MOBILIZING A CROWD OF SARDINES: MEDIATED FRAMING DYNAMICS IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS’ EMERGENCE

Research on framing has devoted attention, in the last decade, on social movements and on how they use frames to mobilize consensus, gain resources and build and consolidate their identity. However, the ongoing meaning construction process of the social movements’ and how it is mediated by social media is not investigated in-depth from an empirical point of view. Furthermore, the role of the crowd in these processes is still less known. Our research addresses these two main gaps by looking at the dynamics of a social movement emergence and of its mediated framing processes. We develop a longitudinal case study of the Italian social movement of “6000 sardine”, that scaled-up quickly and successfully online and by flash mobs organized in more than 125 cities in Italy and abroad in just a few weeks. Our study aims at contributing to the understanding of the framing mechanisms at play during the early phase of a movement development, putting central stage the role of social media and the crowd.