Role of Social Media in Mass Movement: a Case Study of ‘Jallikaatu’
Dr. P. Shanthi
Dean, School of Media Studies, Hindustan College of Arts and Science, Padur, Kelambakkam 603103
*Corresponding Author Email: shanthi_palai@yahoo.co.in
ABSTRACT:
The revolution in social media has made it easier for likeminded people to gather and voice their opinion on a particular subject of common interest, the revolution has accelerated the rate at which relationships develop, information is communicated and influence is transmitted. A recent example is the Jallikattu protest in Tamil Nadu, the news and protests have spread throughout the globe from Tamil youths through social media. In this case governments (State and Central) face increasing pressure because of the power of the crowd. In this article analyses the qualitative aspect of communication on Jallikattu protest and explore the role of social media in mass movement in creating public opinion.
KEYWORDS: Jallikattu, Social Media, Protest, Mass Movement, Public Opinion
INTRODUCTION:
Social media is actually web based media and it refers to accessible online technologies where people share, publish, comment, and communicate etc across the global village. Starting from the local communities, we see a great internet empowerment around "Social media which has the capacity to alter traditional power dynamics. Social media has had a profound effect on society, commoners now have a chance of having their voice heard they feel there is a sense of hope.
The 2017 Pro-Jallikattu Protests, also known as the Pro-Jallikattu Movement refers to numerous leaderless apolitical youth groups protesting in January 2017 in large groups in several locations across the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, with some sporadic smaller protests taking place across India, as well as overseas.
The chief motivation of the protest was against the Supreme Court’s order to ban Jallikattu (also known as sallikattu, eru taluval, or manju virattu), a traditional Tamil bull taming sport, which is held during Pongsl, a harvest festival in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. The sport is conducted annually on the second day of the Tamil month Thai. The sport was banned by the Supreme Court in a decision citing cruelty to animals based on a lawsuit filed by the animal rights activists group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which asserted that the tradition violates the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (PCA).
This study is based on the role of social media that provided a platform to organize an unprecedented mass-movement against this right. Public protests took place on 21 January 2017 at Marina and in front of Assembly/Govt. offices of Tamil Nadu. Almost entire protests were organized by using the social media tools like mobile phones, social media sites like Face book, Twitter and SMS. Tens of thousands signed an online petition protesting the Supreme Court.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:
· The qualitative aspect of communication on Jallikattu that is being disseminated through social media. Dr. P.Shanthi, Dean, School of Media Studies, Hindustan College of Arts and Science, Padur, Kelambakkam, Chennai 603103.
· The role of social media in mass movement in creating public opinion on the issue.
METHODOLOGY:
Present research is descriptive in nature. As the main aim is the discovery of facts and insights on the topic, its research design is flexible, to permit the incorporation of different aspects of the phenomenon or event. The study was divided into following different phases:
Phase I: Exploration of secondary data
Phase-II: Content Analysis
Phase -III: Random sampling survey
Extensive review of literature was done to collect information in order to understand the social media and movement relation and also get a fair understanding of the kind of research previously conducted on similar issues.
Qualitative content analysis was conducted as per the need of the study. Content of the websites and messages given on various social networking sites has been observed and analyzed in order to know its nature. The sample of the web pages of 15 days i.e. from 15th January, 2017 to 29th January, 2017 has been selected for the purpose of the study.
A survey is being conducted through purposive sampling technique to add the audience perspective into the study. Researcher has selected 50 people about their use of social networking sites. These 50 people include students, office goers, and housewives within the age group of 20 to 35 years.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE:
According to Denis Mc Quail, despite the continuity of mass media, the introduction of social media in forms of electronic media does represent a challenge to theory as well as to existing traditional media industry. The ‘social media’ are now increasingly being used for convey of public communication, deeper source of information, a platform for minority voices and an alternative channel for delivering familiar mass media products, services and satisfactions.
The relationship between user need or motivation and actual use of a medium has been extensively investigated by uses and gratifications studies, which assumes an active audience whose motives are the key components of their activity. This may be particularly applicable for the study of new media technologies because they provide audiences with (a) More choices;
(b) New opportunities for altering communication messages, (c) The ability to reallocate time, and (d) The capability to interact with media (Williams, Strover, and Grant, 1994). Each of these demands active audience participation (Perse, 1990; Perse and Dunn, 1998).
