Communicating beyond Information? Mobile Phones and Mobilization to Offline Protests in China

Abstract

The past decade has seen an increase in the use of the mobile phone as a facilitator for political protests. Yet, to date, how the use of mobile phones affects participation in protests remains unclear. This study employs the distinction between communication and metacommunication to investigate the informational and relational dimensions of the mobile phone in protest mobilization in four cases in China. By drawing upon fifty-three in-depth interviews, the results reveal that, in addition to communicating mobilizing information, participants metacommunicate their mutual relationships via mobile phones in the mobilization process, and this shapes the practice of information exchange and the interpretation of information. As the pivotal driving force for protest participation, this metacommunication involves an engagement of reciprocal relationships, generates a sense of mutual engagement, and enhances a feeling of solidarity. The dynamic of the mobile phone as a facilitator in protest lies in its embedding of metacommunication beyond information dissemination.

Keywords

mobile phone protest metacommunication mobilization China interpersonal relationship

Introduction

The growing relevance of the mobile phone to popular protests has attracted considerable attention around the world in the wake of an increasing use of these devices in organizing and facilitating collective action (e.g., Rafael 2003; Rheingold 2002; Suárez 2006). Some studies have elucidated the ways in which people employed their mobile phones in sparking and coordinating protests (Liu 2013; Rafael 2003; Suárez 2006). Others have explored the social and political contexts in which mobile devices have been appropriated for contentious activities (Howard and Hussain 2011; Qiu 2008a). Nevertheless, to date, the role of the mobile phone in mobilizing protests remains largely unclear and undertheorized. Little is known about how the use of mobile phones affects participation in protests or, more precisely, how the mobile phone functions and contributes to the mechanism of mobilization in protest.

Aiming to fill this gap theoretically and empirically, this study employs the distinction between communication and “metacommunication” (Ruesch and Bateson 1951) to investigate the role of mobile phones in protests in China. While few studies thus far have been devoted specifically to the use of mobile phones in contentious activities in China, the devices have been ubiquitous in protest actions. In 2013, China had the world’s largest population of mobile phone users, surpassing 1.2 billion, or 90 percent of its total population (China Internet Network Information Center [CNNIC] 2014). The ubiquity of mobile phones in China, as in other parts of the world, enables growing mobile phone–facilitated, contentious activities, with the increasing use of mobile devices as a major conduit for mobilizing mass protests (e.g., Liu 2013; Weber 2011). The analysis of mobile phones and protest mobilization in China is thus a prime means for understanding the mechanism of mobilization entailed by mobile devices as well as for yielding an understanding of the place and the potential of mobile phones in political activism in China.

In the present study, I first offer a critical review of current studies of mobile phones and offline protests. Second, I introduce and develop Gregory Bateson’s distinction between communication and metacommunication as the theoretical framework to examine the ways in which the use of mobile phones affects mobilization and participation in protests. Third, I specify case selection, data collection, and methods of analysis. Fourth, I give a brief overview of four cases in which mobile phones play a crucial role in organizing protests. I then scrutinize the use of mobile phones in the process of mobilization by looking at relational dimensions of mobile communication as the channel for facilitating participation and recruitment in protests. I conclude with thoughts on the pivotal function of metacommunication that underpins the dynamics of the mobile phone as a facilitator in protest mobilization beyond information dissemination.

Prior Research on Mobile Phones and Popular Protests

Rheingold’s (2002) Smart Mobs, one of the early works on mobile technologies and protests, addresses the emergence of mobile, network–based, collective organizations that proliferated via wireless technologies that amplified human capabilities for political activism. In the following decade, the pervasive adoption of the mobile phone for protests has established this device as an indispensable resource in collective activism. Research on the use of mobile phones in protests has consequently flourished (e.g., Castells et al. 2007, 185–213; Liu 2013; Rafael 2003; Suárez 2006). However, a majority of discussions about mobile phones and protests are lumped in with those about the Internet, failing to identify the distinct properties of mobile communication technologies and their respective impacts on contentious activities (Miard 2012, 120).¹

