Carmen Leong , Isam Faik , Felix T.C. Tan , Barney Tan , Ying Hooi Khoo
{"title":"Digital organizing of a global social movement: From connective to collective action","authors":"Carmen Leong , Isam Faik , Felix T.C. Tan , Barney Tan , Ying Hooi Khoo","doi":"10.1016/j.infoandorg.2020.100324","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>Social media are increasingly credited with the emergence and rapid scaling of social movements. Consequently, many studies have explored the role of social media and other forms of Information and Communication Technology in enabling collective action beyond formal organizations. The focus in these studies has been on connective actions that emerge from the individualized but interdependent uses of social media in the pursuit of a movement's objectives. However, few studies have examined how social movements go beyond connective actions to build organizing capacity that can support effective and sustainable mobilization. Understanding the mechanisms underlying the shift from connective action to a more organized, concerted form of action is particularly important in the light of significant differences in lifespan and outcomes among social media-enabled movements. To advance our conceptualization of these mechanisms, we studied the case of Bersih movement, a transnational coalition and social media-enabled social movement that pushed for clean and fair elections in Malaysia. The case highlights two types of emergence, </span><em>clustering</em> and <em>structuring emergence,</em> that enabled the movement to evolve across three different phases: dispersed individuals, dispersed groups, and networked group. Our analysis of the case reveals that each of these two types of emergence exhibits different dynamics between the environmental, cognitive, and relational mechanisms that underlie the evolution of social movements. Our findings also present both the enabling and constraining roles of social media in clustering and structuring emergence.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47253,"journal":{"name":"Information and Organization","volume":"30 4","pages":"Article 100324"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7000,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.infoandorg.2020.100324","citationCount":"18","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Information and Organization","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471772720300488","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 18
Abstract
Social media are increasingly credited with the emergence and rapid scaling of social movements. Consequently, many studies have explored the role of social media and other forms of Information and Communication Technology in enabling collective action beyond formal organizations. The focus in these studies has been on connective actions that emerge from the individualized but interdependent uses of social media in the pursuit of a movement's objectives. However, few studies have examined how social movements go beyond connective actions to build organizing capacity that can support effective and sustainable mobilization. Understanding the mechanisms underlying the shift from connective action to a more organized, concerted form of action is particularly important in the light of significant differences in lifespan and outcomes among social media-enabled movements. To advance our conceptualization of these mechanisms, we studied the case of Bersih movement, a transnational coalition and social media-enabled social movement that pushed for clean and fair elections in Malaysia. The case highlights two types of emergence, clustering and structuring emergence, that enabled the movement to evolve across three different phases: dispersed individuals, dispersed groups, and networked group. Our analysis of the case reveals that each of these two types of emergence exhibits different dynamics between the environmental, cognitive, and relational mechanisms that underlie the evolution of social movements. Our findings also present both the enabling and constraining roles of social media in clustering and structuring emergence.
期刊介绍:
Advances in information and communication technologies are associated with a wide and increasing range of social consequences, which are experienced by individuals, work groups, organizations, interorganizational networks, and societies at large. Information technologies are implicated in all industries and in public as well as private enterprises. Understanding the relationships between information technologies and social organization is an increasingly important and urgent social and scholarly concern in many disciplinary fields.Information and Organization seeks to publish original scholarly articles on the relationships between information technologies and social organization. It seeks a scholarly understanding that is based on empirical research and relevant theory.