How Do Social Movements Emerge—and Why Do Some Radicalize?
New book, Protests and Radicalization in the Digital Age: The Reopen Movement, explores protest and polarization in the social media era
During the COVID-19 pandemic, protesters demanded an end to stay-at-home orders; the Reopen Movement’s later shift to the right from nonpartisan origins is examined in a new book coauthored by BU researchers. Photo via AP/Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/Sipa USA
How Do Social Movements Emerge—and Why Do Some Radicalize?
New book, Protests and Radicalization in the Digital Age: The Reopen Movement, explores protest and polarization in the social media era
Kids bounced off walls, businesses shuttered, and the novelty of working from the kitchen table soon wore off—the COVID-19 lockdowns of early 2020 were tough for just about everyone. But for some, being stuck at home was also an affront to their freedom, and they decided to push back.
In spring 2020, the Reopen Movement spread across the nation calling for a return to normal life. But what started as largely nonpartisan, says Boston University alum Clara Martiny (Pardee’21), soon edged further and further to the right. When lockdown pressures eased, she says, the movement switched into broader political and election issues.
Martiny is the coauthor of a new book that explores how the Reopen Movement retooled—and what its genesis says about how social movements emerge, evolve, and radicalize in an era shaped by social media and digital advances. Protests and Radicalization in the Digital Age: The Reopen Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2026) was written with researchers drawn from across BU and beyond, and fields as diverse as international relations, engineering, and economics.
The book traces its roots back to Martiny’s time as a BU undergraduate, when she studied the topic as part of BU’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). She later focused her senior thesis on the Reopen Movement, sparking the research that informs the book. Martiny’s BU mentor, Jeremy Menchik, a BU Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies associate professor of international relations and political science, is one of her coauthors.
The Brink spoke with Martiny, Menchik, and coauthor Gianluca Stringhini, a BU College of Engineering associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, about how digital platforms reshape mass mobilization and why grassroots participation matters, even in movements influenced by powerful people and groups.
Q&A
with Clara Martiny, Jeremy Menchik, and Gianluca Stringhini
The Brink: What motivated you to study the Reopen Movement, and why did you see it as an important case for understanding mass mobilization in the digital age?
Menchik: Social media is omnipresent for contemporary politics, whether that’s Donald Trump on Truth Social, Tucker Carlson’s podcast, or Ms. Rachel on Instagram. We wanted to understand how social movements develop, grow, change, and die in the digital age. In-person protests are no longer the default option for mass mobilization, and we wanted to understand how digital tools transform the origins, evolution, and impact of social movements.
The Brink: Your research challenges the idea that the Reopen Movement was purely elite-driven or Astroturf, a seemingly grassroots campaign with hidden major backers. What did your findings reveal about bottom-up participation?
Menchik: A lot of contemporary right-wing movements like the Tea Party and the Reopen Movement are backed by powerful elite institutions such as the Koch Brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council. We wanted to understand elite influence on social movements. What we found was that elites are influential in creating social movements, but that digital infrastructure like Facebook is impossible for elites to control completely, even with bots and paid influencers. Instead, large numbers of everyday people can shape the issues and priorities of mass movements.
The Brink: How did a largely nonpartisan protest movement evolve, and radicalize, over the course of the pandemic? How has this changed since many people have gone back to the office?
Martiny: The movement started as a largely nonpartisan response to a shared problem—lockdowns and COVID-19 disrupting people’s lives and spreading uncertainty and fear. But it changed as that issue faded and states started to reopen. The original goal of the movement was technically achieved, and that created spaces for new agendas, especially national politics and the 2020 election. At the same time, more moderate participants dropped out of the groups, paving the way for more partisan or extreme voices to stay or join, pushing the movement into a direction more aligned with [President] Trump’s agenda. The online networks we studied didn’t just disappear as people returned to “normal life.” The networks were repurposed for new causes. Some of the people we studied back then are still active today as political influencers, local politicians, or are still facing legal fallout from having participated in the January 6 Capitol riots.
The Brink: How does your study change how scholars should think about misinformation, online echo chambers, and political polarization?
Martiny: Our study shows that misinformation, echo chambers, and polarization aren’t baked into the internet. These problems develop over time as online social movements grow, and social media platforms like Facebook can accelerate that process. Misinformation, for example, wasn’t the main reason people initially joined these groups, but it was part of the reason people stayed: it became more partisan and conspiratorial with the arrival of QAnon ideologies. Early on, the groups we studied were also more heterogeneous and not advanced echo chambers; over time, fragmentation and moderation pressures sorted users into more ideologically consistent spaces. In that sense, polarization is something that develops through movement dynamics, not something that structures them from the outset.
The Brink: What broader lessons does this case offer for policymakers and public health officials responding to future crises?
Stringhini: This book shows that social media does not only shape online discourse, but it can also be the breeding ground for movements that spill into the real world, giving rise to societal effects. This is an opportunity for policymakers and health officials as online discourse can be used to identify emerging topics and ideas that might have public safety implications—think of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory in 2016 or of the various false cures for COVID that emerged during the pandemic.
The Brink: The book drew on the expertise of researchers from across BU and beyond—international relations, electrical and computer engineering, economics. Why was it important to have that range of perspectives?
Stringhini: Socio-technical problems cannot be addressed through purely technical or theoretical means. The strength of this project is that we combined computational techniques to collect and analyze data with social movements theory. This allowed us to gather a unique perspective that shaped this book and hopefully will make a lasting impact. As engineers, we are pretty good at collecting and analyzing large amounts of data, but extracting meaning from them requires an interdisciplinary approach. Interdisciplinary collaborations like this one can help us better understand how online discussion can shape real world movements.
The Brink: What do you hope students and readers ultimately take away from this book?
Menchik: This book should inspire students to get involved in research—their UROP projects can turn into books. Clara Martiny’s senior thesis on the Reopen Movement helped to birth this book, and helped launch Clara’s career, including jobs at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Alethea, and a MA from the University of Oxford.
Beyond research, we hope that readers will see the power of social movements, as well as the need for analogue tactics in a digital age. We need social movements for democracy, against climate change, and for global governance. That will take mass mobilization, and we hope that the next generation of leaders draws lessons from our book on how to make their social movements more effective in an age of digital distraction and social polarization.
The Brink: Clara, how has the project influenced your approach to research or the issues you want to tackle in your career?
Martiny: This project has undeniably changed my approach to research by helping me realize how invaluable interdisciplinary, collaborative work can be. Working with economists, computer scientists, and political scientists exposed me to different research methods and perspectives. I encourage everyone to do the same.
During the research, I also witnessed how damaging polarization, disinformation, and disconnection—often worsened by the algorithms of the social media platforms that claim to connect us—could be to democratic processes and political participation. I’ve dedicated my career and research to protecting people against digital harms, a commitment that continues today especially with the rise of AI.
The book’s other authors are Samuel Bazzi, a University of California San Diego professor of economics and former BU College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor, Pujan Paudel (ENG’24), and Seth Soderborg of Harvard University. A version of this article first appeared on the Pardee School website; the interview was edited for length and clarity.