Among studies focusing exclusively on the use of mobile phones in protests, some specify the affordance of mobile communication technologies for protests, such as availability (i.e., the ubiquity of wireless devices), affordability (low-cost terminals and telecommunication fees), efficiency (rapid diffusion of information), and autonomous communication networks (e.g., Suárez 2006). Others underline the relevance of contextual and intermedia dynamics (e.g., Qiu 2008a; Rafael 2003) for protest events. Commonly, these studies have drawn their conclusions from the practical use of mobile phones during protests, for instance, receiving and forwarding text messages that call for some action (e.g., Castells et al. 2007, 188; Rafael 2003). Regarding studies on mobile communication in China, some elaborate the way mobile phones empower “vulnerable groups,” in particular rural-to-urban migrants (Qiu 2008b; Wallis 2013, 169–75). Others take mobile phone–facilitated protests as examples to explicate the contribution of mobile phones to civil society (e.g., Weber 2011). What is missing from all of these studies is a theorization of the mechanisms for mobile phone–mediated mobilization, namely, how people perceive mobilizing messages from their mobile phones and why they follow the instruction from these messages.

In addition to this literature, we may consider quite a few studies that address the relevance of mobile phones in activating and maneuvering existing interpersonal ties and relationships in protests mobilization (Castells et al. 2007, 185; Qiu 2008a, 50; Suárez 2006). However, these studies rarely probe into the specificities of how and why such mobile phone–mediated interpersonal relationships affect offline protests mobilization, leaving it as a taken-for-granted consequence of mobile communication. As Gould (2003, 237) states in his critical view of existing interpersonal ties as a basis for social movements, “simply observing that social ties affect mobilization is not much of a contribution. It is a bit like noticing that people who are stricken with plague have had contact with other plague victims” (also c.f. McAdam 2003, 287). Others extend this point by suggesting that a more in-depth understanding of “the kinds of communication that individuals use to activate personal networks” (Bennett et al. 2008, 286) through digital media during protests would help establish some causal linkages between communication technology–mediated interpersonal ties and social movement actions. By examining the impact of mobile phone–mediated interpersonal interactions on protest mobilization, this study aims to provide a more nuanced portrait and to expound upon the role of mobile phones in protest mobilizations.

Explaining Interpersonal Interaction: From Communication to Metacommunication

Among many studies on interpersonal interaction, the work of Gregory Bateson (1951, 209) on “metacommunication,” or “communication about communication,” provides a unique way of thinking about certain aspects of interpersonal relationships, mediation, and communication. A complex process that involves not just a verbal exchange of information, which is normally regarded as “communication,” human communication also encompasses a variety of exchanged cues and propositions, which, as Bateson suggests, shall be considered as metacommunication. More specifically, metacommunication refers to “all exchanged cues and propositions about (a) codification and (b) relationship between the communicators” (Ibid.). In the process of exchanging information, on one hand, metacommunication provides clues as to how the information that has been communicated should be decoded. On the other hand, metacommunication embodies a mutual relationship between communicators, which significantly influences how the information should be understood. These two kinds of metacommunication overlap and intertwine with each other in communication practice. The point here is not that the exchanged information via interpersonal interaction is not important for us to study. Rather, the same information can be framed by different metacommunication codes and relationships, making the interpretation or perception of the information entirely different—even its opposite (Grof 1981).

The concept of metacommunication calls for a shift from studying the explicit exchanged information to studying the communication practice itself and, in particular, the communicators’ implicit mutual awareness regarding their relationship, in order to understand human communication activity. From a Batesonian perspective, the very act of human communication carries an underlying but significant valence as a determinant of both the interpretation of exchanged information and the follow-up actions: that “each participant [is made] aware of the perceptions of the other” and that “this mutual awareness becomes a part determinant of all our action and interaction” (Ibid., 208, emphases added). Such awareness is relevant because its quality and degree determines “the qualities and characteristics of metacommunication between persons” (Ibid., 209). Beyond the information exchange, the mutual awareness of the existence of and the relationship between the interlocutors thereby plays a key role in human interaction in the social world as it definitively shapes the metacommunication of interpersonal communication. Following this argument, research should take into account the mutual awareness concerning the existence of each of the interlocutors and the relationship between communicators when investigating the process and effect of human communication.

