Collective Action in Organizations: Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change

“Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl (2012) have also found that the relationships between individuals and civic organizations are becoming more entrepreneurial and less centrally manageable, resulting in changes in the way communication is involved in organizing collectivities.”

“…this new technology appears able to provide a movement with powerful, speedy, and relatively low-cost tools for recruitment, fund-raising, the distribution of information and images, collective discussions, and mobilization for action (Bennett 2006; Bimber et al. 2005, 2012; Earl and Kimport 2011).”

“Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl (2012) suggest that, as the Internet becomes ubiquitous in society, its implications should be understood as changes in the context for political organizing and engagement rather than in terms of specific uses of technology.”

“In an intraorganizational context, Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl (2012) defined engagement as “how much people perceive that they are able to shape the agenda and the direction of their organization” (p. 32).”

“Internet technologies have greatly lowered the costs of connecting with potential supporters (Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl 2012; Lupia and Sin 2003; Olson 1965), and although some argue that networked technologies have given place to cheap and meaningless forms of engagement,2 another line of…”

“In this way, the notion of amplification connects to larger conversations about the possibilities of citizen action in the new media environment (e.g. Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Bimber et al., 2012; Castells, 2013; Jenkins, 2006; Papacharissi, 2015).”

“Not only do they, as mentioned in the introduction, provide ‘technological tools that fundamentally enhance connectivity among people’ (Bimber et al. 2012, p. 3), but they also have behavior-structuring effects and generate new means for the observation and evaluation of collective behavior.”

“Bimber (2003) and Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl (2012) described a similar shift from organizations with formal, hierarchical structures to those that allow for greater individual agency and distributed collective action.”

“First, contemporary media environment has challenged the necessity of hierarchical and formal ways of organizing collective action, and have placed a greater emphasis on individual contributor’s autonomy and self-organizing capability (Bimber et al., 2012; Gamson and Sifry, 2013).”

“Another way that more traditional bureaucratic structures exploit and contribute to expanded opportunities for action is by presenting multiple faces to the public, offering opportunities for different citizens to relate to the same organization in personalized ways (Bimber et al., 2012).”

“…given the particular interest of this article in identifying how all this leads to higher levels of political participation, social media are known to be especially effective tools for mobilization (Bennett, 2012; Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Bimber et al., 2012; Samuel-Azran et al., 2015).”

“For instance, Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl (2012) argue that during the last decade, the number of political organizations (SMOs included) has been on the rise, not the decline.”

“To further rethink collective action, we turn to the work of Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl (Bimber et al., 2005, 2012; Flanagin, Stohl, & Bimber, 2006).”

“…private domains without deliberate decisions: “When people have a great capacity to act freely and without constraints by larger social structures or formalized rules of belonging, their negotiation of a boundary typically involves less intentionality and calculation” (Bimber et al., 2012: 62).”

“…in late 1990s, the Internet has been regarded as a medium that can reinvigorate youth participation by creating new opportunities for engagement and allowing established forms of offline participation to be carried out with substantially lower costs (Bimber et al., 2012; Earl and Kimport, 2011).”

“protests, or as a perceived catalyst for political change (e.g., Bennett and Segerberg 2013; Bimber et al. 2012; Earl and Kimport 2011; Karpf 2012).”

“Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl (2012) argue that the presence of “organization-less organizing,” such as the protests against the World Trade Organizarion meeting in Seattle in 1999, is becoming increasingly common.”

“The Internet has been generally characterized as a low-cost and low-risk milieu for political activism (Bennett and Segerberg, 2013; Bimber et al., 2012).”

“This is partly because as they and others have noted (Bimber et al 2012; Flesher Fominaya 2016; Lovink 2011) when technologies become so integrated into daily life as to no longer seem remarkable, people stop being as reflexive about their use.”

“…affordances are appropriated and used in a myriad of ways (DeSanctis & Poole, 1994; Livingstone, 2008), and second, there is an increasingly rapid and seamless integration of information creation, dissemination, and retrieval across multiple platforms and devices (Bimber et al., 2012).”

