and evaluate the facts, as discussed in this book for the case of the flag protest (Chapters Two, Three and Four) and the Ardoyne parade controversy (Chapter Six). Yet, the spread of inaccurate and malicious information continues to be a challenge.
Th[e] rise of citizens’ journalism in the post-truth era becomes an emancipatory mechanism to disrupt media narratives and allow everyday actors to report and evaluate the facts
4. ”Watching the watchers”: Police-checking
Since the book concerns parades and protests, unsurprisingly, a repeated theme was citizens’ concerns about the role of police. Reilly convincingly expands on the concept of ”sousveillance” to analyse citizens’ monitoring and evaluation of official authority from below (Chapter Four). This bottom-up approach provides alternative articulation and meaning-makings of policing, often by evidence that proves the maltreatment of protesters by the police, relevant to other recent social movements like Black Lives Matter. At the same time, the witnesses’ testimonies published online threatened the privacy of people joining the demonstration and police officers on duty, which generated conversations over the legality of these practices. Most importantly, the digital platforms enabled informal learning increasing citizens’ literacy about the legal context of peaceful protesting, sharing audio-visual content online, and police’s authority to prevent video-recording in the grounds of terrorism suspicion. Nevertheless, ”sur-“ and ”sous-veillance capitalism” continue enabling Big Data companies to profit from extensive monitoring. Recent research indicates that people are concerned about these monitoring practices but are also unsure how to address them.
5. Digital communities to (dis)claim (the other’s) rights?
The book also explores the use of digital platforms to develop solidarity among different communities and contribute to peacebuilding. Although Facebook, Twitter (now X), and YouTube were used differently, most positive communication was shared online among in-groups, but cross-community consensus was not achieved. In parallel, online communities, similar to echo chambers, not only reproduced their shared values (Pro-Unionist or Pro-Republican) but were also used to disclaim the other’s rights, at times through dehumanising them. For example, the #Flegs wordplay (Chapter Three) and parody accounts (Chapter Five) mocking the Protestant working class mirrored elitist sentiments resembling the “chav” stereotype of the English working class. Additionally, as the book illustrates, there were times that derogatory, homophobic comments and hate speech were shared online prohibiting a respectful interaction among the competing groups, let alone a meaningful peace-establishment. Nevertheless, the author acknowledges the role of “super-participants” who are frequent politically motivated users of the platforms and dominate the digital narrative impacting the data’s representativeness.
Online communities, similar to echo chambers, not only reproduced their shared values (Pro-Unionist or Pro-Republican) but were also used to disclaim the other’s rights, at times through dehumanising them.
Overall, this book offers valuable and detailed insights into the ways that digital media shape and fuel contentious politics, social mobilisation and citizenship. It shows how online platforms can impact polarised societies negatively, by reproducing prejudice and hate speech, but also positively by managing inter-group tensions, avoiding violence and social unrest, and providing informal learning. This work can help academics, activists, political and media experts, as well as the general public evaluate the occurrence of disputable events, such as protests and demonstration parades, within profoundly fragmented contexts like NI particularly in the face of rising mis- and dis-information in the digital age.
Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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