The FreeBritney movement gained momentum over the past few months, as updates on Britney Spears’ conservatorship have been highlighted in the news. We’ve seen this trend before with social movements. It just so happens that what is presented in the news seems to dictate the popularity and effectiveness of social movements. And conversely, when news stories about the movements fall out of the news, the social movements seem to “fall” as well.
The support for Britney Spears’ “freedom” started in 2008, with the main goal of granting Britney Spears autonomy, or freedom, from her conservatorship. The online social movement was born from a podcast named Britney Glam, created by Tess Barker and Barbara Gray, in which the two women talked about the conservatorship. The movement gained popularity in 2019, after the emergence of allegations involving Spears’s time in a psychiatric facility early that year. The movement subsided for about a year, but then gained momentum, yet again, in the early months of 2021, when Britney’s conservatorship grew a presence in the news, as a result of Framing Britney Spears, a documentary on Spears’ life, by the New York Times.
As of now, The FreeBritney movement, and Britney herself, have seen some “wins.” Earlier in the year, with the release of the documentary, she gained a lot of support online from celebrities and her supporters, and whether related to the documentary support or not, the judge ruling over Spears’ case decided to hear her testimony – a decision that finally allowed Britney’s voice to be heard.
If you pay attention to pop culture and news, you might see a correlation between the movement and the news. As more stories about Spear’s conservatorship land themselves on the front page, The FreeBritney movement has become more and more prominent. It’s getting talked about way more often, and there are many more supporters than say, even two or three years ago.
But this isn’t just the case with The FreeBritney movement. It’s happened to many of the movements which have formed in the past decade, including Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, MeToo, March For Our Lives, and LGBTQIA+.
The news seems to dictate the path that these movements follow. Just as the movements rise with media attention, they also fall when they lose media attention.
Take the LGBTQIA+ movement, for example. Pride month has occurred in June of every year since 1999. During this month, it’s not uncommon to see Pride parades, the celebration of love for all as represented by the Rainbow flag, and the highlighting of those who took revolutionary steps towards equality and justice. On the news, we see live coverage of these parades and documentaries telling the story and impact of the Stonewall riots of 1969. The stories of those in this community are celebrated, and their voices are uplifted.
Support and allyship rise during the 30 days of this month, but what happens on July 1st? Even though Pride month celebrates the advancements in the LGBTQIA+ community, the discrimination and disrespect against these people still fester every day. But rarely does the media acknowledge this. Their stories are forgotten and stored away for June 1st of the next year. Why does this happen? The movement loses the media’s attention. At times of the year when it’s not “popular” to support the community, people often don’t. And in turn, the movement loses the attention of the people.
Here’s another example. The MeToo movement gets attention on the news every so often when a news organization decides a case of sexual abuse and/or harassment is deemed “important enough” to get on the front page. The MeToo movement, with its local variations and related Women’s Marches, is a social movement against sexual abuse and sexual harassment. Often, this comes in the form of people making public allegations of sex crimes and harassment.
The MeToo movement was actually founded in 2006 by Tarana Burke. Yet, it didn’t rise in popularity until late 2017, when actress Ashley Judd accused media mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment. Within days, more men and women came forward about the sexual abuse and harassment they faced at the hands of both powerful and not powerful men and women, using the MeToo hashtag. Within a year, the annual Women’s Marches were launched, and the movement saw an incredible surge in support. The news was covering the MeToo movement every day. I’m sure most people would even argue that victims have never received this much coverage as it relates to the topic. But since then, coverage of these stories has dwindled.
What’s most interesting about the Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, MeToo, March For Our Lives, and LGBTQIA+ movements, is that they consistently fall in and out of support among people. And while yes, #FreeBritney gained popularity only in very recent years, her support doesn’t rise and fall. In fact, it’s very steady and remains very high. I have a theory for why this might be. The FreeBritney movement has no relative implications on the average person’s daily life. While it is possible that people are dealing with controversy over conservatorships, it is more likely that the support for this movement is driven by the fact that a significant number of people have heard “Oops!…I Did It Again” or they are intrigued by her numerous paparazzi scandals in the 2000s. But from a different perspective, it’s also possible that some people have found connections between Britney’s life and conservatorship to the patriarchy, and its influence on her life. Likewise, Spears’s case has implications on feminism, given that under her conservatorship, Britney’s bodily autonomy is at risk, and so is her right to be treated as the human that she is.
The other movements, tied more overtly to issues of social justice, inequality, and human rights, can draw strong responses from people from different backgrounds, and therefore be more polarizing.
For example, the Black Lives Matter movement is one that has seemed to maintain a cultural presence based on the current climate of the country and news coverage. When events relating to police brutality towards black men and women were actually being broadcasted on the news and social media in 2020, there was a surge in support for the movement. It reached its peak in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, when there was fairly universal acceptance of the need for some kind of change, but then it became more politicized due to the calls to defund the police and the fact that many turned sorrow into action, through marches, rallies, and in some cases, riots.
Even so, the movement gained stable support among racial and ethnic minorities in America. The decline in white support is largely due to the fact that race is one of the most divisive topics in all of American politics. And the issues that stem from the Black Lives Matter movement, like police reform and voting suppression, drive an even bigger dagger in American society, as it has implications on every aspect of our lives, from top to bottom.
So, in keeping with the idea that support declined as black and brown Americans took to the streets to protest, what actually maintains support?
When discussing how to mobilize movements, organizers often look to protests or social media outlets. Some of the most prominent movements in the 21st century started with a simple hashtag, and gained support in that way. These social movements often evolved into a combination of both. If you want to talk about ease, twitter hashtags are the way to go. Anyone with a social media account can post, like, or share the hashtag, and this shows support for the movement. Seeing that a movement’s hashtag has been posted over 10 million times, is a good quantitative indicator of the support for the movement.
But then again, it could all be performative. If you just retweet #StopAsianHate, it doesn’t mean that you actually care about the movement, it just means that you chose to retweet it. Or it could mean that you care, but not so much to do anything about it, either because you don’t care that much, or you don’t know how. You don’t actually have to show your face for the movement.
That’s where protests and lobbying come in. Protests serve as a really great tool for movements to actually gauge the support they have. It’s great qualitative data. And it’s effective. Think about it this way. If you saw 10 million retweets of a hashtag, you might think yeah that’s a lot of retweets. But what if you saw an image of 10 million people attending a protest or march for a social cause? Seeing is believing. When you see 10 million individual people in an image, you must imagine that each individual finds the cause so important, that they took the time out of their day to protest. But even then, sometimes the amount of retweets doesn’t add up to the number of people attending the protest, as it takes a lot more effort to hold up signs and chant while surrounded by sweaty people.
And that brings me back around to the FreeBritney movement. No, the facts surrounding her conservatorship are not at all great, but this movement is easy to support. It’s not a movement that really has any direct implications on the average person’s life. It’s not a deep-seeded discussion, and it doesn’t inspire hate and polarization. The movement is centralized on Britney Spears, a pop star who we all like and have no major dissenting opinions about (unless you don’t like her music).
And yet, there is something to be said about those movements in our country’s history that have continued in the face of so much opposition, from a time long before the rise of social media. People have marched on Washington, and other cities, for so many causes, leading to changes in our laws and attitudes about civil rights, marriage, safety, and equality. And while social media sometimes seems to reflect our society’s short attention spans and can lead to echo chambers where we only hear what we want to hear, various social media platforms and a broadened array of news channels have given social movements new outlets and opportunities to flourish.
