Social movements in the age of globalization and ICT: a critical reading of the BDS movement's Boycott SodaStream

Combining social movement rhetoric and post-colonial theories, this MA project unpacks the rhetoric of the global movement for "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel" to illustrate the changing nature of social movements as they operate in the era of the neoliberal economic system and globalized Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The research takes an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing one of BDS's consumer-boycott campaigns, "Boycott SodaStream," and examines the local and transnational conditions influencing the creation and dissemination of BDS to demonstrate how its rhetoric mediates these conditions and the multiple audiences across transnational settings. In looking at the rhetoric of the BDS movement via social media, specifically Twitter, one of its primary communication channels, we gain a better understanding of the persuasion techniques used by BDS activists and the potential and limitations of such a movement model.