The rise and fall of collective identity in networked movements: communication protocols,Facebook, and the anti-Berlusconi protest

This paper explores the impact of communication protocols on the development of collective identity in networked movements. It focuses primarily on how communication protocols change patterns of interactions and power relationships among the constituents of social movements. The paper suggests that the communication protocols of commercial social networking media lead to organizational centralization and fragmentation in social movements by eroding one of the preconditions of collective identity, namely solidarity. The empirical material presented is part of a PhD dissertation on a political protest movement and their use of Facebook as a core communication and organizational platform. The data gathering is multi-methodological and relies on both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques in the form of a historical analysis of interaction patterns, and a content analysis of online conversations among activists.     

Networked intimacy. Intimacy and friendship among Italian Facebook users

In this paper, we describe the results of a qualitative study conducted with 120 Italian Facebook users to investigate how Facebook enables people to achieve a mutually constitutive intimacy with their own friendship network: a negotiation of intimacy in public through self-disclosure, where the affordances of the platform are useful to elicit significant reactions, validations and demonstrations of affection from others. We observed that, in order to achieve various levels of intimacy on Facebook, people engage in various strategies: Showing rather than telling, Sharing implicit content, Tagging, Expectation of mutual understanding and Liking. These strategies produce a collaborative disclosure that relies on others’ cooperation to maintain the boundaries between private and public space. Based on these premises, we developed a framework of collaborative strategies for managing public intimacy that both systematizes and extends the findings identified in previous studies of intimacy on Facebook. We describe this framework as networked intimacy and we discuss the consequences of it in the light of already existing research on online self-disclosure.     

Participant recruitment and data collection through Facebook: the role of personality factors

As participant recruitment and data collection over the Internet have become more common, numerous observers have expressed concern regarding the validity of research conducted in this fashion. One growing method of conducting research over the Internet involves recruiting participants and administering questionnaires over Facebook, the world’s largest social networking service. If Facebook is to be considered a viable platform for social research, it is necessary to demonstrate that Facebook users are sufficiently heterogeneous and that research conducted through Facebook is likely to produce results that can be generalized to a larger population. The present study examines these questions by comparing demographic and personality data collected over Facebook with data collected through a standalone website, and data collected from college undergraduates at two universities. Results indicate that statistically significant differences exist between Facebook data and the comparison data-sets, but since 80% of analyses exhibited partial η^2?相似文献   

Role of Facebook use in predicting bridging and bonding social capital of Pakistani university students

ABSTRACT

The explanatory study aimed to examine the role of Facebook use (intensity of Facebook use, Facebook relationship maintenance behaviors, duration of use, and number of ties), motives of using Facebook (making new social ties, maintaining existing social ties, seeking and sharing information, self-expression, self-documentation, and recreation), and sociodemographic characteristics (age, education, gender, and monthly family income) in predicting the formation of bridging and bonding social capital among youth. Opting Putnam’s theory of social capital, a survey was conducted from eight randomly selected universities of Lahore, Pakistan. A total of 1,245 students, had an average age of 21, were participated in this study. Stepwise multiple linear regression technique was used to explain bridging and bonding social capital. The study found that motives of using Facebook had a major role in predicting bridging and bonding social capital of the students. The intensity of Facebook use and Facebook relationship maintenance behaviors were also positively correlated with bridging and bonding social capital. Except for the age for bonding social capital, no other sociodemographic variables had an influence on bridging and bonding social capital.     