As Bateson worked in a period before the ubiquitous adoption of mobile phones, he did not have a chance to examine mobile phone–mediated human communication at present. Nor has his distinction between communication and metacommunication been employed to explicate mobile phone–mediated interpersonal communication in protests today. Nevertheless, the concept of metacommunication remains valuable for understanding interpersonal interaction in the digital age as it underlines relational implications (Steier 2013, 164) and greatly shapes literal meanings. Few studies account for the covert relational influences via new media communication, such as “shared awareness” (Shirky 2008, 163) or “hyper-coordination” (Ling and Yttri 2002). Ling (2008), for instance, theorizes how mobile communication generates social cohesion in everyday life on the basis of mutual engagement and rituals of interaction. Nevertheless, his study has largely focused on ritual cohesion, which involves “the sharing of a mood and the mutual recognition of being engaged in a common situation” (Ling 2008, 83) after the establishment of interpersonal interaction via mobile communication. What is the situation before the establishment of interpersonal interaction, that is, how does the relational influence affect communication and interpretative practices when one person starts to call or text the other via his or her mobile phone, or when the other receives the mobile call or text, but has yet to respond? In short, how does the mutual awareness of the other side shape communication practices at the very beginning of interpersonal interaction and contribute to its establishment? The Batesonian concept of metacommunication helps shed some light on a more nuanced understanding of the process of mobile phone–mediated interpersonal interaction.

Against this backdrop, this study aims to provide some preliminary answers to two follow-up questions. First, what are the characteristics of the metacommunication that the mobile phone embodies in protests? Second, how has metacommunication contributed to protesters’ actions? To answer these questions, this study scrutinizes the relational dimensions of mobile communication in protest mobilization. On the metacommunication side, this study investigates the following: first, how mobile communication transforms the relationship between communicators; second, how—and to what extent—such a relationship affects the practice and interpretation of exchanged information; and third, how such practices and interpretations contribute to protest mobilization.² By interrogating the impact of mobile phones through the prism of metacommunication, this study aims to provide a detailed picture of the role of mobile phones in protests.

Method

To present a nuanced picture of the use of mobile phones in protests, this study examines four case studies: the anti-Para-Xylene (“anti-PX” for short) protests in Xiamen in 2007, the Weng’an mass incident in 2008, and the taxi driver strikes in Fuzhou and Shenzhen in 2010. The criteria for case selection required the use of mobile phones (in contrast to the Internet, for example) as a key means of protest mobilization. From these cases, this study used snowball sampling and in-depth interviews with participants in these protests. In China’s tightly controlled and monitored political environment, the distribution of calls for protests is strictly prohibited, not to mention personal participation in protests (e.g., King et al. 2013). This method allowed the researcher to recruit “hidden populations” (Salganik and Heckathorn 2004). To access the hidden networks of mobile phone users in China, the researcher asked fifteen people in four cities as initial “seeds”³ to provide details about both from whom they received mobilizing messages and to whom they distributed these messages via their mobile phones. The researcher then replicated this process to identify and recruit more participants in the protests. This mobile network–based sampling procedure guaranteed the interviewees’ privacy and ensured that their participation in protests would be kept to a low profile. Of the initial sixty-five participants contacted for the study, fifty-three agreed to be interviewed. The final sample was comprised of eighteen respondents from the Xiamen case (eleven male, seven female), eight from the Weng’an case (seven male, one female), eleven from the Shenzhen case (all male), and sixteen from the Fuzhou case (all male).

All interviews were conducted in Chinese and in person by the researcher in spaces that the interviewees already knew. The researcher only documented interviews when the interviewee was comfortable and anonymity could be guaranteed. Each interview lasted typically 1.5 hours.

The findings for the study are drawn from the fourth and fifth sections of the interview guide created for the study.⁴ In these, interviewees were asked to consider and examine their own behaviors and responses to the mobilizing calls/texts they received via mobile communication, and the impact of such information and communication practices on their decision to participate in protests. The last two sections thus delved into the relational dimension of mobile communication in protests.

After data collection, an explanation-building approach and cross-case synthesis (Yin 2009, 18) were employed to figure how participants adopted their mobile devices as a facilitator for mobilization in the process of protests, what kinds of metacommunication mobile phones generate, and how the metacommunication through mobile phones affects mobilization and participation in protests.

Mobile Communication and Mobilization to Offline Protests in China

This section first provides an overview of four cases: the anti-PX protests in Xiamen, the Weng’an mass incident, and the taxi driver strikes in Fuzhou and Shenzhen. Second, it sums up how mobile technologies shape the exchange and flow of information and generate favorable conditions for protest mobilization. Although these four cases took place in different sets of circumstances (urban and rural areas), they include different groups (the middle class, the rural population, and taxi drivers), and the reasons for these events are different (environmental concerns, justice-seeking, and complaints against the government), all of them embraced the mobile phone as a key means of organizing and facilitating protests.