Exploration of secondary data:
Jallikattu is cited as one of the last available ways to promote and preserve the native livestock because the other uses of native breeds such as ploughing, breeding via mating and milk is on decline due to advancement in mechanization by tractors, improvement in artificial insemination and hybrid Jersey cows respectively. Music videos, such as "Takkaru Takkaru" by Hiphop Thamizha and on Facebook videos to talk about jallikattu and its benefits inspired the protestors. Sivasenapathy has claimed that the indigenous cattle bulls are critically endangered in Tamil Nadu and banning jallikattu will have the adverse effect of wiping them out completely. According to Sivasenapthy and other pro-jallikattu activists, jallikattu is not just a sport that is deeply entrenched in Tamil culture, but it has also inadvertently served as a scientific method of breeding cattle. This view is held among a majority of jallikattu supporters. The protest is aimed at revival of the native humped bull, called the zebu.. The Tamil Nadu breed of zebu is unique to India and has several advantages compared to European varieties of cattle such as the Holstein cow. PETA disputes the allegation that outlawing jallikattu would lead to a loss of the Tamil Nadu zebu, stating that the bulls can still be used as studs regardless of whether jallikattu is legal or not.
The protests were spontaneous and had no specific organizers. The protest happened at Marina along with sit-ins at large grounds across the state. The protests were initially formed by members of Student community across the state which was further strengthened by people from various sections such as IT professionals, who joined later. The lack of leader was seen as stumbling block for the state government because it could not call people for talks. The protests were largely peaceful except for the laththi charge by the police.
The protests are not just confined to Chennai but thousand gathered across the state in prominent places such as Thamukam Grounds in Madurai, SAV school ground in Thoothukudi, VOC Ground in Coimbatore, VOC Ground-Tirunelveli, VOC Ground in Erode, Court Road in Trichy, Vellore Fort in Vellore, Salem, Nagercoil, Thanjavur, and Pudhucherry. Tamil youths from other states expressed solidarity with jallikattu protests in Tamil Nadu. The protests against the ban on bull-taming sport Jallikattu turned into a movement. Thousands of people from across Tamil Nadu gathered at the Marina Beach in Chennai in a massive protest that proved to be an example of how protests could be peaceful and organized.
In what many called an ‘uprising’, people in Chennai were protesting for number of days and maintained calm all through. Despite the police cutting off power supply from the Marina Beach, the protesters did not lose patience and continued to protest in a calm and peaceful manner with the torch lights of their mobile phones turned on.
Not just that, water bottles and food packets were being served at the Marina Beach, which saw over lakhs of protesters on Wednesday. The protesters made all efforts to keep the Marina Beach clean. Empty bottles and wraps were collected and no littering was encouraged at the beach.
What’s also impressive was how the young protesters used the social media to make the movement bigger. WhatsApp messages, tweets and Face book posts were being sent out continuously to more people urging them to join the protest.
The protest that continued to grow bigger without any untoward incident stood out as an example and left many impressed. Protesters also made sure that the country had to pay attention to the Jallikattu issue, coming out in huge numbers and spreading the movement. Cricketers Virender Sehwag and Ravichandran Ashwin tweeted how they were impressed with the way the protesters have maintained calm.
“Wonderful to see protest in a peaceful way in Tamil Nadu, I request to maintain peace in your passion. Peaceful protest will be a lesson for all,” Sehwag tweeted. Ashwin also tweeted, “Scenes of peaceful protest all around TN. Unity, peace and resolve will show our plea in the right light.”
Content analysis:
The protest was primarily coordinated using social media apps. The use of memes was another feature used to spread the message. Memes added satire and humor to the protests. Various traditional Tamil sports such as Silambattam, stilt performances and street plays were performed to showcase Tamil pride along with speeches to inspire the crowd. Slogans were shouted against the animal rights organization PETA, alleging an international conspiracy favoring extinction of Tamil Nadu's rare cattle breed, and replacing them with Jersey cow from Denmark and Switzerland.
The political class in Tamil Nadu was shaken by the speed and efficiency with which the protests were coordinated. What began as a small group — around 50 protesters at the Marina Beach in Chennai, on 17th January — swelled by evening to around 5,000 people. The initial 50 blocked the Beach Road, the route used by the Tamil Nadu chief minister, other ministers and high court judges to reach the secretariat at Fort St George. They wanted to meet the CM to present their demands.
Instead, Tamil Nadu’s head of state O Panneerselvam (OPS) evaded the route. Soon, the number of protesters began increasing and demanding that OPS promised to help them conduct Jallikattu, a popular bull taming sport usually held only in four districts of the state – Madurai, Trichy, Theni and Dindigul. By the next day, the crowd grew to 10,000, mostly students who were bunking college and coming onto the streets in protest. The protesters demanded that Tamil pride, suddenly linked with Jallikattu, be restored. The last time the state government, police and residents of Chennai witnessed a tidal wave of protesters was in 2013, when demonstrators demanded a resolution in the United Nations Human Rights Council against Sri Lanka for the genocide of Tamils.
The call for action spread rapidly through social media and WhatsApp. Student unions across India displayed their solidarity with the cause. And Tamils across the world responded. The diaspora conducted protests in front of the Indian embassies in their respective countries. Students, whose numbers rose to over a lakh in the week, made sure that the protests were largely peaceful, helped regulate traffic, picked up garbage from the beach and slept overnight on the beach’s shores.