Canada is #IdleNoMore: exploring dynamics of Indigenous political and civic protest in the Twitterverse

Social media have been playing a growingly important role in grassroots protest over the last five years. While many scholars have explored dynamics of political cyberprotest (e.g., the ongoing transnational Occupy movement, the 2012 Quebec student strike, the student-led protest movement in Chile between 2011 and 2013), few have studied sub-dynamics relating to ethno-cultural minorities’ uses of social media to gain visibility, mobilize support, and engage in political and civil action. We fill part of this gap in the academic literature by investigating uses of Twitter for political engagement in the context of the Canada-based Idle No More movement (INM). This ongoing protest initiative, which emerged in December 2012, seeks to mobilize Indigenous Peoples in Canada and internationally as well as their non-Indigenous allies. It does so by bringing attention to their culture, struggles, and identities as well as advocating for changes in policy areas relating to the environment, governance, and socio-economic matters. Our study explores to what extent references to aspects of Indigenous identities and culture shaped INM-related tweeting and, by extension, activism during the summer of 2013. We conducted a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 1650 #IdleNoMore tweets shared by supporters of this movement between 3 July 2013 and 2 August 2013. Our study demonstrates that unlike other social media-intensive movements where economic and political concerns were the primary drivers of political and civil engagement, aspects of Indigenous culture influenced information flows and mobilization among #IdleNoMore tweeters.     

No Expo Network: a failed mobilization in a post-political frame

In 2015 Milan hosted the Universal Exposition with the theme ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’. Even if characterized by various scandals and problems, the edition was narrated by the mainstream media as a political and economic success. Critical voices were almost completely obscured by favorable propaganda and the ideas of development and the future proposed by the Expo rhetoric was presented as inevitable, configuring ‘the best of all possible worlds’ in a more general post-political frame. In this profile I first present the main characteristics of the No Expo Network, e.g. the actors that composed it and the main critiques that they advanced. I will then focus on the reasons for its defeat, which is then contextualized in relation to the election of the Chief Executive Officer of Expo 2015 as new Mayor of Milan. Here, we can see the continuation and structural strengthening of the neoliberal politics of Expo2015 beyond the mega event itself.     

Building community online and on the trail: communication,coordination, and trust among mountain bikers

The affordances of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) have altered the ways that communities emerge, interact, and organize, creating possibilities for new forms of interaction. Using a case study of the mountain biking community, this paper examines the impact of ICTs on community bonds and boundaries. Based on 60 intensive interviews in North America, survey results from 2363 mountain bikers around the world, and email exchanges with an addition 98 of the survey respondents, the findings suggest several ways that online and in-person communication intersect to blur the distinction between strong and weak ties, make the boundaries of the community more porous, and accelerate the development of trust between members.     

More Kin,Less Support: Multipartnered Fertility and Perceived Support Among Mothers

Recent research has documented the high prevalence of having children with more than 1 partner, termed multipartnered fertility. Because childbearing is an important mechanism for building kin networks, we theorize that multipartnered fertility will influence the availability of social support for mothers. Analyzing 3 waves of data from the Fragile Families study (N = 12,259), we find that multipartnered fertility is negatively associated with the availability of financial, housing, and child‐care support. Our longitudinal evidence suggests a bidirectional relationship in which multipartnered fertility reduces the availability of support, and the availability of support inhibits multipartnered fertility. We conclude that smaller and denser kin networks seem to be superior to broader, but weaker kin ties in terms of perceived instrumental support.     

“No Tyson in Tongie!”: The Battle to Protect a Rural Way of Life in Kansas*

Political mobilizations in small towns have come to play a disproportionate role in today’s national politics. This article examines the conditions giving rise to small‐town mobilizations through an in‐depth case study of Tonganoxie, Kansas. Residents of this town mounted a massive campaign to block the opening of a Tyson chicken processing plant in 2017. The article draws on interviews, observations, a newspaper claims database, and extractions from the “No Tyson in Tongie” Facebook group page. The article maintains that a racialized cultural framework (“rural idyll”) among White middle‐class residents helped them perceive the plant as an existential threat. Social networks, sustained through social media, enabled the same residents to mobilize in a fast and forceful manner. We suggest that in “hybrid” towns (partially rural and suburban), the “rural idyll” is politically decisive. It unites recently settled and established residents in battles to defend a particularly racialized and classed way of life.     

