Je suis Charlie as mass protest: analytical reconstruction of emerging publics in France and in global level

Transcription

1 Je suis Charlie as mass protest: analytical reconstruction of emerging publics in France and in global level Panel : T04P03 - Mass protests of new millennia as a challenge to social theory Author : Shota Kakabadze Co-author : Katerina Uzoikina Following the Islamist attacks on the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris on 7th of January, crowds waved French flags and sang France's national anthem La Marseillaise from Paris to Washington and from Jerusalem to Beirut. All over the world, on every continent the message created by Charlie Public has found a response. The Charlie Hebdo shooting stimulated the creation of global public, which has included not only mass assemblies all over the world, but also strong international movement in social media, uniting not only civil society and global NGO's, but also heads of states and international intergovernmental organizations. Thus, this global consolidation is seen both on street and virtual level, which are interconnected with each other. Consolidation on a virtual level Following Mahoni ideas, the new reality totally transforms the features of communication in the modern society - the quality, quantity and speed of information flows, as well as its impact on political communication. New media and information technologies are opening up a range of innovative possibilities for public summoning. And the case of Charlie Hebdo only proves this fact. The Charlie Hebdo shooting received an outstanding reaction in social media. The message of solidarity with France has united millions of people in the virtual space. Twitter became the main virtual tool of public consolidation and addressing the issue.

2 Martin Grandjean in his article Les millions de tweets #CharlieHebdo et #JeSuisCharlie 1 tried to visualize the reaction of Twitter users. The first graph shows the most used hash-tags at the period from 6 th of January to 15 th of January, the period when the Charlie Hebdo shooting happened and was the item of the world agenda. According to the graph, top-hastags were #CharlieHebdo, #JeSuisCharlie, Charlie Hebdo without hash-tag and #RespectforMuslims. The most popular one was #CharlieHebdo which was used times by Twitter users on 7 th of January and times in the whole period of analysis (from 6 th to 15 th of January 2015). The next widespread hash-tag was #JeSuisCharlie, which was used times at the day of shooting and times during these 10 days. Source:

3 Apart from these main key hashtags there were also some other messages used by the Twitter users at that time. Among them we can find #NousSommesCharlie (which means We are Charlie ), #JesuisAhmed (in english I am Ahmed, the tribute to a Muslim police officer killed during the attack on 7 th of January), #JesuisJuif (In English I am a Jew, hashtag expressing solidarity for the Jewish people living in France after the attacks on a Jewish Supermarket in Paris in the following days after Charlie Hebdo attack), #LaFranceEstCharlie (in English France is Charlie, the hash tag to show French unity) and #NousSommesEnsemble (in English we are together, this hashtag was used to show the worldwide unity and solidarity with France), #VoyageAvecMoi (in English travel with me to support muslims in fear of travelling after the attack), #TousALaMarcheDu11Janvier (In English All on the March on 11th of January which aimed to attract more people to join mass march of solidarity), #JeSuisFlic or #JeSuisPolicier(In English I am a Police officer for commemoration of another policeman killed during the terrorist attack), #Killallmuslims (the hashtag has been used in the social network since 2013 and was given a boost by the Charlie Hebdo attack, still its popularity is controversial, as it was also used by people, who criticized this approach. For example, People have no heart who really want to #KillAllMuslims ), #JesuisKouachi (the opposite campaign used by Islamists to support two brothers Kouachi that were suspected of the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine and then killed by the police), #AnnulezLaMarcheDu11Janvier (In English Cancel the march on 11 th of January which was used by the users who were afraid of the repeat of the terrorist attack during the march), #JeSuisCharlieMartel (hashtag which remind of Charles Martel, French military leader of the 8 th century who went down in history as the savior of Europe from the Arabs at Poitiers), #JeNeSuisPasCharlie (hashtag opposite to jesuischarlie and used for different reason by people who did not agree to express solidarity with France) and the last but not the least is #JeSuisNico that was made to make fun of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy who

4 pushed his way to the front during the march of solidarity. These variety of messages, their distribution is shown in the following table and graph. Message Number of tweets from 6 th to 15 th of January #NousSommesCharlie #JesuisAhmed #JesuisJuif #LaFranceEstCharlie #NousSommesEnsemble #VoyageAvecMoi #TousALaMarcheDu11Janvier #JeSuisFlic #JeSuisPolicier #Killallmuslims #JesuisKouachi #AnnulezLaMarcheDu11Janvier #JeSuisCharlieMartel #JeNeSuisPasCharlie #JeSuisNico

5 Source: Thus, the analysis of data shows that the most popular messages, that were pushed the process of summoning the virtual public, were CharlieHebdo and JeSuisCharlie. Now it is also interesting to look, how these key messages were distributed worldwide. For this purpose we will follow Matthew Zook s article Mapping the Twitter Reaction to the Charlie Hedbo Attack 2, where the author collected 73,000 geotagged tweets with the hashtags: #charliehebdo or #jesuischarlie that were posted in social network from 7 th of January to noon of 8 th of January. Zook aggregated these tweets to the country level and normalized by a random sample of tweets in each country during the same time period. This procedure helped to compare the reaction in countries with differences in population and access to the Internet. The author calculated a location quotient for each of the country. The location quotient that is more than 1 shows the higher level of tweets about Charlie Hebdo in comparison with usual amount of tweets in this country. A quotient less 2

6 than 1 shows the lower level of tweeting. The results of this analysis are presented in the following table: This table can be supplemented by the map, created by Rich Donohue, a post-doc at the University of Kentucky Department of Geography. This map shows the widespread reaction on the Charlie Hebdo shooting all around the world. Red countries (France, Belgium and French Guyana) have the highest relative number of tweets on Charlie Hebdo. The orange countries (Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Cameroon, Lebanon, India and Pakistan) show a greater level of tweets related to Charlie Hebdo than one would expect when taking into account typical level of tweeting in this country. The countries shaded in blue have a lower level of tweets related to Charlie Hebdo than usually and those shaded in grey failed to meet the minimum threshold of tweeting activity (15 tweets) to be included in the analysis.

