Fracking, Elsipogtog First Nation, and the police: Examining the social media discourse around a police-repressed environmental justice movement

Fracking, Elsipogtog First Nation,

and the police: Examining the social media discourse around a

police-repressed environmental justice movement

Molly J. Simis, M.S. Ph.D. Candidate

Jill Hopke, Ph.D. Assistant Professor

Environmental movements and new media

Police repression

Climate change

Contested energy technologies

Elsipogtog…

…and Fracking…

Source: ProPublica. (n.d.). What is Hydraulic Fracturing?

…and the RCMP.

What are the features of wide-reaching tweets

compared to tweets that get little to no attention?

•  Computer-‐assisted content analysis of English language tweets with DiscoverText machine learning funcEon

•  Narrowed down fracking-‐related tweets with hashtag keywords: #cdnpoli #rcmp #Elsipogtog #INM #IdleNoMore #nbpoli #FirstNaDon #FN

•  De-‐duplicated the data, which groups all verbaEm duplicates

Methods

Methods

•  Grouped the data into three categories based on # of re-‐tweets – Hi: 20+ retweets (n=49) – Low: 1-‐19 retweets (n=762)

– Single items: no retweets (n = 2872) •  Coded each group into subsets of posts with images images and posts without images

Methods

•  Coded text + images for – Movement response/presence

•  Peaceful protest •  DisrupEve protest •  Solidarity

– Police acDon/presence •  Use of force, surveillance and monitoring •  Equipment and weapons

•  Coded images for – Police-‐protester interacDon (present or absent)

Results

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

Movement response/presence within Elsipogtog-themed posts

Hi # of RT; Image

Hi # of RT; No image

Low # of RT; Image

Low # of RT; No image

Single items; Image

Single items; No image

No movement response Peaceful protest

DisrupEve protest Solidarity

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

Police acDon/presence within Elsipogtog-‐themed posts

Hi # of RT; Image

Hi # of RT; No image

Low # of RT; Image

Low # of RT; No image

Single items; Image

Single items; No image

No police acEon Use of force, surveillance/monitoring Police equipment and weapons

Police action/presence within Elsipogtog-themed posts

Police-protester interaction

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0% No police-‐protester interacEon Police-‐protester interacEon

Hi # of RT; Image

Low # of RT; Image

Single items; Image

Conclusion

•  Peaceful protests are a dominant theme of highly re-‐tweeted posts.

•  Solidarity tends to be textually described more oaen than visually depicted.

•  Police use of force/surveillance is visually depicted more oaen than textually described.

Repression galvanizes tweeEng

Next steps

•  Code for user type

•  Trace images through networks

Questions? Thank you!

Molly J. Simis, M.S. Ph.D. Candidate [email protected]

Jill Hopke, Ph.D. Assistant Professor [email protected]