J. Vijay Ratna Kumar, B. Jishamol, R K Maya
The Black Lives Matter
(BLM) movement has been a remarkable assertion for racial equality worldwide.
Similarly, the Farmer’s Protests in India have been hailed as the largest
protest in human history. Both the BLM protests and the Farmers Protest in India
have gained worldwide support and attention. The movement can be seen as an
attempt to seek racial, economic or political justice. The paper seeks to
analyse the nature of these protests and how cyberspace or social media has
been used and or has contributed to the organisation of the ongoing protests. And
it also looks at the government's response to this use of social media as an
organisational tool.
One of the
characteristic features of these protests has been the highly organised nature
considering the fact that they are a group of people who were isolated in space
and yet came together especially in the case of the BLM. About the farmer
protests, nearly 40 farmer organisations were engaged in the protests. The lack
of attention given to these protests in the initial days by the mainstream
media is also studied necessitating the use of used social media to a large
extent to generate and keep up the support of the protestors and inform the
public.
The study seeks to analyse the various
protests in the context of a demand for economic and political justice in the
absence of effective political mobilisation on the issue by mainstream
political parties.
Farmer Protests, India, Me-too, Black Lives
Matter, Social Media, Hashtags
VOL.14, ISSUE No.1, March 2022