A niche analysis of three interpersonal media: examining the competition among Facebook,Line, and e-mail

Dimmick’s niche theory was applied to examine the gratifications obtained from the use of Facebook, Line, and e-mail to understand the competitive relationships among them in Taiwan. Two methods were adopted, the first of which was to conduct 20 intensive interviews. The second method was a telephone survey that consisted of 1,042 valid calls. The results of the data analysis showed that among the three media, Line had the widest niche breadth and the highest scores for competitive superiority, and it competed strongly with Facebook. However, the overall findings actually indicate that the strengths of Facebook and Line were more complementary than competitive. Therefore, based on these results, it is predicted that Facebook and Line are able to coexist. Furthermore, based on the results, it is predicted that Line is unable to replace e-mail in safe and formal communication because it is effective in task coordination whereas the strength of e-mail is in documentation. The results also showed that Facebook and Line had wide niche breadths, indicating that they are “generalists” in terms of communication. In contrast, e-mail had a narrow niche breadth, indicating that it is a “specialist” focusing on safe and formal communication. The results also showed that the competitive superiority scores of a medium were a powerful predictor of the use history of that medium only when individuals perceived that two media were similar.     

Social Networks and Individual Perceptions: Explaining Differential Participation in Social Movements

This paper seeks to explain differential participation in social movements. It does so by attempting to bridge structural-level and individual-level explanations. We test a number of hypotheses drawn from the social networks and the rationalist perspectives on individual engagement by means of survey data on members of a major organization of the Swiss solidarity movement. Both perspectives find empirical support: the intensity of participation depends both on the embeddedness in social networks and on the individual perceptions of participation, that is, the evaluation of a number of cognitive parameters related to engagement. In particular, to be recruited by an activist and the perceived effectiveness of one's own potential contribution are the best predictors of differential participation. We specify the role of networks for social movements by looking at the nature and content of networks and by distinguishing between three basic functions of networks: structurally connecting prospective participants to an opportunity to participate, socializing them to a protest issue, and shaping their decision to become involved. The latter function implies that the embeddedness in social networks significantly affects the individual perceptions of participation.     

Transnationalism and Diffusion: A Study of the Food Sovereignty Movements in the UK and Canada

Abstract

This paper explores a number of questions surrounding the transnational diffusion of social movements and their ideas through case studies of the food sovereignty movements in the UK and in Canada: How do social movements in one country or world region diffuse to another country or region? How do social movement participants learn about other movements and their ideas in different countries and organize and mobilize around these same ideas while at the same time adapting them to their local context? What are the channels and mechanisms of social movement diffusion? In addressing these questions, the paper contributes to our understanding of the transnational diffusion of social movements and the ways in which social movement participants adopt, interpret, and adapt new ideas, organizational forms, and agendas and causes that originated outside their own countries. It highlights the ways in which groups and communities around the world recontextualize social movement discourses to make them relevant to their own circumstances and to connect their causes and struggles to global movements.     

Mobilizing on Campus: Conservative Movements and Today’s College Students1

Social movement scholars have known for some time that students, and particularly college students, play an important role in modern social movements. Yet the full extent of conservative mobilizing, both today and in the past, is frequently overlooked. This article highlights the critical role college campuses have played in the rise of conservative movements in the United States over the last 40 years. In doing so, it develops a concept of transition points to help explain the mechanisms responsible for the longstanding finding that college students form an important core of many social movements. Transition points are marked by both changes in routines and changes in social network configuration. The utility of the transition point concept is explored through ethnographic and interview data from the American pro‐life movement.     

Movement‐Based Influence: Resource Mobilization,Intense Interaction,and the Rise of Modernist Architecture

We argue that the long‐term influence of actors in fields of cultural production depends on the opportunities for resource mobilization offered by external conditions combined with intense interaction among actors. Using a unique data set of 1,143 architects active between 1890 and 1940, at a time of large‐scale socioeconomic transformations and political disruption, we find by multiple regression analysis that exposure to industrialization and political upheaval, and halo effects in an architect's network of collaborators predict greater ultimate impact, while urbanization and professional affiliations do not. Theory of social movements and theory of cultural production thus have important implications for each other.     

