ABSTRACT
This chapter includes a detailed examination of the relationship between core organisers and rank-and-file supporters in The Hardest Hit, Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and The Broken of Britain. By combining the analysis of Facebook content with data obtained from semi-structured interviews with core organisers, crucial differences are exposed with regard to the internal structure and perspective on social media of British disability advocacy groups. The chapter then goes on to consider the implications of these findings for the citizenship levels of disabled Internet users. Three distinct approaches to discussion on Facebook are delineated below. In particular, the limits of ‘tactical’ success, represented primarily by the ability to generate a high volume of conversation on Facebook, are explored. This illustrates that the amount of posts, in itself, was not a sign of meaningful participation or empowerment for ‘ordinary’ disabled Internet users. More broadly, this also provides the opportunity to discuss whether conversations that took place on Facebook were responsible for shaping group interaction or merely reproduced relationships and power differentials that were primarily negotiated in other venues, both online and offline. The chapter reflects also on the specific combinations of ideological ethos and strategic planning that led each group to champion a different approach to Facebook. Overall, the result was one of tentative innovation inwhich change in the
ecology of British disability activism was coupled with some potential for micro-empowerment at the individual level. However, political talk, and not collective action, represented the norm on Facebook in the vast majority of cases. Among the case studies considered in this book, The Broken of Britain’s organisational structure stood out as surprisingly centralised and unstable, but also potentially empowering. Facebook played a key role in this process by enabling a new generation of tech-savvy disabled self-advocates to communicate with and ‘represent’ other disabled Internet users. This opened up new opportunities for disabled people’s political citizenship to be mediated by a group of peers versed in the practice of digital advocacy instead of formal organisationswith layers of bureaucracy and professionalised leaderships, or experienced activists that privileged a more traditional and arguably less effective repertoire of contention.
