In their article, Anatomy of a Protest, Karduni and Sauda (2020) set out to study and gain an understanding of the relationship between social media, urban space and the community members of said urban space. Due to the potential scale of this topic, they limit the focus of their research to one instance of a Black Lives Matter protest that occurred in Charlotte, North Carolina, in September 2016. The protests, which went on for 3 days, were a response to the fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott by police.

Using a mixed-method approach, and collecting both quantitative and qualitative data (i.e. spatial statistics and interviews), Karduni and Sauda discuss how social media was used by both pro- and anti-movement protesters to motivate, communicate, organise and participate in the protests. They reflect extensively upon the fact that protesters used particular urban spaces deliberately, being mindful of the impact that they would have on police response and the physical flow of the city.

They conclude by succinctly summarising that social media, public space and community are an integrated system. Social media provides the practical means by which community members are motivated and protests organised, while urban spaces provide public stages for the expression of pressing injustices that connect people and can create networks that are extended through social media.

Karduni and Sauda’s paper is strengthened by the fact that they themselves acknowledge a possible limitation to the study: namely, that it is focussed on a single series of related events in a single city. See below a video (TODAY, 2016) that explains the incident and corresponding protests.

There are, however, other limitations that Karduni and Sauda (2020) fail to address and these weaken their argument.

Firstly, by limiting their focus to a case study, they accept the potential restrictions associated with selecting the Lamont Scott shooting. Unlike other Black Lives Matter protests that were occurring at the time because typically unarmed African-Americans were being harmed by police, Lamont Scott was 43-years-old (i.e. not a vulnerable child and/or teenager) and was allegedly armed at the time of the incident. Karduni and Sauda do not address whether his age or his supposed possession of a firearm impacted community response, and therefore the public support protests.

Secondly, they do not ever note that Lamont was shot by an African-American officer, rather than one of another ethnicity. In failing to acknowledge this, they also fail to note whether this impacted the response given by the community, and whether this impacted their study of this one protest.

In conclusion, Karduni and Sauda’s study is an interesting discussion on the power of social media in protests, and the role that it plays both in virtual and physical spaces. There is no doubt that social media can be used as a tool to communicate information and ideologies surrounding protests. There are however obvious limitations to Karduni and Sauda’s study, and if a more dynamic understanding of the intersection between social media, physical space and protests is to be had, comparison of protests are needed.

Reference List

Karduni, A. & Sauda, E. (2020). Anatomy of a Protest: Spatial Information, Social Media, and Urban Space. Social Media and Society, 6(1). DOI: 10.1177/2056305119897320

TODAY. (2016, September 22). Protests Erupt in Charlotte After Police Fatally Shoot Keith Lamont Scott [YouTube Clip]. Retrieved March 5, 2020 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb5jvZcqiv0