The Structure of Online Activism

Lewis, Kevin; Gray, Kurt; Meierhenrich, Jens

doi:10.15195/v1.a1

Cited by 102 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…In this manner, we identified a subset of 471 users in our panel (3 percent) as "physical participants," for which Table 3 shows the corresponding breakdown by political party. The low percentage of physical participation reinforces the notion that online activism and physical participation are quite different (Lewis, Gray, and Meierhenrich, 2014).…”

Section: Identifying Physical Participationsupporting

confidence: 67%

“…9 González-Bailón, Borge-Holthoefer, and Moreno (2013), focusing on the indignados movement in Spain, suggest that online social networks facilitated the movement more efficiently than their offline counterparts by enabling fast diffusion of ideas and organizational details. 10 Finally, and in contrast to the generally optimistic tone of other studies, Lewis, Gray, and Meierhenrich (2014) use the "Save Dafur" campaign on Facebook to argue that cause-related online activism generates surprisingly little "real" activism, as measured either by donations or recruitment of new members.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As noted in Related Work, however, the impact of social media on social movements is a matter of dispute: although some authors argue that the relative ease of virtual participation is a positive development (Etling, 2013;Tufekci and Wilson, 2012;González-Bailón, Borge-Holthoefer, and Moreno, 2013), others question its value (Lewis, Gray, and Meierhenrich, 2014;Shulman, 2009), even going as far as to dismiss it as "slacktivism" (Morozov, 2009) to settle the issue, we note simply that there is a clear analytical distinction between people who protest exclusively through social media and those who participate physically in protests. Physical participation, moreover, also has implications for the question of influence: although social media users are free to engage in conversation with people from different backgrounds, the physical proximity of an actual protest site is more likely to force such engagement (McAdam, 1989).…”

Section: Identifying Physical Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dissecting the Spirit of Gezi: Influence vs. Selection in the Occupy Gezi Movement

Budak¹,

Watts²

2015

SocScience

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Do social movements actively shape the opinions and attitudes of participants by bringing together diverse groups that subsequently influence one another? Ethnographic studies of the 2013 Gezi uprising seem to answer "yes, " pointing to solidarity among groups that were traditionally indifferent, or even hostile, to one another. We argue that two mechanisms with differing implications may generate this observed outcome: "influence" (change in attitude caused by interacting with other participants); and "selection" (individuals who participated in the movement were generally more supportive of other groups beforehand). We tease out the relative importance of these mechanisms by constructing a panel of over 30,000 Twitter users and analyzing their support for the main Turkish opposition parties before, during, and after the movement. We find that although individuals changed in significant ways, becoming in general more supportive of the other opposition parties, those who participated in the movement were also significantly more supportive of the other parties all along. These findings suggest that both mechanisms were important, but that selection dominated. In addition to our substantive findings, our paper also makes a methodological contribution that we believe could be useful to studies of social movements and mass opinion change more generally. In contrast with traditional panel studies, which must be designed and implemented prior to the event of interest, our method relies on ex post panel construction, and hence can be used to study unanticipated or otherwise inaccessible events. We conclude that despite the well known limitations of social media, their "always on" nature and their widespread availability offer an important source of public opinion data.

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Section: Identifying Physical Participationsupporting

confidence: 67%

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Identifying Physical Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Dissecting the Spirit of Gezi: Influence vs. Selection in the Occupy Gezi Movement

Budak¹,

Watts²

2015

SocScience

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“…Issues include sample nonrepresentativeness, especially in terms of age and gender, and selection bias. Mturk participants may become especially familiar with message-testing research and are motivated, at least in part, by financial compensation (see Kahan, 2013;Weinberg, Freese, & McElhattan, 2014). However, research has generally found it to be a reliable and valid data collection tool.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Weight-of-Evidence Messages on (Vaccine) Attitudes: A Sequential Mediation Model

Clarke

McKeever

Holton

et al. 2015

Journal of Health Communication

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Media coverage of contentious risk issues often features competing claims about whether a risk exists and what scientific evidence shows, and journalists often cover these issues by presenting both sides. However, for topics defined by scientific agreement, balanced coverage erroneously heightens uncertainty about scientific information and the issue itself. In this article, we extend research on combating so-called information and issue uncertainty using weight of evidence, drawing on the discredited autism-vaccine link as a case study. We examine whether people's perceptions of issue uncertainty (about whether a link exists) change before and after they encounter a news message with weight-of-evidence information. We also explore whether message exposure is associated with broader issue judgments, specifically vaccine attitudes. Participants (n = 181) read news articles that included or omitted weight-of-evidence content stating that scientific studies have found no link and that scientists agree that none exists. Postexposure issue uncertainty decreased-in other words, issue certainty increased-from preexposure levels across all conditions. Moreover, weight-of-evidence messages were associated with positive vaccine attitudes indirectly via reduced information uncertainty (i.e., one's belief that scientific opinion and evidence concerning a potential link is unclear) as well as issue uncertainty. We discuss implications for risk communication.

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“…Lewis, Gray and Meierhenrich (2014) provide an example of this type of research with their examination of the network structure of online activism in general. Consistent with the idea that many actors may sympathize with a movement but few will become actively involved, they find more than two hundred thousand "weak components" wherein all members could directly or indirectly reach one another but were fully disconnected from all other components.…”

Section: Dynamics Of Individual Radicalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Terrorism and Social Movements; Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, 2nd Edition

Beck¹,

Schoon²

2017

Preprint

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In spite of a proliferation of empirical research, scholarship on terrorism remains theoretically fragmented and often inconclusive on even basic issues. In this chapter, we detail how terrorism can be incorporated into the social movements and collective action scholarships' portfolio of research through a review of several of the most widely debated topics in current terrorism research: 1) how terrorism is defined; 2) dynamics of radicalization for individuals and groups; 3) intensity and targets of violence; 4) organizational diversification; and 5) the context of terrorist action. Taking a problem-centered approach, we detail how prior insights from scholarship on social movements and collective action can theoretically and substantively advance terrorism research.

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The Structure of Online Activism

Cited by 102 publications

References 40 publications

Dissecting the Spirit of Gezi: Influence vs. Selection in the Occupy Gezi Movement

Dissecting the Spirit of Gezi: Influence vs. Selection in the Occupy Gezi Movement

The Influence of Weight-of-Evidence Messages on (Vaccine) Attitudes: A Sequential Mediation Model

Terrorism and Social Movements; Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, 2nd Edition

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