This was the first time they all demonstrated togetherness, and the first time they were joined by millions of their fellow citizens. But it is important to understand that this movement had built on a legacy of protest by many different activist networks, most of which were not primarily organized online. Secondly, it was clear that the protesters used a range of different media to communicate with each other and to get their message across.
Every mass movement needs spaces where political alternatives can be debated and organization can take place. For the current generation some of these spaces have been online. "Online organizing is very important because activists have been able to discuss and take decisions without having to organize a meeting which could be broken up by the police," one of the protesters said. Journalists present at Marina Beach were also impressed with the way the protesters were making all efforts to keep the protest calm as well as clean.
On January 11, O. Panneerselvam wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to promulgate an ordinance to resume the sport of Pongal but no result came out of the letter.
The protest was not one giant rally like politicians organise at election campaigns. There were multiple small gatherings. Many students with microphones made many small speeches. Some were blurting out clever, funny and unprintable slogans jeering at both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister O. Paneerselvam. Some others jeered at Subramaniam Swamy whose incendiary tweets were met with abuses that would make most people blush. Some wanted a ban on PETA. Some others were discussing the effects of losing native cattle breeds, which they claimed is what banning Jallikattu will result in. This wasn’t all – a call to boycott of Pepsi/Coke came alongside an appeal for students to stay united. But an essential factor in all these various sub-protests was an appeal to Tamil identity. Almost all protests were implicitly an expression of Tamil anxiety.
Most protestors were college students from the city of Chennai. It is a reasonable estimate that a vast majority of them came from homes that did not own cattle. Most of them were likely to have never touched a bull in their lives. Yet they were at the Marina beach protesting for Jallikkattu for their identity in what is the largest protest the state has seen in decades. This is something that needs far greater sociological exploration. One could attribute this to the power of social media intersecting with a cause that moves people. But surely demonetization had a far greater impact on these protestors than a ban on Jallikattu did. Demonetization saw no such mass protests.
An aspect that’s affected the Tamil psyche in recent times is the empty space left by two giants of the political landscape. J. Jayalalithaa passed away recently while M. Karunanidhi has been ill and has for all practical purposes retired. There was, one could argue, a sense that Tamil interests had strong and powerful leaders in these two giants. Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK was after all the only party to argue against the GST citing states’ rights. While Karunanidhi’s credentials in this regard have been burnished for over half a century, their exit from the public sphere in such a short period of time has, as a matter of practical power play politics. The impact of this vacuum on the Tamil psyche to assert one’s identity is one possible explanation for this protest.
The alienation of Tamil identity from the national mainstream has also been hastened by the incumbent government at the Centre. The Sanskrit and Hindi bias of the BJP needlessly reopens wounds.
In this context, it was useful to see the protest at Marina beach as more of an expression of Tamil solidarity rather than being about any particular grievance. This solidarity and Tamil nationalism worked for Tamil Nadu in the past 70 years. The state has used that to improve its health and education indices more than any other state in independent India. The index of Tamil nationalism that helps in fomenting a sense of ‘my state’ for development is the same that builds fissiparous intent vis-a-vis the nation state. How India deals with its individual states which are also linguistic and civilisational entities will govern how the protest at Marina pans out in future.
Random sampling survey:
REFERENCES:
1. Bekkers,V, Beunders,H., Edwards,H and Moody, A. (2011). New Media, Micro Mobilization and Political Agenda Setting: Crossover Effects in Political Mobilization and Media Usage. In The Information Society: An International Journal, 2011, Vol. 27, No. 4.http://dx.doi.org.
2. Burkey, W (2011). ‘Media, Youth Activism and Participatory Politics: Case Studies in a Digital Age’. dmlcentral.net/blog/ whitney-burke.
3. Mc. Quail D. (1996) Mass media in the Public interest: Mass media Society, Arnold Publications, UK.
4. Alan Bradburne, Practical Rails Social Networking Sites (Expert’s Voice).
5. Wim van de Donk (2004) Protest: New Media, Citizens and Movements. Routledge, London UK.
6. Marshall McLuhan (1964). Understanding Media, Gingko Press.
7. Jones S G (1997). Virtual Culture, Sage Publications, London, UK.
8. Hayashi AM (1999). The Net Effect: Scientific American.
9. https://www/oneindia.com/india/fight-jallikaatu-becomes-s-movement-tn/articlecontent-pf23684-2320032.html
10. http://www.india.com/news/india/jallikattu-ban-protests-in-chennai-calm-peaceful-clean-leave-many-impressed-1768260/
11. http://thewire.in/101658/marina-beach-jallikattu
12. http://www.faceboom.com
13. http://www.twitter.com
Received on 24.10.2017 Modified on 05.12.2017
Accepted on 20.01.2018 ©A&V Publications All right reserved
Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2018; 9(1): 253-257.
DOI: 10.5958/2321-5828.2018.00046.3