ABSTRACT
In April 2014, Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group, abducted over 200 Nigerian girls in Chibok, Nigeria. This heinous act caused global outrage and before longthe “bring back our girls” campaign had gone viral with no less than the US first lady pitching in as well as celebrities galore. Debates over whether virtual activism diminishes political engagement continue to be polarized with some holding that it is mere clicktivism while others argue it is a spillover from other forms of offline involvement. Nash (2008) posits that such campaigns provide opportunities for global citizenship in addressing global issues.
Collective action through organizational enabled networks is increasingly becoming augmented by, and in some cases supplanted by, personalized activist formation employing social media networks (Bennett and Segerberg 2012).Through a critical analysis of this social media campaign, this chapter analyzes the discursive constructions of the campaign through messages posted on its Facebook site,utilizing three action frames drawn from social movement literature—diagnostic, prognostic and motivational. The chapter shows that the framing of the campaign in simple universalistic terms caused it to resonate beyond the borders of the continent which also speaks perhaps to the beginnings or growth of people’s movements powered by technology, given broad global lack of effective institutionalized leadership.
