Cultural Production of Protest Frames and Tactics: Cybermediaries and the SOPA Movement

On the surface, the recent mobilization of opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) over the internet appears to be yet another cyberactivism success. Yet, the antiSOPA movement should have been doomed to failure for two reasons. First, the issue was too abstract to mobilize local kinship and friendship groups. Second, because mass media interests were served by the bill, mass media was unmotivated to diffuse the antiSOPA message. Our analysis of this movement suggests it succeeded because of cybermediaries, internet companies that used their sites to diffuse the anti-SOPA message. They accomplished this through cultural productions of protest frames and tactics – technology-based verbal, graphical, and experiential representations of the SOPA protest frame and technology-based toolkits for use at the cybermediaries’ sites as well as for use at visitors’ sites. Our key contribution lies in identifying the nature and relative impact of these frames and tactics in cyberactivism.