Messaging and Mobilization: Investigating the Online Momentum of Canada’s Trucker Convoy

By: Cecilia Pang and Samantha Bradshaw

Canadian Journal of Communication

Background: This article explores the dominant narratives shared on Facebook by key actors of the Truckers’ Convoy from January 22 to February 23, 2022.

Analysis: Using a qualitative content analysis on a novel dataset of the top-performing communications by the eight most followed public Convoy pages and groups on Facebook, we first identified 27 categories of shared information and then manually coded them.

Conclusions and implications: Content that gained the most traction tapped broader themes of solidarity with the movement as well as discontent toward the Canadian government, the Liberal Party, and the mainstream media. Our findings provide a systematic look at the Convoy’s common values, beliefs, and self-perceptions, deepening an understanding of the movement’s political implications for the Canadian environment.

Read the full paper here: https://cjc.utppublishing.com/doi/10.3138/cjc-2024-0095