Digital contention in a divided society

Social media, parades and protests in Northern Ireland

Paul Reilly

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780719087073
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526152930
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Digitales Marketing

How are platforms such as Facebook and Twitter used by citizens to frame contentious parades and protests in 'post-conflict' Northern Ireland? What do these contentious episodes tell us about the potential of information and communication technologies to promote positive intergroup contact in the deeply divided society?

These issues are addressed in what is the first in-depth qualitative exploration of how social media were used during the union flag protests (December 2012-March 2013) and the Ardoyne parade disputes (July 2014 and 2015). The book focuses on the extent to which affective publics, mobilised and connected via expressions of solidarity on social media, appear to escalate or de-escalate sectarian tensions caused by these hybrid media events. It also explores whether citizen activity on these online platforms has the potential to contribute to peacebuilding in Northern Ireland.

1

Social media, contentious politics and social movements

This book examines the ways in which contentious parades and protests in ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland are contested by affective publics mobilised on social media. In this way, it will contribute to the extant interdisciplinary scholarship on digital citizenship and the role of digital media in contemporary social movements. This chapter contextualises the research findings presented throughout this book by exploring three key issues. First, it introduces the contentious politics framework and applies it to the Northern Irish conflict. Second, it explores the evolving relationship between ICTs and contentious politics in the contemporary era. The role of digital media in social movements since 2011 is analysed, using exemplars such as Occupy Wall Street and the popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa later labelled the ‘Arab Spring’. Third, the chapter explores the evolving role of digital media in contentious politics in Northern Ireland. Data from organisations such as Ofcom are used to empirically investigate the news consumption practices of citizens and levels of public trust in professional news media and political institutions in the social media era. Finally, the results of interviews conducted with key stakeholders (N = 14) between October 2009 and September 2013 are elaborated, in order to examine the impact of ‘Web 2.0’ on political participation in the deeply divided society prior to the flag protests.

Contentious politics and the Northern Irish conflict

In order to explore the role of social media in contentious parades and protests in Northern Ireland, one must first understand the terrain of contentious politics. Contentious politics describe those “interactions in which actors make claims bearing on other actors’ interests, leading to coordinated efforts on behalf of shared interests or programs, in which governments are involved as targets, initiators of claims, or third parties” (Tilly and Tarrow, 2015: 7). These are moments in which existing levels of polarisation within a society are ‘inflamed’ by “takeoff issues” (Bode et al., 2018: 217). It is a theoretical framework that has frequently been used to study the Northern Irish conflict in the late twentieth century. Northern Ireland was defined as a hybrid regime due to its combination of “authoritarian and representative mechanisms of rule” and “composite forms of contention” (Tilly and Tarrow, 2015: 75). This was congruent with the Irish republican framing of the Troubles as an ethnic conflict in which ‘settler’ Protestants suppressed ‘native’ Catholics to ensure their hegemony in the “illegitimate statelet” (Guelke, 2014). Further evidence to support this ‘hybrid regime’ thesis came in the form of elections held against the backdrop of the cycle of protests and violent confrontations between what could crudely be defined as ‘pro and anti-state forces’. Tilly (2008: 172) went so far as to identify a “repertoire of contention”, involving public rallies and protests, that were frequently deployed by various political factions during the conflict.

Flag protests: birth of a social movement?

Many of these tactics were adopted during the union flag protests and the Ardoyne parade disputes in pursuit of political objectives. These were what Tilly and Tarrow (2015) referred to as familiar contentious performances and episodes, deployed as part of a broader contentious campaign to protect unionist and loyalist culture from attack by Sinn Féin and the republican movement. The flag protesters could be defined as a social movement insofar as they were a “networked group of claims-making actors” capable of making a sustained challenge to the authority of political elites on behalf of marginalised groups. Social movements are a “principal social form” through which collectivities both articulate grievances and engage in collective action, such as public demonstrations, in pursuit of common objectives (Snow et al., 2004: 3). This conflict with political elites is what differentiates social movements from ‘legitimate’ political actors such as political parties and interest groups (Vromen, 2017: 29). While it is beyond the scope of this book to fully explore the history of social movement theory, it is worth noting that such movements are often defined as ‘identity fields’ due to their use of shared symbols, identities and practices to establish the boundaries of discursive communities (Della Porta, 2015). It would be reasonable to surmise that the union flag was a symbol of unity for loyalists who engaged in the public demonstrations analysed in this book.

