How to trigger a digital mass mobilization

To increase their visibility, social movements have taken to the digital public space. Yet apart from a few instances of striking mobilization, their capacity to generate a mass digital response remains uncertain. This article provides an empirical analysis of mobilization around the “Case of the Century” on Facebook (the most signed petition in French history), to identify configurations likely to spur digital mobilization beyond activist circles. We argue that digital mobilization spreads when its information and communication framework successfully adopts the codes of the digital public space in which it operates, particularly by optimizing the circulation of content. To support this argument, we undertook a study on the circulation of the URL to the “Case of the Century” petition on Facebook in order to grasp the dynamics of mobilization within this space. We found that the communication framework of the “Case of the Century” was able to mobilize new audiences by simultaneously articulating two variables: appealing to opinion leaders associated with the cause; and appealing to digital ‘affects’ likely to facilitate the circulation of content. These two conditions successfully triggered a cascade of information that was able to overcome the visibility constraints at play in a digital space like Facebook.