Social Media and Informal Organisation of Citizen Activism: Lessons From the Use of Facebook in the Sunflower Movement

Abstract

The literature embraces several arguments regarding the influence of online communication platforms and practices on communicative, semantic, affective and organisational elements of citizen activism. Although organisational matters are inherent in most discussions in this area, there is a need for empirical insight into under-explored cases of citizen activism that can contribute toward addressing questions about the informal organisation of citizen activism and the associated role of social media. This paper presents an interview study of the role of Facebook in the informal organisation of the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan. The study found that participants in the Sunflower Movement engaged more with Facebook's information-spreading and information-sharing functions than with its networking affordances. They used these functions to enhance the public's engagement with the movement and recruit new participants, as well as to initiate, support and coordinate offline action. In addition, in the context of the Sunflower Movement, Facebook appeared to support the largely self-organised and loosely structured character of the coordination of offline action. It also fostered movement participants' actions and feelings of 'altruism' toward other participants as well as their desire to 'awaken' other groups and the public at large. Regarding leadership, the study shows that leadership structures still exist in technologically mediated citizen activism, but they are often challenged by activists, while decision-making is a lot more complex and multi-layered than in the past.

Governing with conversation culture – conditioning organizational interaction in a digital social movement

“…The admin role, nonetheless, extends beyond technical administration and spam moderation: they formed an ideological core for the group and formulated its original mission. Thus, some forms of non-hierarchical leadership shown to exist in digital movements were present (Gerbaudo, 2012;Poell et al, 2016;Tsatsou, 2018).…”

“…As organizations, such collectives are often considered more fluid forms of organizing that are somehow fostered by digital technologies. Scholars have investigated organizational forms and structures enabled by social media platforms (Dolata & Schrape, 2016;Ganesh & Stohl, 2021), the functions and uses of social media by movements (Myles et al, 2020;Theocharis et al, 2015;Tsatsou, 2018), and movement leadership supported by technology (Gerbaudo, 2012;Poell et al, 2016;Tsatsou, 2018). Recent scholarship also critically discusses the role of digital platforms as organizing agents and brokers (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013;Dolata & Schrape, 2016) whose properties and affordances affect the ways of performing digital activism (Kavada, 2015;Milan, 2015).…”

INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS OF ECUADOR: between collective action and connective action

“…Finally, it would be important for future research to investigate whether the connective action strategies annihilate the existence and influence of classical collective action leaderships, or if on the contrary, they would strengthen them (Tsatsou, 2018).…”

Untangling Taiwan’s Hybridity With Structural Dysfunctions

“…The movement occupied Taiwan’s parliament (the Legislative Yuan) in March and April 2014 and concluded successfully by preventing a service trade agreement with China. Both organizational hybridity (Tsatsou, 2018) and media hybridity (Liu & Su, 2017) were important factors during the protest, and a broad range of actors from mainstream and alternative media led to a proliferation of media usage. Alternative media, such as live-streaming tools, BBSs, and Facebook, helped the movement bypass traditional media outlets, give voice to alternative perspectives, increase the efficiency of online peer collaboration, and mobilizing a highly heterogeneous group of protestors (Hu, 2017; Liu & Su, 2017).…”