Mobile Phone–Mediated Protest Mobilization in China: Cases

The anti-PX protest, write Xie and Zhao (2007, 16–17), demonstrated “the power of text messaging” during a process of remaking a public agenda for the environment. The local government of Xiamen, which is located on the Southeast coast of China, initiated a petrochemical project without informing residents, who believed it would have a negative impact on the environment. To stop the residents from finding out about the project, the government ordered local media not to cover this issue and prevented the spread of reports about this project by media outside Xiamen. Nevertheless, a warning regarding the PX project went out via text messages. Despite the denials by local officials that the negative information on the Internet and mobile phones was made of “rumors” (Interviews with Xiamen residents by author, September 4–6, 2007), the government shut down several online forums. Against this backdrop, text messages urged residents to join a street protest; one of the most renowned texts that was “forwarded frenziedly” by “millions of Xiamen residents” (Lan and Zhang 2007) read,

For the sake of our future generations, take action! Participate among 10,000 people, June 1st at 8 a.m., opposite the municipal government building! Hands tied with yellow ribbons [as a symbol associated with environmental protection]! Pass this message on to all your Xiamen friends!

The proliferation of mobile texts resulted in a two-day street demonstration at the beginning of June 2007 with over twenty thousand participants.

The mass incident in Weng’an, a town in Southwest China’s Guizhou province, was ignited by an allegation of a cover-up over a sixteen-year-old girl’s “unusual death” (Yu 2008) in a river on June 22, 2008. A postmortem examination declared the girl had committed suicide, but her relatives refused to accept the verdict and claimed she had been raped, killed, and then tossed into the river by two men believed to have familial ties with the local public security bureau. The girl’s family went to petition the matter, but they were refused, creating further rumors that the girl’s relatives had been assaulted by the police. One mobile message read,

Without conducting a full autopsy, the police asserted that the girl committed suicide by jumping in a river, and they did not take mandatory measures against the suspect and ignored the family’s call for a full autopsy. (Interview with a resident in Weng’an by author, December 22, 2008; see also Buckley 2008)

Such a message fueled public anger across the small county. On June 28, texts and calls sent almost ten thousand people to the public security bureau where they smashed and set fire to the police vehicles and government buildings (Yu 2008).

The taxi drivers’ strikes in Fuzhou city and Shenzhen city were two in a long line of driver protests since 2008 (Branigan 2008). Discontentment with the rigid manner of enforcing traffic regulations and long-standing concerns, including unlicensed competition, high fuel prices, and rising rental fees, prompted taxi drivers in several cities to call and text others to strike in succession between 2008 and 2013 (e.g., Global Times 2013). Strikers attempted to post their discontent on the Internet (Lee 2011), but most of this information was censored, as was local media (Interviews with journalists and editors in Fuzhou and Shenzhen by author, December 13–17, 2010). On April 23, 2010, in response to a surge in police-issued penalties, taxi drivers in Fuzhou went on strike (Reporter 2010, 7). Mobile calls had become the major conduit for the strikes (Interviews with taxi drivers in Fuzhou by author, December 3–5, 2010). Similarly, over three thousand taxi drivers took part in a three-day strike to protest the failure of the government to address the problems of suburban drivers and the city’s inequitable cab fare structure. It was also organized largely through mobile communication in Shenzhen at the end of October 2010. As strikes by taxi drivers have become more frequent due to soaring costs that squeezed profits for drivers, the mobile phone emerged as a key channel for distributing strike calls and organizing protests.

Communicating Information for Protests via Mobile Phones: Affordability, Immediacy, and Independence

The exchange and flow of information via mobile phones in the protest cases featured the following three characteristics—affordability, immediacy, and independence—which afford favorable conditions for protest mobilization.

