Sailing to reimagine international law? A qualitative analysis of the place of law in the social media discourse of the Global Sumud Flotilla (August – October 2025)

Abstract

This thesis contributes to the field of law and social movements studies by analysing the discursive mobilization of international law, including international humanitarian law and human rights, by the Global Sumud Flotilla. The GSF is a civil society movement in solidarity with Palestine, constituted after Israeli military attack against Gaza since October 2023. In particular, the research consists in a qualitative analysis of GSF discourse on social media, through the case study of the GSF Summer25 flotilla mission (August-October 2025), as it was communicated through the digital platform of Instagram. The thesis illustrates not only how the law contributes to shape and sustain solidarity; but it also looks at what the mobilization of the law by civil actors does, in return, to international law itself in terms of authority, legitimacy and political scope. Overall, this thesis argues that the GSF’s voyage can be read as a law-constituting and world-making practice through which civil society actors do not simply invoke international law, but they actively reimagine and enact it from below, beyond the limits of state power. Indeed, the discursive and material enactment of international law by the GSF goes beyond a tactical invocation and represent another international law, prefiguring an alternative legal and political order.