Revision summary
Social media lowered the cost of calling, framing, and witnessing protest. Castells and Tufekci describe leader-light networks of outrage with real limits in bargaining. Indian CAA, farmers’, and #MeToo campaigns show hybrid online and street repertoires. Shutdowns, trolling, and influencer oligarchy are the other side of the same tools. The change of form is significant. Street, union, and court remain decisive.
Model answer
Introduction
Social media are platforms that let users publish, share, and assemble without passing through a newspaper or party office. Forms of protest are the repertoires people use to claim, disrupt, and persuade. The case argued here is yes, the changes are significant in speed, scale, and visibility. They are not a replacement of street, union, and party.
Body
What has changed
- Manuel Castells described networks of outrage and hope: rapid assembly without a single headquarters, as in parts of the Arab Spring and Occupy.
- Hashtags, livestreams, and encrypted groups lower the cost of calling a crowd and of documenting police action.
- Transnational mirroring lets a local injury travel as a template, which Zeynep Tufekci analysed as a strength and as a weakness of leader-light movements.
- Everyday Goffman-like presentation now includes the protest profile: symbols, frames, and counter-frames compete in the same feed.
- New forms include online petitions, coordinated rating campaigns, leak drops, and hybrid sit-ins that are both camp and channel.
Indian illustrations
- The 2011 anti-corruption mobilisation used television and early social media together.
- The 2019–20 Citizenship Amendment Act protests and the 2020–21 farmers’ movement used WhatsApp, YouTube, and Twitter to coordinate langar, legal updates, and counter-narratives.
- #MeToo in Indian workplaces showed a repertoire of naming that bypassed slow internal committees, with risks of defamation law and unequal digital access.
What has not been abolished
- Occupying a physical place, blocking a road, and striking still decide outcomes when platforms can be throttled.
- Michels’s oligarchy reappears as influencer hierarchies and as parties that harvest online anger.
- The state uses the same tools for surveillance, shutdown, and organised trolling, which changes the risk of protest rather than ending protest.
- Digital divides of language, gender, and rural bandwidth mean the feed is not the people.
Argument
- Significant change is in the repertoire: faster framing, wider witnessing, and weaker formal leadership at the start.
- Significance is not the same as success. Leader-light networks can occupy a square and then fail to bargain, which Tufekci noted.
- Marx still asks who owns the platforms. Weber still asks who holds the monopoly of force. Those questions bound the new forms.
Judgement
- Yes, forms have changed significantly. No, the street, the union, and the court are not obsolete.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD SM[Social media] --> R[New repertoire] R --> F[Fast frame witness assemble] S[Street strike court] --> O[Outcomes] F --> O ST[State shutdown surveillance] --> F
Conclusion
Social media has changed protest by speeding assembly, witnessing, and framing, as Castells and Indian hybrid movements show. The change is significant in repertoire. It is limited by shutdowns, oligarchy of influencers, and the continuing need for physical disruption and organisation. The fair case is significant change without replacement of older forms.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Assess critically A. G. Frank's theory of development of underdevelopment'
Next question in the 2023 paper (Q7). View answer →
-
Is a hashtag a social movement?
It can be a frame and a call. A movement still needs lasting organisation, claim, and often a physical presence.
-
Do social media cause protests?
They change how protests are organised and seen. Grievance, organisation, and the state still cause the conflict.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2023 · Q1(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
How does the dramaturgical perspective enable our understanding of everyday life? -
2023 · Q1(d) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Is reference group theory a universally applicable model? Elucidate -
2023 · Q2(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
What, according to Robert Michels, is the iron law of oligarchy? Do lions folly and foxes in Vilfredo Pareto's theory, essentially differ from each other? Substantiate -
2023 · Q3(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
How do you assess the changing patterns in kinship relations in societies today? -
2023 · Q4(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Do you think that common sense is the starting point of social research? What are its advantages and limitations? Explain -
2023 · Q4(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Highlight the differences and similarities between totemism and animism -
2023 · Q5(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Examine the relevance of corporate social responsibility in a world marked by increasing environmental crises -
2023 · Q5(d) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Analyze critically David Morgan's views on family practices
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2023 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
What is the distinctiveness of the feminist method of social research? Comment
Sociology as Science
Feminist method starts from women’s everyday work and treats gender as power, not as an extra variable. Smith, Harding, Oakley, and Collins made standpoint, reflexivity, and intersection the core tools. It criticises Durkheim-style distance that treated the male public actor as the normal subject. Indian care work, dowry, and the double day show what occupation surveys miss. The method stays empirical. It is not a substitute for evidence.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2023 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Discuss the relationship between sociology and political science
Sociology as Science
Both disciplines study power. Political science centres the state. Sociology centres groups and everyday domination. Marx, Weber, Pareto, Michels, and Mills already joined class, party, and elite. Durkheim and Parsons treated the polity as part of a wider social system. Indian elections, Mandal, and civil society research fail if the two fields are sealed. The relation is complementary, not a hierarchy of sciences.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2023 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
How does the dramaturgical perspective enable our understanding of everyday life?
Sociology
Goffman reads everyday life as performance with front and back regions, teams, and face-work. The point is the shared definition of the situation, not a claim that all talk is false. Mead’s Me is made public on this stage. Asylums shows what happens when the back region is removed. The method is strong on encounters and weak as a full theory of class and the state.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.