The Flag Dispute (Nolan et al., 2014: 88) questioned whether the flag protests were a ‘unifying movement’ due to the high levels of internal fragmentation among its supporters. Six broad drivers of mobilisation were identified including the desire to defend unionist and loyalist identity, ideological opposition to the Belfast Agreement, dissatisfaction with the political institutions, and socio-economic disadvantage. Although the nominal rallying cry for working-class loyalists was based on the change to the flag protocol at Belfast City Hall, it was the combination of these drivers, rather than one specific factor, that convinced the protesters of the need to take urgent action in December 2012. In this respect, the flag protests were comparable to other social movements, whose success often rest upon how much brokerage is required to accommodate the different preferences of their constituent organisations (Gamson, 1990; Tilly and Tarrow, 2015). Indeed, it could be argued that the failure of the flag protest movement to reverse the decision of Belfast City Council was due in no small part to its internal divisions and the lack of a “workable strategy” to secure its core objective (Nolan et al., 2014: 54). A new political party, the Protestant Coalition (PC), eventually emerged after a split in the flag protest movement over the decision by the Ulster People’s Forum to move from blocking roads to ‘white line’ protests in February 2013. The self-styled ‘anti-politics’ party, led by protest spokesperson Willie Frazer, made minimal electoral impact and was only in the media headlines due to its campaign against Facebook’s decision to remove its page in August 2013.¹

Political opportunity structures and the flag protests

The factors contributing to contentious episodes such as the flag protests can be elaborated through the lens of political opportunity structures, a key element of social movement theory. Its proponents argue that it is too reductive to attribute mass mobilisation to changes in socio-economic structures alone; rather, collective action is inextricably linked to the “presence of mobilization resources, as well as the opening of political opportunities” (Della Porta, 2015: 4). Specifically, social movements are more likely to act in those circumstances where there is more than one independent power centre, growing instability within political institutions, restrictions placed on collective claim-making, and, crucially, the availability of influential allies or supporters for those wishing to make such a challenge (Tilly and Tarrow, 2015: 59). Although social movement theories have been criticised for focusing too much on these structures at the expense of the agency of protesters (Della Porta, 2015), there was some evidence to suggest that a combination of these factors provided a ‘political opportunity’ for the flag protest movement. I wish to draw particular attention to two of these factors, namely the growth in unionist and loyalist disillusionment with the Stormont Executive and the socio-economic deprivation within working-class loyalist communities.

First, there were a number of political crises that beset the Stormont power-sharing institutions. For the purposes of brevity I will not go into these in detail, but the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) were embroiled in a series of high-profile scandals between January 2010 and September 2012. This began in January 2010 with ‘Irisgate’, when DUP member of the legislative assembly (MLA) and MP Iris Robinson (the wife of the First Minister) was alleged to have broken parliamentary rules in procuring £50,000 to help start up a restaurant on behalf of a 19-year-old with whom she was having an affair.² The largest party in the Executive was also rocked by the Red Sky scandal in October 2010, after whistleblower Jenny Palmer told the BBC Northern Ireland current affairs programme Spotlight that party officials had forced her to vote in favour of extending a maintenance contract to a company accused of producing substandard work on properties owned by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.³ These controversies occurred in the context of increasing unionist and loyalist disillusionment with both the Stormont Executive and the peace process in general. A relatively low percentage of unionists (39 per cent) felt the Assembly was doing a good job of representing their interests in the period leading up to the flag protests (Fealty, 2013). Furthermore, data from the 2012 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey showed that only 44 per cent of Protestants believed that community relations would improve within five years, the lowest figure reported since 2003 (Morrow, 2014).