First, affordability involved both the low-cost, easy-to-use mobile device as the key mobilizing facilitator and the cheap telecommunication price for information dissemination—be it through voice calls or text messaging—for protests. The ubiquity of mobile phones and low-priced telecommunication fees have made this device one of the most widely used today, embedding it into Chinese people’s everyday lives (CNNIC 2014). The capability for lowering the threshold of organizing and coordinating protests was thus immense, as mobile phones—cheaper to own and easier to run than computers—gained ground as tools for facilitating collective action and other forms of contentious politics. Close observation of mobile phone uses for protest mobilization in these four cases revealed that, instead of advanced functions such as email or even text messaging, it was the mobile call—a very basic, mundane function—that acted as a key means for low literacy groups (i.e., rural residents and taxi drivers, mainly rural-to-urban migrants) to initiate and coordinate contentious activities. The mundaneness of such means did not undermine its potential for political purposes but strengthened it instead by allowing ordinary people, especially those without sufficient technical competency, to mobilize collective resistance through a simple and fast method—twiddling their thumbs over a mobile phone keyboard to make a call.

Second, immediacy referred to the instantaneous information transfer service via mobile phones, in particular, the synchronous voice call, which enabled rapid mobilization for protests. Mobile communication technologies allowed for the establishment of “perpetual contact” (Katz and Aakhus 2002) through which each mobile user was personally addressable anytime, anywhere. In this way, the transfer of information—in this case, mobilizing messages—took place instantaneously. The immediate communication made the proliferation of mobilizing messages happen within a short period, making it difficult for the authorities to predict when and where proliferation of a mobilizing message via mobile communication would ensue and, furthermore, to intervene in the outbreak of protests. In the Xiamen case, a civil servant admitted that local government never realized that the mobilizing texts for anti-PX protests could go viral merely via mobile phones and reach “millions of residents” (Lan and Zhang 2007) within three days, finally resulting in offline demonstrations (Interview with a civil servant in Xiamen by author, September 4, 2010). Relying largely on voice calls, the taxi drivers had initiated and organized strikes overnight in the Fuzhou case. Immediacy thus brought about the potential of rapid mobilization, which may have left the authorities unprepared for protests. Moreover, even if it was possible to detect the spread of calls for protests, “it is impossible to predict to what extent such kind of messages will be distributed and how many people will be informed [about protests]” (Interview with a civil servant in Xiamen by author, September 4, 2010). In this way, the immediacy of communication through mobile phones contributed a certain lack of predictability to the protests, which guaranteed, to a degree, the unfolding of protests away from the intervention of authorities.

Third, independence included a twofold meaning: the independent operation of a wireless telecommunication service as an alternative channel to the highly controlled Internet platform for communication, and the self-directed process of information dissemination by a communicator. The operation of a mobile telephony service is an independent system, which has been different from, for instance, social media like weibo⁵ that have to largely depend on mobile and web-based technologies to provide interactive platforms. Mobile telephony services—voice call, text messaging, and so on—have run more or less independently in telecommunication operations. This does not mean that there has been no censorship in wireless telecommunication services,⁶ but that it has become more difficult to supervise and control the information flow via wireless telecommunication. Regarding Internet control, the government has shut down websites or disabled certain functions to disrupt or prevent the flow of information. However, when the authorities have tried to stop the spread of information via wireless telephony service, they have had to shut down the whole telecommunication network. Such a decision would have easily caused “substantial collateral damage” (Zuckerman 2014), such as the interruption of mundane communication in work and life that would not only trigger larger-scale discontentment with the government, but would also impede the functioning of authorities who have already integrated mobile services as part of the propaganda system. As such, the government has had to prudently pursue its control of mobile services.

This study observes that, in all four cases, the authorities carried out censorship, including deleting what they regarded as “sensitive words” and shutting down online forums to stop the flow of mobilizing information online. Only in the Xiamen case did the local government try to stop the diffusion of mobilizing messages by shutting down the telecommunication service. However, the government was forced to reopen this service after about two hours, partly due to the large amount of complaints from government employees who themselves rely on the mobile network to carry out their work (Interview with a civil servant in Xiamen by author, September 4, 2010). In short, as an alternative channel of communication, the relatively independent operation of mobile telecommunication services, to a degree, prevented the authorities from abruptly interrupting the flow of mobilizing messages.

Moreover, mobile communication was a self-controllable process. You can decide for yourself what kind of and how much information you would like to deliver, to whom—or which people—and at what time. In the case of the protests, the communicator was able to decide independently the specific receivers with whom he or she would like to share mobilizing information and, more importantly, who could be recruited into protests or could mobilize even more people into protests. This kind of communication also allowed for adopting different persuasive skills for mobilization according to different objectives. This process provided participants with the autonomy to maximize their control over the procedure for mobilization, which in turn increased the possibility of persuasion in protest mobilization.

