Moral Foundations Theory proposes five intuition-based moral concerns: Care and

The Internet has emerged as an important communication platform for the support of collective action, but little is known about how it influences the psychosocial motives for participation. Two quantitative studies were conducted within two different mobilizing contexts, in which offline collective actions were launched through computer‐mediated communication. We examined whether and how the frequency with which people participated in online political discussions moderated the effects of the psychosocial predictors of collective action, specifically politicized identity, anger, collective efficacy, and morality. Results showed that collective action intention was predicted by politicized identity only when participants reported a higher versus lower frequency of online discussion. However, anger did not predict collective action when people had the chance to express this emotion through a higher versus lower frequency of online discussion. Moreover, collective efficacy and morality supported collective action intention in participants who reported a higher versus lower frequency of online discussion. We theorize on how computer‐mediated communication, and its specific features, can be studied as a mobilizing context that influences the psychosocial motives to participate in collective action. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Although online discussions may stimulate political participation, little is known about how computermediated communication among members of political groups contributes to develop their politicized identity, thus indirectly stimulating collective action. Two studies involving activists from two webbased social movements investigated how online discussions moderate the effects of collective efficacy, group-based anger, and moral obligation on politicized identity. Self-reported frequency of online discussions and activists' perceptions of two content-related characteristics of online discussions both interacted with collective efficacy and moral obligation beliefs in predicting politicized identity. Politicized identity mediated the effects of these interactions on collective action intention. We discuss how specific characteristics of online political discussions may contribute to politicize group identity via group-level and individual-level paths.

Starting from the pluralistic view of morality proposed by the moral foundations theory, this paper aims at highlighting the plurality of personal moral concerns that may drive people to collective action and at investigating how they are connected with other personal and group-based motivations to act (i.e., moral obligation, moral convictions, politicized group identity, group efficacy, and group-based anger). Moral foundations can be distinguished into individualizing foundations, aimed at protecting individual rights and well-being; and binding foundations, aimed at tightening people into ordered communities. We expected that collective action intention would be most strongly associated with an individualizing foundation in equality-focused movements, and with a binding foundation in conformity-focused ones. Four studies that examined activists of both liberal and conservative movements confirmed these expectations. The relevant foundations predicted collective action mainly through the mediation of moral obligation and politicized identity, but they also had some effects above and beyond them.