7 The reaction in France and closest Belgium is comprehensible, as well as great level of tweeting in other neighboring European countries. What is more interesting is the support outside of Europe by the former French colonies: Canada, Algeria, Tunisia and some others that do not have such historical ties: Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan. Source: This global reaction to the Charlie Hebdo shooting caused the translation of the key messages Je suis Charlie into other languages. Thus, in an official website of Charlie Hebdo appeared the translated versions of a rallying cry against the gunmen attack on 7 th of June. We can find there translations into 7 languages: German, Farsi, Spanish, Arabic, Slovakian, Russian and Czech.

8 Moreover, Charlie public got a special tool for its consolidation. There was created a special phone application Je suis Charlie intended to help users around the world to show their solidarity. The application is provided with the description in the official stores, that state Because "Je suis Charlie" has become the symbol of freedom of speech whatever your beliefs, your country and your opinions, download the "I am Charlie" app and simply state where you stand on today's world map. The number of Charlies, people who downloaded and used this application is Thus, je suis Charlie became a powerful message of public consolidation. One of the reasons for the popularity of the slogan je suis Charlie is rooted in the national culture of protest in France. It reminds the similar slogan of the French revolution of May 1968, which was Nous sommes tous des Juifs allemands (We are all German Jews). The slogan "We are all - German Jews" was the response of French students on the attempt of the French authorities to deport one of the leaders of the protest movement in May Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a German student of Jewish descent, who studied in the country.

9 According to A. Oleynic 3, the slogan of the past and the new one appeared in 2015 looks quite similar, still have the difference, as that from 1968 expresses the collective solidarity, while the new one je suis charlie is personalized and became more than nous sommes charlie, which also appeared in social media, but did not become the key slogan. Consolidation of public on the streets Undoubtedly, mass public actions in solidarity with journalists shot at their job places at magazine Charlie Hedbo united millions of people. The same slogans as Charlie Hebdo and Je suis Charlie with its translations were used in many cities of France and all other Europe, North and South America, Oceania and even in some Asian and African cities. First demonstrations happened in France on 7 th of January. According to French newspapers, this day approximately 35,000 people gathered in Paris, each in Lyon and Rennes, people in Nice and Toulouse, 7,000 in Marseille and 5,000 each in Nantes, Grenoble and Bordeaux. All in all, there were more than people in total on the French streets on 7 th of January. The demonstrations in France were supported by some other countries. Thus, on 7 th of June similar demonstrations under the same slogans happened in Amsterdam. Brussels, Barcelona, Ljubljana, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Washington, New York, Luxembourg, Seattle, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal. On 8 th of May the big demonstrations happened in Australia. On th of January there were a series of demonstrations, called Republican marches and aimed to honor the victims of Charlie Hebdo shooting and the following terroristic attacks, to show the solidarity with France and to support freedom of speech. According to French officials, the number of people who participated in these rallies in France was more than people, so that it 3

10 became the largest public gathering in France since 1944, when people celebrated the end of German occupation. Below are the figures for French cities: 10 th of January Toulouse 150, ,000 Nantes 75,000 Marseille 45,000 Strasbourg 45,000 Lille 35,000 40,000 Nice 30,000 Besançon 30,000 Limoges 30,000 Pau 30,000 Orléans 22,000 Agen 13,000 Le Havre 11 th of January Paris 1,500,000 2,000,000 Lyon 330,000 Bordeaux 140,000 Rennes 1 Grenoble 1 Montpellier 100,000 Saint-Étienne 70,000 Marseille 65,000 Brest 65,000

11 Nancy 50,000 Strasbourg 45,000 Toulon 45,000 Angers 45,000 Metz 45,000 Aix-en-Provence 40,000 Perpignan 40,000 Tours 35,000 Dijon 35,000 Caen 33,000 Clermont-Ferrand 30,000 Lorient 30,000 Nimes 30,000 Saint-Brieuc 30,000 Reims 25,000 Cherbourg 25,000 Mulhouse 25,000 Quimper 25,000 Angouleme 20,000 Chambery 20,000

12 Avignon Vannes Albi Alençon Bastia Bourg en Bresse Blois Carcassonne La Rochelle Laval Mâcon Perigueux Poitiers Saint-Malo Tarbes Belfort Cognac Charleville-Mézières Troyes 20,000 20,000 16,000 14,000 13,000 11,000 12,000 12,000

13 Ajaccio Cannes Bergerac Tulle Colmar Ferney Voltaire Libourne Dammartin-en-Goële Narbonne The demonstrations spread to the different corners of the world 456 : City Number of people that participated in public actions Vienna Brussels Montreal Berlin Dublin Luxembourg Lausanne 2000 Stockholm Munich

14 Washington London San Francisco Lausanne 2000 San Francisco 2000 Jerusalem 1000 Rome 1000 Milan 1000 Cardiff 1000 Buenos Aires 1000 Sydney Madrid Athens 500 Bangkok 500 Geneva 500 Oslo 500 Boston 500 Cluj-Napoca 500 Brasilia 300 Rio de Janeiro 250 Beirut 200 Tokyo 200 Guadalajara 200 Rammallah 200 Lisbon 200 Caracas 200 Istanbul 120 Moscow 100

15 Smaller gatherings took place in Delhi, Tunis, Gaza, Warsaw, Seoul, Kiev and some other cities.