Given the experience from interviewees, this study observes that participants used their mobile phones to communicate mobilizing information in an easy, immediate, and independent way. The lower costs and greater access to easy-to-use mobilizing tools made it significantly easier for ordinary people, even those without complex digital skills, to initiate and coordinate protest movements. The immediacy of the medium allowed for rapid diffusion of mobilizing messages, which exponentially amplified the scale of influence of each mobilizing message from one-to-one to one-to-many (and then many-to-many more). Independence not only meant the process of mobilization taking place through a relatively independent and alternative channel compared with the Internet. It also referred to the fact that, by using their mobile devices for mobilization, people acted on their own when deciding to whom they should spread their messages and how they should go about recruiting for protests. Put differently, the mobile phone offered greater autonomy to participants for handling the processes of mobilization and recruitment for protests. Furthermore, these three characteristics intertwined with each other and shaped the process of communicating mobilizing information together. The immediate interaction facilitated the proliferation of mobilizing messages and accordingly generated the possibility of rapid mobilization. In this way, communicating information for protests through mobile phones created favorable conditions for the development of protests.

Findings and Discussions: Metacommunication through the Mobile Phone for Protests

Although mobile communication—given its affordability, immediacy, and independence—facilitated the distribution of information for protest mobilization, its role merely created a possibility for protest. It leaves the question: what was the key mechanism that transforms such a possibility into reality? Embodying both the mutual relationship and the specific way of interpreting exchanged information in terms of such a relationship, metacommunication endows mobilizing information with a sense of reliability, reciprocity, and solidarity beyond its literacy content. Such a process fundamentally shapes how people reflect on and act upon the mobilizing messages.

The mutual relationships between communicators had a decisive impact on the practice of distributing and responding to mobilizing messages. Senders selected the receiver(s) of mobilizing messages on their own, but this was neither a random process of name-picking nor a simple inclusion of all the names in a person’s mobile phone directory. Instead, as one interviewee elaborates,

You have to think over to whom you would like to send this kind of information [calling for protest]. In particular, you have to take into consideration your mutual relationship, including the trust and reliability of the other side . . . Given the relationship between both sides, will the receiver respond to your appeal? To what extent will the receiver join the protest, or recruit more participators by distributing the message to a broader scope? . . . calling for protests is one of “the top forbidden message contents” in China [because the government always strives hard to eliminate these kinds of messages]. You have to be sure that the receiver is reliable and the authorities will not be able to detect the protest organization by being informed by the receivers in advance. (Interview with a student in Xiamen by author, December 14, 2007)

Here, the decision about who should be the receiver of mobilizing information relies on the sender’s perception of reliability toward the other side on the basis of a mutual relationship. Reliability is a crucial driving factor behind mobilization in high-risk activism (McAdam 1986) in repressive contexts. With exponential popularity of digital media, the Chinese authorities are working even harder to tighten their control over digital platforms for curtailing the possibilities of collection actions. Against this backdrop, reliability on the basis of a mutual relationship has a decisive impact on the practice of distributing mobilizing message, as it guarantees that such “politically sensitive content” can be disseminated safely, even against opposition from the Chinese authorities.

In the process of delivering mobilizing messages, more specifically, senders start by looking for receivers in their personal networks (as in a mobile phone directory) who will respond in “a predictable way” (Interview with a resident in Weng’an by author, December 22, 2008) to their appeals for protest. The “predictable” way refers to the positive response the receiver will give to the request for protest participation. The higher the level of mutual reliability and trust perceived by the senders and the greater their belief in the possibility of protest participation, the more likely they will select the person as the receiver. Another interviewee summarizes, “sending a [mobilizing] message to the correct person is the very first step for successful protest” (Interview with a graduate student in Xiamen by author, December 6, 2007). Given the reliability in mutual relationship, mobile communication thereby provides participants a secure and reliable means to engage in recruitment and mobilization for protests.

