Since the start of large-scale waves of mobilisation in 2011, the importance of identity in the study of collective action via computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been a source of contention. Hence, our research sets out to systematically review and synthesise empirical findings on identity and collective action via CMC from 2012 to 2016. We found that the literature on the topic is broad and diverse, with contributions from multiple disciplines and theoretical and methodological approaches. Based on our findings, we provide directions for future research and propose the adoption of an integrative approach that combines the study of identity and networks to advance our understanding of collective action via CMC. This review contributes to the crossroad of social movement, collective action, communication and media studies. Our results also have practical implications for the organisation of collective action in a society characterised by the pervasive influence of CMC.

In online peer-to-peer fundraising, individual fundraisers, acting on behalf of nonprofit organizations, mobilize their social networks using social media to request donations. Whereas existing studies focus on networks of donors to explain success, we examine the role of the networks of fundraisers and their effect on fundraising outcomes. By drawing on social capital and network theories, we investigate how social capital derived from social media networks and fundraising groups explains individual fundraising success. Using the Movember health campaign on Twitter as an empirical context, we find that fundraising success is associated with a moderate level of centrality in social media networks and moderate group network size. In addition, we find that fundraisers interact only marginally on social media but prefer to connect with each other outside these platforms and engage in group fundraising. Our article contributes to research on fundraising and social networks and provides recommendations for practice.

We combine social theory and NLP methods to classify English-speaking Twitter users' online social identity in profile descriptions. We conduct two text classification experiments. In Experiment 1 we use a 5-category online social identity classification based on identity and self-categorization theories. While we are able to automatically classify two identity categories (Relational and Occupational), automatic classification of the other three identities (Political, Ethnic/religious and Stigmatized) is challenging. In Experiment 2 we test a merger of such identities based on theoretical arguments. We find that by combining these identities we can improve the predictive performance of the classifiers in the experiment. Our study shows how social theory can be used to guide NLP methods, and how such methods provide input to revisit traditional social theory that is strongly consolidated in offline settings.

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On the whole, this dissertation presents its findings through a first-person perspective. From time to time, however, the pronoun "we" is used to emphasize the collaborative effort that went into particular parts of the research (see Chapter 2, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5). Introduction | 15 approach adopted in this dissertation (Section 1.6), and a short summary of the dissertation's contributions (Section 1.7). 1.2 Social movements, collective action and social media: The state of the art 1.2.1 Defining social movements and positioning individuals and organizations within social movements The study of social movements has a longstanding tradition in sociology that dates back to Durkheim's (1912) concept of "collective effervescence" and the Marxian heritage of Habermas (1979, 1987), Touraine (1981), and Calhoun (1982) (for a review of social movements in social theory, see Eder, 2015). Social movement studies are recognized as a scientific, "organizational" (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) field of investigation and theorizing (Della Porta & Diani, 2015). Nonetheless, the study of social movements has benefited from and expanded thanks to developments in other fields, such as political science, organization studies, and communication science (Della Porta & Diani, 2015). Consequently, the study of social movements is characterized by an interdisciplinary perspective that has produced a variety of definitions of what a social movement is, as well as theories, approaches, and methods to study social movements (for reviews, see, among others,

Social media interventions to stimulate the adoption of pro-environmental behaviors is a topic of increasing interest in both Information Systems (IS) research and environmental studies. Yet, we still know little about the factors explaining the effectiveness of such interventions and how they influence decision-making in online social networks. By bringing together insights from both social science and IS research streams, this research-inprogress studies intentions to change towards proenvironmental behaviors as the result of exposure to normative social media content and the level of environmental awareness. We conducted an online experiment to explore intentions to change behaviors regarding the consumption of meat. We find that while individual environmental awareness is positively associated with intentions to change meat consumption, exposure to social norms in social media content is not significant in predicting intentions to change meat consumption. Since our findings suggest the importance of environmental awareness in decision-making towards sustainable behaviors, our future research will explore the inclusion of information provision to stimulate environmental awareness in combination with nudging on social media.

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