Mens rea, wrongdoing and digital advocacy in social media: Exploring quasi-legal narratives advocated by boycotters during #deleteuber

#Boycotts – i.e. the call for non-adoption of a product or a service – represent digital advocacy attempts in which users publicly punish an organization, as it is not judged in the legal system. Yet, we know little about legal narratives advocated by users. To this aim, we developed a mixed method study of the #deleteuber boycott on Twitter and analyzed the degree to which narratives boosting the boycott include a discussion of Uber’s organizational mens rea or Uber’s shared mens rea, respectively advocating for Uber-specific bad intentionality or shared intentionality with other sharing economy or Silicon Valley companies. Our findings suggest that both narratives emerge and that their use depends on whether users are influencers. These findings provide a contribution to studies on public affairs that focus on online activism and boycotts and digital advocacy because they increase our understanding of the opaque legal motivations that provoke boycotters.