Social Media and Civic Engagement

With over one million refugees arriving in Europe in 2015, countries have entered a state of emergency as they struggle to cope with the continent’s greatest migration wave since the aftermath of the second World War. In this context, grassroots initiatives are stepping in where political administrations are failing and capacities are exhausted. Mobilization has been exceptionally large in Germany, where hundreds of grassroots initiatives were born all over the country under the common slogan “Refugees Welcome”. The vast majority of them is characterized by their shared use of social media, in particular Facebook and Twitter, which have played a key role in organizing and mobilizing the efforts of thousands of citizens. With a slowdown of the refugee crisis not in near sight, the grassroots initiatives are constantly trying to find new innovative ways of using those digital platforms to their advantages in order to meet their challenges. In this context, new forms of civic engagement emerge that translate to a successful use of social media for civic mobilization purposes. The goal of this study was to understand how social media are used by such an initiative in the context of the refugee crisis. With the aim of providing a holistic picture of how social media are used by a grassroots initiative, firstly, it was investigated how different online platforms are used by identifying what messages are circulated through them for what purpose. Secondly, it was examined why those platforms are used in a certain way by identifying reasons and motivations behind this specific social media use. Using the example of one particular case of civic activism through social media (i.e. the Berlin-based initiative Moabit helps), this research was approached from a case study perspective. By combining a qualitative content analysis of their Facebook page, Facebook group, Twitter page and website, as well as in-depth interviews with initiators and volunteers, the actual practices of social media usage were assessed as well as reasons and motivations for this specific usage examined. The findings of this study showed that the context of the refugee crisis shapes the nature of the social media use in some ways more than in others. Through positive and negative experiences on the different online platforms, strategies are formed over time. While the divisive nature of the refugee issue and its outcomes such as right-wing extremism led to a limited informational usage of the public Facebook page, the closed nature of the Facebook group functions as a safe space that encourages dialogue and is primarily being used for mobilization purposes through the group’s swarm intelligence. While Twitter is still mainly used as a complementary channel for reaching new audiences, the people working at Moabit helps consider it a learning process. Due to its limited maintenance compared to the social media platforms, the purpose of the website within the online environment of Moabit helps remains questionable and may be a predictor of how websites might lose their relevance within the broader picture of future communication practices in civic activism.