Online Protest Behavior In French Youth Culture And Its Formation Mechanism

This thesis focuses on the online protest behavior and its formation mechanism in French youth culture.It uses innovatively online protest behavior as the entry point to explore the protest aspect of French youth culture on social media,and explores the cultural behavior and object of online protest of French youth with the help of two theories: social protest and online collective action.We also consider the act of protest as an interaction ritual and explore its formation mechanism from the perspective of interaction ritual chain,and summarize the interactive ritual model of the French youth online protest behavior.We conducted a year-long field observation of 50+ hashtags and groups on Instagram,Facebook and Twitter,the three most popular social media platforms for French youth,and conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with six French youth who have been involved in online protests several times,to answer three main questions with the help of textual analysis: In what ways are French youth protesting?What are they protesting for? How is online protest action formed?The development of technology has given rise to new genres of symbol resistance.On the Internet,French youth use textual forms such as slogans,poetry and letters,graphic forms such as private photos and caricatures,and video forms such as live broadcasts and videos for collective action,presenting the resistance that French youth culture possesses.French youth generally adopt two strategies of online collective action,one is online collective action that uses the Internet as a field of action,and the other is offline collective action that only uses the Internet as a mobilization tool,but actually takes place in the real world.The main objects of youth resistance in France are the individual,the group,the policy/system and the cultural power system.These four objects are interrelated and contain a variety of progressive and causal relationships within them.At the same time,French youth "virtually co-exist" on social media,using exclusive symbols and values as a "soft barrier" to distinguish between members inside and outside the group,resisting around a common focus,and reinforcing connected interactions through shared emotions,so that an interaction ritual of online resistance is formed.The interactive ritual brings four outcomes,namely,the production and application of group symbols,the transformation and accumulation of individual emotional energy,the strengthening of group solidarity through identity,and the defense and maintenance of group morality.These four outcomes are interrelated,interchangeable,and mutually causal.They are both the results of the interaction ritual and the source of motivation for the next interaction ritual of online resistance.French youth achieve a continuous and lasting action of online resistance through the cycle of interaction rituals.