#AFringeMinority: Collective identity within the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests on social media
Abstract
In early 2022, Canada – and the world – was gripped by protestors’ disruptive occupation of Ottawa’s downtown core, and several Canada-U.S. border crossings. Operating under the banner of the “Freedom Convoy,” an amalgamation of far-right actors – from anti-government extremists, White nationalists, and anti- “vaxxers” – united against Canada’s COVID-19 public health mandates. Instructive to understanding the Freedom Convoy’s ascendance was their ability to construct a symbolically inclusive collective identity, and their use of social media to that end. However, there are three notable gaps hindering a fuller understanding of these processes: how far-right social movements use short-form video platforms, like the pandemic favourite, TikTok, to mediate their collective identity, and how protestors’ TikTok use for identity building compares cross-nationally, and across platforms. I aimed to remedy these gaps, making decisive contributions to our understanding of collective identity’s mediation on social media. First, I explore Canadian Freedom Convoy supporters’ use of TikTok for expressing collective identity frames. I uncovered that the movement’s anti-institutional collective identity was buoyed by TikTok users’ practices, including alternative broadcasting, monologuing, and audio memes. I argue that TikTok’s emphasis on visuality, personability, and imitability was beneficial to conveying the Freedom Convoy’s anti-institutional collective identity. Second, I investigated the Freedom Convoy cross-nationally, looking into Canadian and New Zealanders’ use of TikTok to communicate collective identity frames. I found that New Zealanders’ collective identity did not passively copy Canadians’ anti-institutional collective identity, but rather “re-contextualized” these frames within their own localized political struggles, national histories, and symbolic registers. Moreover, I found that New Zealanders’ TikTok practices subtly differed from their Canadian counterparts, working to better capture New Zealand’s socio-cultural specificities, and the forceful crackdown on protests in Wellington. Lastly, I examined Canadian Freedom Convoy supporters’ use of TikTok and Facebook to articulate collective identity frames. I found that, while certain practices transcended platforms’ borders (e.g., alternative broadcasting, monologuing), they were nevertheless mediated through platforms’ specificities. I also found evidence that other practices were more recalcitrant to being transmuted (e.g., audio memes, public relations messaging), owing to each platform’s material infrastructure, and culture of use.