“2 Bimber et al. (2012), Carty (2010), Chadwick (2006: 122–124, 2007), Flanagin et al. (2006) and Karpf (2012).”

“Political campaigns, parties, and organizations are looking for new ways to mobilize supporters, particularly online by providing interactive spaces for participation and engagement (Bang 2009; Bimber et al. 2012).”

“Online engagement can have spillover effects for offline activity (Bimber et al., 2012; Earl et al., 2010); alternatively, online and offline engagement can converge into specific modes of participation (Hirzalla and Van Zoonen, 2011: 494).”

“Overall, emphasis has been given to the functionality of social networking sites as a means of information sharing and a tool for organising protests (Bimber et al., 2012).”

“110 Deibert 2000; Earl and Kimport 2011; Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl 2012.”

“D ow nl oa de d by [ U ni ve rs ity o f C al if or ni a Sa nt a B ar ba ra ] at 0 2: 30 1 8 A pr il 20 16 to formal and direct organizational communication might be more critical in rallying support for activism on social media (Bimber et al., 2012; Diani & McAdam, 2003).”

“Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl (2012), Earl and Kimport (2011), Bennett and Segerberg (2013), and Shirky (2008), among others, have made important theoretical contributions about the changing nature of collective action in the era of digital media that are leading to the rethinking of organization and…”

“…examinations of listening have rarely turned their attention to organizations, other than specialist disciplinary studies of intra-organizational communication between management and employees and analyses of entities that function specifically as representative organizations (Bimber et al., 2012).”

“…of social movements and other types of collective action in the age of transnational and technologically mediated activism (e.g., Bennett, 2005; Bimber et al., 2012, 2005; Chadwick, 2007; della Porta & Diani, 2006; Earl & Kimport, 2011; McDonald, 2002; Melucci, 1996; Tarrow, 2011; Tremayne,…”

“As noted above, the online environment lowers resource barriers to participation (Bimber et al, 2006; 2008; 2012).”

“Research has focussed on the emergence of new advocacy organisations, the role of social media (mainly Twitter and Facebook), and the advent of online activism (Bennett and Alexandra 2013; Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl 2012; Karpf 2012; Vromen 2017).”

“…to mobilizing online in certain cases, while in others, traditional social actors have successfully employed digital media to enhance their own organizational capacities on the ground (Beissinger 2017; Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl 2012; Breuer, Landman and Farquhar 2014; Hassanpour 2014).”

“By viewing groups in terms of interaction and engagement, it places the emphasis on the ways in which members enact personal relations and various activities or, in other words, on what people do and how they communicate, and not solely on organizational structures (Bimber et al., 2012, p. 96).”

“…to levels and types of digital activism (Agarwal et al. 2014; Rohlinger, Klein, Stamm, & Robers, 2014; Schradie, 2015), a common argument is that individualized digital participation is tied to personalized, rather than institutionalized, ideology (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012; Bimber et al., 2012).”

“This attempt expands the conceptual and methodological discussions on Ihm (2015) and furthers the understanding of the new social roles of and relationships between individuals and NPOs in the contemporary media environment (Bimber et al., 2012).”

“It is ‘emerging’ in the sense that the framing of a given issue under which an individual mobilizes is not pregiven or even assumed to be shared by virtue of being a ‘member’ (Bimber et al. 2012).”

“…of political communication are, this study makes the case that we must not neglect how digital media are transforming the relationship between citizens and the major civic organizations that have guided American civic life for the past 150 years (Bimber et al., 2012; Levine, 2000; Skocpol, 2003).”

“Second, previous research has been largely developed in liberal and democratic contexts such as North America and Europe (e.g., Bimber et al., 2012; Neumayer and Stald, 2014).”

“…increasingly analyze the promises and pitfalls of different structures of interaction for collective action in the short term (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; Bimber et al., 2012; Earl & Kimport, 2011), clearly how activist organizations use ICT shapes individuals decisions to stay or leave a group.”

“In many cases, these technologies have reduced the need for formal member-driven organizations by allowing individuals to organize, form groups, share information, and take action without the resources provided by these traditional organizations (Bimber et al., 2012).”