Multitudinous identities: a qualitative and network analysis of the 15M collective identity

Abstract

The emergence of network-movements since 2011 has opened the debate around the way in which social media and networked practices make possible innovative forms of collective identity. We briefly review the literature on social movements and 'collective identity', and show the tension between different positions stressing either organization or culture, the personal or the collective, aggregative or networking logics. We argue that the 15M (indignados) network-movement in Spain demands conceptual and methodological innovations. Its rapid emergence, endurance, diversity, multifaceted development and adaptive capacity, posit numerous theoretical and methodological challenges. We show how the use of structural and dynamic analysis of interaction networks (in combination with qualitative data) is a valuable tool to track the shape and change of what we term the 'systemic dimension' of collective identities in network-movements. In particular, we introduce a novel method for synchrony detection in Facebook activity to identify the distributed, yet integrated, coordinated activity behind collective identities. Applying this analytical strategy to the 15M movement, we show how it displays a specific form of systemic collective identity we call 'multitudinous identity', characterized by social transversality and internal heterogeneity, as well as a transient and distributed leadership driven by action initiatives. Our approach attends to the role of distributed interaction and transient leadership at a mesoscale level of organizational dynamics, which may contribute to contemporary discussions of collective identity in network-movements.

Crisis and post-crisis urban gardening initiatives from a Southern European perspective: The case of Barcelona

“…While the latter could be observed as a form of disciplining political gardening, it would be a mistake to reduce it to a mere neoliberal strategy to domesticate urban contestation while avoiding the proliferation of more squatted gardens. The latter interpretation would gloss over the context-specific trajectory of urban crisis, and the emerging new forms of contestation in South Europe and more specifically Spain, with the critical importance that the Indignados movement has had in contemporary (urban) struggles against austerity (della Porta, 2015;Monterde et al, 2015). As it is occurring in Barcelona, grassroots and urban associations may use the unexpected avenues of the crisis impinged on the urban fabric (i.e.…”

Communication Activism as a School of Politics: Lessons From Spain's Indignados Movement

“…The confluence of diverse political cultures within 15M (Flesher Fominaya, ) generated a vast web of interconnections and mutual influences (Monterde, Aguilera, Barandiaran, Calleja‐Lopez, & Postill, ) through which multiple processes of political education were articulated. Below we draw from our research materials to conceptualize 15M communication activism as a school of politics based on three key principles: (a) pedagogical sovereignty (communication activists as self‐taught political agents), (b) pedagogical action (communication activists as political educators), and (c) pedagogical networking (communication activists as creators of political pedagogy networks).…”

Protest communication ecologies

“…Recent attention to scale-shifts has been dominated by innovation in the treatment of online big data and the concern with the aggregate-level explication of collective action (Gonzalez-Bailon et al, 2013;Bennett et al, 2014;Monterde et al, 2015). Whilst this direction of travel remains fruitful and broad patterns of social action are yet to be exhaustively described and fully appreciated (Burrows and Savage, 2014), implications for democratic norms, social and cultural practices likely come into sharper focus when resituated in local settings and lived experience.…”