There was a strong sense of indignation within working-class loyalist communities at what they saw as the failure of unionist politicians to protect unionist and loyalist culture from a peace process that had benefited republicans at their expense (INTERCOMM and Byrne, 2013). The loyalist protests during this period constituted a “claim to validity” (Hands, 2011), that urged political elites to pay attention to their grievances and stop this perceived ‘culture war’. The contentious nature of these parades and protests was a manifestation of the failure of the Northern Ireland Executive to address conflict–legacy issues nearly 15 years after the Belfast Agreement. Since the late 1990s unionist and loyalist political representatives had repeatedly called for the abolition of the Parades Commission, arguing that it should be replaced with an alternative system for dealing with parades (details of which were not fully disclosed). There was also a recognition by some unionist leaders that a way forward on contentious parades could not be achieved without the agreement of the DUP and Sinn Féin, the two largest parties in the Executive.

Certainly, the failure to address these issues helped create a context in which sectarian violence was more likely to be sparked by contentious parades. During the 2012 marching season there was widespread condemnation of the Young Conway Volunteers (YCV) flute band, who were filmed playing the sectarian ‘Famine Song’ and marching in a circle outside St Patrick’s Church in Belfast during the annual Twelfth demonstrations. Tensions were raised during subsequent loyalist and republican parades in the area, which boiled over into violence in the neighbouring districts of North Belfast. The YCV were at the centre of yet more controversy during a Royal Black Institution parade on 25 August, after they and several other bands defied a Commission ruling banning the playing of music during a parade as it passed by St Patrick’s Church. A riot by nationalist youths afterwards resulted in seven PSNI officers and one member of the public being injured. A parade by a republican flute band a week later (2 September) led to several nights of loyalist rioting in the vicinity of Carlisle Circus, a major junction of the Antrim Road which runs from Belfast city centre to the village of Dunadry in County Antrim. It was in this context that working-class loyalist communities viewed the decision to alter the flag protocol at Belfast City Hall as yet further evidence that they were losing the culture war being waged against them by Sinn Féin.

Second, there was some evidence to suggest that the perceived high levels of socio-economic deprivation within working-class loyalist communities played a role in the mobilisation of flag protesters in December 2012. The social basis for these protests appeared to be different from those of the mass mobilisations in Europe and North America the year before, although all could be viewed through the lens of neo-liberal globalisation, with its ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ brought into sharp focus by the 2008 global economic recession. Youth unemployment in particular was identified as a key driver of protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street in the United States and Los Indignados in Spain. The precariat, defined loosely as “young, unemployed, or only part-time employed, with no protection, and often well-educated” (Della Porta, 2015: 4), were part of a broad anti-austerity coalition, which included cultural workers and the lower middle classes, that spearheaded the protests. There was, however, little evidence that a similar coalition was mobilised during the flag protests. The 2013 and 2014 Northern Ireland Life and Times Surveys revealed that a narrow majority of Protestants (51 per cent in 2014) favoured the designated days protocol, compared with 43 per cent who agreed with the protesters that the flag should be flown throughout the year (Morrow, 2014). Although some middle-class and more affluent unionists tacitly supported the protests, they would not physically participate due to, among other factors, the fear that they might lose their jobs if they were identified in news reports (Nolan et al., 2014: 65). Hence, this was not a mass mobilisation of unionists and loyalists on the scale of the protests against the Anglo–Irish Agreement in November 1985, during which a crowd of approximately 70,000 people gathered at a rally in Belfast City Hall to hear speeches by unionist leaders such as the then DUP leader Dr Ian Paisley. ⁴

What little information we have about the background of the protesters has come from interview and focus group-based studies that have concentrated more on their motivations and experiences than their socio-economic status. Focus group participants in one study stated that identity politics, rather than socio-economic factors, was the key driver of the protests (INTERCOMM and Byrne, 2013). A more nuanced narrative linking socio-economic deprivation an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Social media, contentious politics and social movements
• 2 Too many cyberwarriors? The case of Loyalist Peaceful Protest Updater
• 3“You can’t eat a flag”: Northern Ireland Twitter responds to the flag protests
• 4 PSNIRA vs peaceful protesters? YouTube, sousveillance and the policing of the flag protests
• 5 Parody of esteem? LAD and the rise of ‘silly citizenship’
• 6 Twitter, affective publics and public demonstrations: the 2014 and 2015 Ardoyne parade disputes
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1 Content analysis of newspaper coverage of flag protests
• Appendix 2 Content analysis of newspaper coverage of the Ardoyne parade disputes
• Bibliography
• Index