The mutual relationship also greatly shapes the response to such messages in the next step of mobile phone–mediated protest mobilization. As soon as the message is received, receivers must, first and foremost, view such a message as an appeal from their friends rather than as a simple piece of mobilizing information per se. As one interviewee explains, “It [the message] is more than a piece of information. Because it is a piece of information from a specific sender, who could be your friend, colleague, relative, and so on” (Interview with a taxi driver in Shenzhen by author, December 20, 2010). Accordingly, whether or not—and how—to respond to the request in this message from a specific sender (Ling 2004, 151) depends not just on the information itself but, more importantly, on the mutual relationship between communicators. For mobile message receivers, the positive response to the request not only confirms the reliability and trust perceived by the sender but also demonstrates the reciprocity in the mutual relationship.

One interviewee, as the receiver, explains, “Beyond informing you about protest issues, the message actually asks for your participation as a kind of reciprocal help in terms of your mutual relationship” (Interview with a taxi driver in Fuzhou by author, October 5, 2010). As this statement demonstrates, when people receive mobilization messages via their mobile phones, the message reminded people of the relationship between senders and themselves, for one thing, and their reciprocal duties in social relationship, for another. Being a sort of moral belief, reciprocity “evokes obligation toward others on the basis of their past behavior,” thereby motivating and guaranteeing “a mutually gratifying pattern of exchanging goods and services . . . in the long run” (Gouldner 1960, 170). In the process of mobile phone–mediated mobilization, as the receivers perceive it, how they deal with the mobilizing request will definitely affect the way in which the senders handle appeals from them in the future beyond the participation issue at hand. Such feeling, generated by self-perceived duties and responsibilities given the basis of the reciprocal nature of mutual relationship, encourages people to respond positively to the request at once as a sort of social support and fulfillment of their duties in a social relationship. In this way, it is the mutual relationship—reciprocity in particular—instead of the information that generates a sort of “pressure” on the receivers about how they respond to the mobilizing call.

The reciprocal relationship between sender and receiver deteriorates when the receiver rejects the request to join the protest or even when the receiver fails to reply to the request in time, because this kind of reaction

shows that the other side does not really care about the sender’s appeal and the [reciprocal] relationship between both sides per se . . . in the future, it will be difficult for you to gain help from the sender as you are the one who first failed to maintain your reciprocity. (Interview with a taxi driver in Fuzhou by author, October 5, 2010)

With this in mind, the reciprocity of mutual relationships encourages receivers to accept the requests, engage in protests, and further distribute the mobilizing call in their personal networks.

Communicating mobilizing information is more than a practice of using the mobile phone. It is also an action against the authorities who try to snuff out the possibility of collective action. In other words, the dissemination of and response to calls for protest are already part of protest activity. For receivers, the mobilizing message implies that the senders have already engaged themselves in the protest. For senders, a positive response confirms the receivers’ engagement. Consequently, as several interviewees underline, they recognized that they “[both senders and receivers] are ‘comrades-in-arms in the same trench’ and need to consolidate against the authorities” (Interviews by author with Xiamen residents, September 4–6, 2007; and with taxi drivers in Fuzhou and Shenzhen, December 17–21, 2010), as soon as they all engaged in the dissemination of mobilizing messages via their mobile phones. The perception of mutual engagement in the protest becomes “a catalyst in the construction of social cohesion” (Ling 2008, 9), leading to the tightening of the relationship and a sense of solidarity in protest participation.

Moreover, the mobilizing message multiplies as more and more people join the distribution of information; in turn, the chance to receive the identical or similar message rises. In a circular fashion, people perceived an increasing sense of support and solidarity as they received the message from multiple known, reliable sources in their personal networks. As a white-collar worker noted,

Knowing that quite a lot of my friends and relatives have engaged in the demonstration as I received messages [via my mobile phone] from them really empowers the feeling of togetherness against what the government has done. Such a feeling does encourage me to engage myself in the protest and keep distributing the [mobilizing] message to my other friends, asking them to recruit their friends and participate [in the protest]. (Interview with a white-collar worker in Xiamen by author, December 3, 2007; emphasis added)

Instead of being separate individuals, participants realized that they are in fact “networked” (Rainie and Wellman 2012) individuals enjoying support and solidarity. The feeling of empowerment from support and solidarity pushes an increasing number of people toward the mobilizing call, and makes them more willing to engage in protest. Their active practice, such as distributing mobilizing calls to more friends, further motivates the process of mobilization and recruitment, making more and more people engage in the protests.

