SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) as a solidarity network and explores how it uses social media platforms to garner solidarity for the Palestinian cause and mobilize activists to achieve political change. Using an ethnography of production practices as well as a frame and discourse analysis, the research addresses challenges the PSC faces with the duality (centralised-decentralised) of its structural organisation and its navigation of sociopolitical opportunities and constraints particularly in a context plagued by contested narratives, propaganda and fake news. This research addresses how these political opportunities and constraints had an impact on the building and articulation of solidarity frames for the Palestinian cause. The methodology combines collective action frames analysis and discursive analysis of posts from the PSC’s Facebook page gathered during select key moments in 2016 and 2017, which included the publication of a damaging UN report labelling Israeli policies in Palestine as apartheid and the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. The thesis discusses diverse solidarity frames the PSC uses to articulate the ‘Palestinian cause’ as a global movement and their articulation according to context. The research showcases the way solidarity frames are articulated depending on the opening or closeness of the political context and the ways in which the PSC attempted to use these frames in both traditional mainstream media and Facebook in order to increase solidarity with Palestine during highly contested historical moments. Thus, this work attempts to provide new knowledge into how a social movement organization, such as the PSC, functions within overlapping local and international contexts and in