Caught in a Winding,Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory

The study of social movements has recently been energized by an explosion of work that emphasizes political opportunities—a concept meant to come to grips with the complex environments that movements face. In the excitement over this new metaphor, there has been a tendency to stretch it to cover a wide variety of empirical phenomena and causal mechanisms. A strong structural bias is also apparent in the way that political opportunities are understood and in the selection of cases for study. Even those factors adduced to correct some of the problems of the political opportunity approach—such as mobilizing structures and cultural framing—are subject to the same structural distortions. We recommend social movement analysis that rejects invariant modeling, is wary of conceptual stretching, and recognizes the diverse ways that culture and agency, including emotions and strategizing, shape collective action.     

Fostering democracy through social media: Evaluating diametrically opposed nonprofit advocacy organizations’ use of Facebook,Twitter, and YouTube

Nonprofit organizations contribute to a democratic society by allowing those with diverse opinions to assemble and voice these ideas. Social media has provided an extensive new marketplace in which such organizations can give voice to their ideas. Thus the purpose of this study was to explore and assess the use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) for advocacy by nonprofit organizations with diametrically opposed points-of-view on two social issues, the pro-gun/gun control issue and the pro-choice/pro-life issue. Results of this study indicate that nonprofit advocacy organizations are using social media to ethically persuade people to their point of view, for the most part through use of one-way communication. Moreover, organizations are using the various social media for different purposes, providing thanks and recognition on Twitter, and soliciting feedback and other two-way communication with stakeholders on Facebook. Use of authority figures to communicate messages is generally reserved for YouTube.     

Political activation and social movements: Addressing non-participation in Aotearoa New Zealand

The decline of participation in traditional civic political processes, like voting in elections and writing to elected representatives, continues to deepen in contemporary liberal democracies. However, civics comprise only one avenue for political participation. Social movements also play a key role in influencing political affairs by exerting pressure on established institutions from outside rather than within. ‘Political activation’ is key to understanding and addressing non-participation in both movement and civic settings alike, yet activation in movement settings, like non-participation more generally, remains under-researched. This article seeks to address this imbalance by exploring ways of using political activation theory to synthesise research on the fields of political participation and non-participation, in both civic and social movement contexts. After reviewing the literature on activation, which favours political participation in civic settings, I then juxtapose this existing scholarship with a case study focused more on non-participation and social movements as they are understood by movement organisers in Aotearoa New Zealand. In so doing, I demonstrate how civics, social movements, participation and non-participation can be better understood together to advance scholarship on why people do or do not engage with politics.     

Masses,Crowds, Communities,Movements: Collective Action in the Internet Age

This article investigates two questions: One, how might the very differently structured social collectives on the Internet – masses, crowds, communities and movements – be classified and distinguished? And two, what influence do the technological infrastructures in which they operate have on their formation, structure, and activities? For this, we differentiate between two main types of social collectives: non-organized collectives, which exhibit loosely coupled collective behavior, and collective actors with a separate identity and strategic capability. Further, we examine the newness, or distinctive traits, of online-based collectives, which we identify as being the strong and hitherto non-existent interplay between the technological infrastructures that these collectives are embedded in and the social processes of coordination and institutionalization they must engage in, in order to maintain their viability over time. Conventional patterns of social dynamics in the development and stabilization of collective action are now systematically intertwined with technology-induced processes of structuration.     

Diffusion of innovations through social networks: Determinants and implications

Social scientists have long been interested in the diffusion of innovations—the process by which new ideas, behavior, and practices spread between persons, organizations, and even countries. While innovations can enter a community through various channels, ongoing spread of innovations through a community occurs through the medium of social networks—collections of interpersonal or digital relationships connecting actors to each other. Social networks are important for diffusion because relationships foster communication, trust, and flow of information. Diffusion outcomes are also shaped by the structural properties of social networks such as density, centrality, and strength of ties, as well as properties of the innovation and the actors involved in the process. The purpose of the article is twofold: (1) to take stock of the field and review ongoing debates on the role of social networks in the diffusion of innovations and (2) to summarize the sociological implications of the diffusion of innovations through social networks.