Our Research in the UK
Case Study One
Exploring Anti-Oppression Activism in South Wales
South Wales has a rich history and culture of anti-oppression activism. Highly tied to anti-war, socialist, trade union, and Welsh-language activism, the activist scene has broadened in recent decades to include anti-racist activism and LGBT+ rights activism. These progressive activist groups have received much less attention in the academic literature than their mainstream and far right peers in the political social media space but research into these groups can enrich our understanding of how social media users engage with and respond to political messaging. Do progressive activists receive different patterns of engagement from far right or mainstream social media pages? Do social media users engage with some types of progressive media more than others? What are the effective ways of encouraging engagement with progressive social media messaging?
The UK team at Swansea University team is working on an exploratory study into the social media posting styles of anti-oppression activist groups. This study looks at a broad cross-section of activist groups across south-Wales to compare and contrast social media posts across geographical regions, political goals, and type of group formation. Thirty six activist groups were identified as having a social media presence on either Facebook or Instagram and all social media posts were scraped from an 18-month period from December 1st 2023 to May 31st 2025. This timeframe allows for key religious holidays to be studied, and the length of the timeframe allows for patterns in the posting habits to be identified. This study looks at the engagement rates different groups receive, the structure of the network that the activist pages are involved in, and the written content of the social media posts to reveal a picture of central and peripheral actors with different approaches to social media engagement.
Meet the UK Team
The UK team are
The UK team uses network analysis to understand relationships between political groups and their causes
This study aims to see what messaging strategies are effective for different types of groups and whether they differ between regions, political goals, and group structure. The study looks at both community building groups and protest groups. Community building groups are those whose primary objective is to create a safe, thriving community for their primary demographic, such as LGBT+ people, migrants, or BAME people. Protest groups have political demands as their main goal, such as ending the arms trade, increasing the rights of migrants and asylum seekers, or ending structural discrimination. We expect to see different messaging strategies from the two groups as they are asking for different types of engagement from followers: the former is looking for their followers to attend events and to form friendships with the group and one another, the latter is asking its followers to take political action and join a cause, which tends to lead to community and friendship but these are not the primary goals.
The intended outcomes of this study are an increased understanding of effective progressive social media messaging which can be used to support and encourage further prosocial behaviour on social media platforms. We hope to use these findings to highlight the organic grassroots work that is done by activists to challenge racism and division in society, to see which aspects of it are most effective, and to use this to support future efforts. As far right and reactionary politics is on the rise, we hope to use this research to further challenge the narrative that far right messaging receives traction on social media because people agree with it. Research regularly shows that far right messaging receives increased traction due to algorithmic amplification. Analysing engagement metrics and messaging strategies of progressive anti-oppression groups may show if and how they receive engagement without algorithmic amplification, which would indicate a genuine desire on the behalf of users to seek out and engage with this content, rather that merely responding to ‘rage-bait’ and ‘like if’ style posts that are common on the far right.
Studying progressive anti-oppression groups like the ones in this study will highlight the grassroots opposition to reactionary politics and offer examples of unity and ‘living well together’ that can be supported and replicated by other actors invested in social justice.