How Digitized Strategy Impacts Movement Outcomes: Social Media, Mobilizing, and Organizing in the 2018 Teachers’ Strikes

• Author: Eric Blanc
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00323292211039953
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00323292211039953

Politics & Society

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DOI: 10.1177/00323292211039953

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Article

How Digitized Strategy

Impacts Movement

Outcomes: Social Media,

Mobilizing, and Organizing in

the 2018 Teachers’ Strikes

Eric Blanc

New York University

Abstract

Explaining digital impacts on social movements requires moving beyond technological

determinism by addressing two underdeveloped questions: How does political strategy

shape the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs)? And how do

divergent uses of ICTs influence movement outcomes? This study addresses these

questions by examining the 2018 educator walkouts in Oklahoma and Arizona—

statewide actions initiated through rank-and-file Facebook groups. To explain why

the strike in Arizona was more effective than in Oklahoma, despite more auspicious

conditions for success in the latter, this study shows that the impact of ICTs is

mediated by leaders’ strategic choices. Whereas Oklahoma’s strike was marked

by mobilization without organization—scaling up protest without an organizational

foundation—Arizona used digital tools to build, rather than eschew, organization.

Digital impacts further depend on the nature of the contentious performance itself,

since the efficacy limitations of relying solely on ICTs are particularly pronounced for

actions like strikes.

Keywords

labor strikes, social media, social movements, strategy, movement outcomes

Corresponding Author:

Eric Blanc, NYU Department of Sociology, 295 Lafayette Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10012, USA.

Email: ebb356@nyu.edu

1039953PASXXX10.1177/00323292211039953Politics & SocietyBlanc

research-article2021

2022, Vol. 50(3) 485–518

The impact of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) on social

movements has become a central point of debate over the past two decades.1 Much

of this schol arship has been polarized between works emphasizing or dismissing

the positive transformative powers of digital tools for popular mobilization. Various

scholars have argued that by reducing communication costs, ICTs have made it

possible to effectively mobilize without the need for traditional social movement

organizations.2 In response, critics have pointed to the continued centrality of well-

resourced organizations, as well as face-to-face organizing, and have contended that

digital tools at best enable only low-risk, ineffective, or non-working-class forms of

protest.3

Recently a growing number of scholars have questioned these dichotomous and

often technologically deterministic accounts. What is needed, they argue, are more

nuanced analyses of how movements have been transformed by new technologies, as

well as the strengths and weaknesses of ICTs for social movement efficacy.4 Without

analyzing leadership strategy, however, even some of the most sophisticated of these

recent works tend to tell an overly deterministic story about how digital tools shape

contemporary protests. For example, while Zeynep Tufekci’s Twitter and Tear Gas:

The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest stresses the contradictory costs and

benefits of digital tools and notes that “networked” protest outcomes are shaped by

“cultural and political choices,” her monograph nevertheless exclusively discusses

contemporary movements that share the same digitally enabled limitations—for

example, rapidly scaling up in size without a strong organizational foundation.5 By

failing to explore how digital tools can be leveraged to build up (rather than eschew)

dense organizing infrastructures, Tufekci’s work gives a one-sided impression of the

impact of ICTs upon movements dynamics.

Moving fully beyond technological determinism, I argue, requires sustained atten-

tion to two questions that remain underdeveloped in the literature: How does political

strategy shape ICT use? And how do the divergent ways movement leaders use ICTs

influence protest outcomes?

To address these questions, and to demonstrate their theoretical importance for a

rounded assessment of ICTs, this article analyzes the 2018 educator walkouts in

Oklahoma and Arizona—successful statewide actions initiated through rank-and-file

Facebook groups in a span of less than two months. Drawing on a unique data set of

the entire corpora of these educator Facebook groups—with more than one hundred

thousand posts and comments—complemented by on-the-ground ethnographic obser-

vation during the strikes themselves, I show how the communicative and mobilizing

powers of ICTs enabled small numbers of teacher activists to initiate statewide work

stoppages that involved tens of thousands of predominantly nonunionized workers in

a high-risk, high-effort action.

At the same time, I argue that explaining the puzzle of why the strike in Arizona

was more effective than in Oklahoma, despite more auspicious conditions for success

in the latter, requires acknowledging that the role of digital technologies is mediated

by strategic leadership choices. The ICT affordances that facilitated the explosive

growth of these mobilizations simultaneously made possible, but not inevitable, a

486 Politics & Society 50(3)

mechanism that can limit the efficacy of (certain types of) movements: mobilization

without organization. While Oklahoma’s strike was affected by this dynamic, Arizona’s

movement avoided it because its Facebook group was led by experienced activists

who made the strategic decision to use ICTs to build up a robust nondigital workplace

organization.

As indicated above, the strengths and limitations of ICT-enabled movements are

shaped not only by digitized strategy but also by the form of contentious performance

in which ICTs are leveraged.6 Through an analysis of labor strikes rather than the

forms of mobilization normally discussed in the literature, such as petitions and dem-

onstrations, I show that the mechanism of mobilization without organization is espe-

cially problematic for labor actions, which must win over a majority of a bounded

constituency and which generally require strong—and targeted—organization to suc-

ceed. While digital technologies on their own may be sufficient for mobilizing—

activating preexisting supporters—they reveal greater limitations in actions such as

strikes that require high strategic capacity and that rely more on organizing—the

development of new leaders to win over the unconvinced—to succeed. The 2018 edu-

cator strikes demonstrate that ICTs can be used for organizing, but whether that pos-

sibility is realized depends on strategic leadership decisions.

ICTs and Social Movement Transformation

Most of the early research on ICTs in contentious politics fell into dichotomized

camps. On the one hand, numerous scholars posited that digital tools, by lowering the

costs of communication and mobilization, had qualitatively—and positively—trans-

formed protest dynamics by dramatically diminishing the importance of traditional

“brick and mortar” social movement organizations (SMOs).7 Accordingly, Bimber,

Flanagin, and Stohl wrote that “organizations matter less than they once did,” and Earl

and Kimport argued that resource mobilization theory—which claims that social

movement efficacy depends on access to financial and other resources—was of

decreasing relevance.8

Critics responded by charging ICTs with promoting only slacktivism, that is, inef-

fective weak-tie, low-risk, low-effort actions, or arguing that the digital divide—the

lack of access to new technologies by working-class and poor people—constitutes a

major impediment to digitally based organizing.9 Others challenged the alleged cen-

trality of social media use by protestors in events like the Egyptian Revolution and the

Occupy movement of 2011 or pointed to the continued importance of traditional brick-

and-mortar organizations like unions.10

Yet recent years have witnessed an increase in calls for what Kidd and McIntosh

describe as an “ambivalent” approach that probes both the powers and perils of new

digital technologies, without either exaggerating or downplaying their transformation

of social movement dynamics.11 Most of these works emphasize the tension between

the short-term benefits and long-term drawbacks of new technologies.12 Tufekci’s

Twitter and Tear Gas, for example, analyzes how ICT affordances have profoundly

modified movement dynamics by enabling rapid mass mobilizations without dense

487

Blanc