Twitter Discourse of a Novel Environmental Social Movement Organization: Framing by and of Extinction Rebellion

The present study’s key objective is exploration of that was employed by the British and Dutch branches of a novel environmental social movement organisation, Extinction Rebellion (XR), and their public in the context of Twitter discourse across three distinct time periods. Furthermore, predominantly utilised dimensions of collective action frames as well as the extent of generated audience engagement were analysed. To provide an answer, a mixed methods approach was adopted, integrating a content analysis of Twitter posts’ framing as well as quantitative analysis of the frame and audience response frequencies and ANOVA. The findings demonstrated that branches articulated a large variety of frames, including all three dimensions of collective action frames as well as additional frames constructing their public image and supporting their standpoint. Such a broad range of employed framing reflects the nature of social media discourse and suggests that social network sites might be suitable for a global citizens’ assembly, however, less valuable when mobilizing local adherents. Twitter public response presented support and counter-framing to the framing of XR, hence, imposing frame contests. Finally, time periods presented a significant effect on the level of audience engagement, which led to an assumption that external conditions of the time have a great effect on how the public perceives and engages in social media discourse.