In summary, the metacommunication of mutual and reciprocal relationships through mobile phone usage played a pivotal role in protest mobilization. The mutual relationship through metacommunication not only shaped the interpretation of mobilizing messages but, more importantly, transformed the perception of reliability, strengthened the sense of reciprocity, and nourished the feeling of solidarity for protest participation beyond merely communicating mobilizing information. This finding resonates with Katz’s (1957, 77) argument that interpersonal relations are not just channels of information but are also sources of social pressure and social support. In the Chinese cases, the sense of reliability, reciprocity, and solidarity were intertwined in the process of mobile communication and led to a circular strengthening of ties between texting and other protest practices. In this way, metacommunication through mobile communication was a key part of the mechanism of mobilization in protests.

Reflection on Communication and Metacommunication via the Mobile Phone in Protests and Its Implications

It is necessary to underline that the role and the function of metacommunication through the mobile phone had both positive and negative impacts for the protests. On one hand, the metacommunication articulated and accumulated the social network and relational support of participants. This generated the sense of solidarity that ensured the mobilization of protests in spite of strict control over collective action in China. On the other hand, the metacommunication may have made the decision regarding protest participation more to do with the influence of personal relations, than to do with the devotion to the protest itself. In other words, the motivation of protesters to participate may have come largely from a combination of the fear of losing one’s social support with the desire for the maintenance of a long-term, good social relationship within one’s social network.

This study finds that the protest participation and mobilization via mobile devices were more or less relationship-driven. Accordingly, one of the most powerful motivations to protest against the authorities may have had more to do with social networks than the politics at hand. The responses from interviewees supported the notions that participants normally do not consider how they will achieve the aim of the protest (e.g., request that the government amend the management regulation for the benefit of taxi drivers), what kind of strategies they will adopt to expand the influence of protests, and so on. This could, in fact, restrict mobile devices’ long-running impact on China’s contentious politics.

Beyond simply suggesting that interpersonal relationships play a key role in the process of protest mobilization, which has long been recognized by social movement studies, this study elaborated how these interpersonal relationships, metacommunicated through mobile phones, intervened in the mobilization process and why they mattered. The findings also showed that mobile phone–mediated interpersonal relationships embodied multiple dimensions (e.g., reliability, reciprocity, and obligation) that intervened at different moments in the process of mobilization and that induced people to become involved in contentious activities. Specifying these dimensions has given us “a more complete explanation of the entire process of individual participation” (Passy 2003, 22).

Future research in this field may benefit from drawing lessons from social movement scholars who address the relevance of interpersonal relationships to the mechanism of mobilization in different aspects, such as tie strength (Gould 2003), density and frequency (Marwell et al. 1988), and salience and centrality (Fernandez and McAdam 1989). By asking probing questions about why and how interpersonal relationships, mediated by mobile phones, matter in the process of mobilization, we will yield a deeper understanding of the role of mobile phones in contentious activities.

Conclusion

The mobile phone is galvanizing and shaping collective activism in contemporary China, as it does in many parts of the world. By investigating four cases involving the use of mobile phones as a requisite resource for protest mobilization with fifty-three in-depth interviews, the study observes the role of the mobile phone as a key facilitator in protests with two-fold functions. On the one hand, the mobile phone provides an easy means of proliferating mobilizing information within a short time, which further generates a base for rapid mobilization. On the other hand, apart from the communication of mobilizing messages, more importantly, the mobile phone as an interpersonal communication device introduces the dynamics of interpersonal relationships through metacommunication. The incorporation of mutual relationships shapes both the communicative practice of information exchange and the interpretation of the message. Significantly, through the prism of metacommunication, the mobile phone–mediated interpersonal relationship acts as a pivotal mechanism of mobilization by affecting people’s decision to participate in protests. As a result, the dynamic of the mobile phone as a facilitator in popular protest lies in its embedding of metacommunication, which embodies interpersonal relationships beyond information dissemination.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Rich Ling, Vicki Mayer, and two anonymous reviewers for offering insightful comments throughout the drafting of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Jun Liu is an assistant professor in the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication and the Centre for Communication and Computing at the University of Copenhagen. He holds a Ph.D. from Fujian Normal University (2011) and a second Ph.D. from University of Copenhagen (2013). His research covers the interrelationships between new media, culture, and politics with particular attention to new communication technologies in China.

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