The VUCA-nature of modern protest communication

Abstract

This study introduces several political revolutions from the past and the present for a deeper understanding of the nature of protest communication. Previously, the protests’ success was ensured by the use of printing, telegraph and media innovations, which allowed the protest organizers to evade government control. Today, such technologies provide information and allow participants to communicate proactively in social networks, self-organizing into structures that strengthen and spread protest communication. Social networks enable the realization of the communication potential of each participant based on the organizational model of mass collaboration. This model is not characterized by a system-structural organization, which confounds predictions of the processes of social interaction. Each subsequent event depends on the previous one, complicating the establishment of a trend. This organizational model creates difficulties for the authorities in controlling protests, as it is prone to the stochastic formation of centres of activity, which can be explained from the perspective of field theory, provided in this study. Therefore, from the point of view of the authorities, the situation with the development of the protest acquires the characteristics of VUCA, moving beyond possible control.