About Us

UGBA 192AC: Social Media and Social Movements

“Social Movements and Social Media” provides a critical survey of innovative social movements and their complex relationships to social media technologies.

AUTHORIAL TEAM 

MoveMe is a collaborative project by students enrolled in “Social Media and Social Movements” (UGBA 192AC) at UC Berkeley, in the Haas School of Business. Four batches of around 40 students each have contributed to this library of social movements by spending a semester working on a research project about a particular social movement based on their interests and passions. The names and profiles of the authors responsible for a chapter can be found at the end of the respective article in order to credit the multiple generations that have contributed to this endeavour. 

VISION OF #MOVEME 

Under the guidance of Professor David Harris at the UC Berkeley Haas Business School, the MoveMe library is a free, online collection of profiles and analyses of social movements.

The  goals of the #MoveMe library are:

  • To examine the intersection between social media platforms and social movements;
  • To develop a comparative analysis of social movements over time and highlight the evolution of mobilisation strategies;
  • To explore the different [dis]advantages of such platforms, and;
  • To build a cross-movement understanding of the relationships between activists, networks, and institutions.

This guide is first and foremost an opportunity for students to share their work with the digital community, as an experiment in collaborative writing, editing, and publishing. It is important to note that the MoveMe website is different from Wikipedia and other anthologies since it presents authorial work and a depth of analysis and comparison that would not be possible, appropriate, or accepted under the Wikipedia community standards. This guide also uniquely features embedded content from social media, ranging from Tweets to YouTube videos to Facebook posts, as well as factual and visual elements, like original and third-party charts, timelines, and graphs. Finally, this guide seeks to serve as an educational resource, where readers can learn about how to take action at the intersection between technology and social justice in their own lives, regarding the issues that are important to them.

STRUCTURE OF #MOVEME 

Within the guide, each chapter exploring the evolution of a specific social movement. Topics range from Arab Spring to the Anti-Trump Movement to the Movement for Black Lives (also known as #BlackLivesMatter).  In each chapter, students highlight how different social actors have used various social media techniques to organise social movements that challenge and disrupt society. Articles attempt to cover the history, context, key actors, critiques, antecedents, and impact to create a comprehensive understanding of each movement. The class peer-reviewed and edited each others’ work in order to improve the validity and rigour of the articles.

Throughout the course of the semester, UGBA 192AC has introduced relevant concepts and a toolkit to help scope the analysis on the #MoveMe website. Additionally, students in the class have worked with professionals and activists from several organizations, such as the Wiki Education Foundation and Google.org, to improve their understandings of social media and social movements. To understand more about the course structure, please visit the Syllabus page for more information.

FUTURE OF #MOVEME 

The library is expected to continue to grow as students in future generations of this class continue to add their own chapters. As each class adds to the existing coverage of social movements, #MoveMe seeks to be an extensive anthology of knowledge on this rapidly evolving topic.

If you are interested in using this guide as a resource, expanding upon it, or suggesting future directions that this work could take, please do not hesitate to contact us.