Movember: Twitter Conversations of a Hairy Social Movement

Abstract

Movember is an annual “month-long celebration of the moustache” where men grow a mustache and raise money in the largest philanthropic endeavor for men’s health. Movember is predominantly an online campaign, and consequently, participants have actively embraced social media; this is evidenced in the 1,879,994 tweets collected during Movember 2012 in this research project. This article presents an analysis of Movember that examines how individuals use the numerous syntactical features of Twitter to engage in conversation and share information in order to develop a nuanced understanding of how people are utilizing social media as part of the social movement. While Movember has been successful in gaining traction on social media, the Twitter data point to surprising conclusions that have implications for understanding non-profits and social movements online. The following study provides two main contributions to existing sociotechnical social movement literature using a mixed-methods approach. First, the findings suggest that there is limited true conversation taking place although the stated purpose of the campaign is to facilitate conversation. Second, the findings identify that participants are more engaged with Movember as a branded movement than engaged in health promotion. While the tweets are conversational in form, they are largely not conversational in function, which points to Twitter being used as a broadcast tool in this context. These findings have broad implications for understanding how social media is used to engage individuals in social campaigns and engage with each other and share information.