Count of Twitter messages per day
Probably not a social movement
Italians went to the polls recently producing two results many thought interesting and a bit frightening. There was the resurrection of Berlusconi for the umpteenth time even as he is being investigated for a $3+ million bribe. You cannot hold him down. The second was the emergence of Beppe Grillo as a political leader with lots of votes. Of course, the result that seemed a bit threatening is that there is no majority, and having to produce a government from no majority can seem unsettling.
I wanted to investigate the conversation after the election. [That is because I was not paying enough attention to the election beforehand.] I collected Twitter messages using the following search terms:
The collection started on February 26, 2013 which was the day after the election, and continued through March 5. The count was something over 600 thousand Twitter messages. This is the figure showing the daily count for all five of the search terms.
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Count of Twitter messages per day |
From top to bottom Grillo is the most mentioned. The number of mentions was just over 60,000 on the 27th, and only on the 26th was he not the most discussed of the search terms. Bersani is next, left to right, with roughly 45,000 mentions on the 26th, the day after the election. Third is elezioni2013 with almost 30,000 mentions on the 26th, and a quickly decreasing number of mentions per day. Berlusconi is fourth with just over 20K mentions on the 26th. The search term on the bottom is Movimento 5 Stella.
Starting with Grillo the question is when can massive protest not be a social movement? Of course, that begs the question by suggesting that Grillo's emergence on the national political scene is not a social movement. There are two ways to suggest that it might be a social movement. One is the name of his party, which is Movimento 5 Stelle. I believe that becomes 5 Star Movement in English. Movement is in the name. Two, Grillo has been at great pains to criticize the Italian political leadership as incompetent. He was busy constructing the other in the process of forming his own movement. Why would one think it is not a social movement? The answer is in the pattern of Twitter messages.
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Mentions of Grillo and Movimento 5 Stella on Twitter |
Grillo dominates the discussion in communication about his emergence with 25% party share of seats from the election and how he will participate in forming the new government. Movimento never comes close. The high point is 3,200 and then it falls to 2,250. This is definitely protest voting according to all reports. But the result seems to be very personalized politics. It is the man who stands out rather than the movement. For comparison think of #OccupyWallStreet or #Feb14. There were leaders in both cases, but it was the movement that was the focus of attention on Twitter as well as in the streets. Or think #TeaParty for a directly U.S. example of a movement with leaders but the focus was on the movement.
The communication about the re-emergence of Berlusconi produces a pattern that seems in reaction to communcation about Bersani. Bersani is the leader of the center-left party that was expected to win a majority in the two houses of parliament and form the government. Votes for Grillo and Berlusconi spoiled that prediction. And the reaction on Twitter took this form.
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Mentions of Bersani and Berlusconi |
Attention seems to shift from one to the other. On February 26 there were almost 45K messages mentioning Bersani and only 22K mentioning Berlusconi. When you get to the 28th, however, it is reversed. Berlusconi is mentioned 32K times and Bersani is only mentioned just over 15K times. Then they 'collapse' together on the 2nd of March with just over and just under 10K mentions. On the 3rd, however, Bersani is up and Berlusconi continues at roughly 10K. And by the 5th they have ended up with about the same number of mentions. If I was writing the history I would note the events of each day. But that is not what I want to do. I want to notice the volatility of communication on Twitter. (Boynton, 2010) Twitter is a media of high volatility as is the mass media. Attention can change quite quickly. It does not have to, of course. Attention to Movimento 5 Stella changed very little from one day to the next.
Back to social movements. There are lots of movements. There are movements with charismatic leaders, and they usually are designated by the name of the leader. There are movements that we call cults. I think they generally withdraw from the dominant culture rather than investing their energy in attempting to change it. Finding various criteria by which one could distinguish them seems a full time job. I have a colleague who wants to distinguish them by style and aesthetics, for example. The social movements I think of do not have charismatic leaders, and I wonder if that is a useful 'sorting' criteria. Perhaps after reading all of our papers I will have thought this through with your help.
Reference
Boynton, G. R. (4/17/2010) Assessing Volatility
© G. R. Boynton, March 8, 2013