Discovering the Libyan youth movement’s identity through facebook

Abstract

This study demonstrates that critical discourse analysis can be used to quickly discern the identity of a political actor and make accurate predictions about that actor’s intentions and goals, even in the context of a revolution. This study’s authors used critical discourse analysis to empirically assess the identity of the Libyan Youth Movement using 45 images posted on the group’s Facebook page during the opening weeks of the Libyan revolution of 2011. The authors uncovered multiple discourses which permitted the positing of a group identity as well as predictions of the group’s goal and intentions. The findings are significant in that they provide new evidence to support the practical utility of discourse analytic approaches in contemporary communications and political science research.

Keywords

• Lybian revolution of 2011
• Lybian youth movement
• group identity
• social media
• discourse analysis