A Tale of Two Movements: Egypt During the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street

Social media provides flexible platforms that play key roles in energizing collective action in movements like Arab Spring (AS) and Occupy Wall Street (OWS). By enabling individuals to display emotions broadly, social media amplify sentiments defined as shared collective emotion to supply the forces that drive change in society. This study describes how one platform, Facebook, contributed to these two different examples of political activism. Using social network analytics and text mining, we examine how Fan Page posts during the life of the movements influenced the formation of social ties by using sentimental messaging. We hypothesize a set of relationships between group cohesion and polarity of sentiments in explaining involvement. We find that the strength of social ties formed through exchanges of posts and comments influence participation, but its effect differs across two movements. We also find that negative sentiments are associated with more participation for Egypt during the AS than OWS. Our results suggest cultural differences play a major role in participation behaviors. Social media is important in engineering management, because someone who has a negative reaction to a project or a product can use these media to reach thousands of individuals and potentially turn sentiment against a project.