The Impact of Social Media on Grassroots Movements

Abstract

Social media is becoming an increasingly important component of global governance. This essay argues that social media has a significant impact on global governance which is understood to mean international policy-making and related activities by states and international organizations such as negotiations, agreement and policy implementation, and activities by non-state actors, such as the engagement of the civil society or the private sector. The main findings illustrate that social media have both negative and positive impacts on global governance as they facilitate communication, mobilize public opinion, and enhance transparency, but that these pathways also generate difficulties, such as the spread of misinformation or the exacerbation of a digital divide. Negative language use on social media notably influences success of advocacy groups that engage in global governance. This essay aims to provide detailed insights into how social media dynamics play out in the realm of global governance, but the research also speaks to the broader literature on social media and international politics. The essay relies on a mixed methodology, combining event data analysis, co-membership network analysis, and regression analysis of digital surveys, to study state and civil society engagement in the negotiations of the Basel Convention’s Plastic Waste Amendment.Social media’s increasing importance for global politics has been recognized by several scholars, who have dealt with its influence on topics such as diplomacy, global protest, and the internal working of international organizations. However, despite a growing literature, there is a need for more detailed insights into the full variety of social media impacts, particularly on global governance which is a distinct and more policy-focused facet of international politics. This area of research has also been criticized for its partiality and is said to concentrate on the most obvious or illustrative examples. The essay thus turns to a case of global governance that represents a more under-researched area of global political interaction and focuses on global plastic waste management negotiations.

 Keywords social media, global governance, international policy, public opinion, transparency, misinformation, advocacy groups, digital divide.