The document discusses how collective action has occurred online through social media. It notes that traditional views of collective action assumed it required small, tightly organized groups, but online many examples show loosely coordinated large-scale collective action can succeed. This is due to lower communication costs allowing people to easily pool self-expression into shared goals and movements. Viral content like memes that spread widely can also fuel collective action by building shared identities and challenging conventions. The boundaries between private and public expression are blurred online, enabling formation of distributed communities that support collective goals.

1. From Self Expression to
Collective Action
Social Media – Dr. Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)
Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore

2. Introduction
 We have reviewed ‘traditional’ definitions and issues associated with collective
action and public goods provision
 We explained that people’s intrinsic motivations to contribute to a public good may
be threatened by a number of factors but can also be reinforced by other factors,
which also depend on the characteristics and design of a community, including its
organization
 Increasing use of the Internet and the new ways of communication that it enables
have created new possibilities for collectivity
 In particular, more or less independent actions of self-expression can be much more
easily pooled together, leading to the formation of small or large groups with a
shared purpose, sometimes even fueling entire highly distributed movements for
social change
 We will review some of these developments, contrasting them to more traditional
understandings of collective action, and in light of a new understanding of online
collectivity
2 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

3. Collective Action
 Common wisdom in collective action theory and practice dictates that smaller groups
are more efficient than large groups because group identity and norms can foster
cooperation and action can be better coordinated through organization
 Also, that free-riding (benefiting from the public good without contributing to it) is a key
issue, which can be somewhat mitigated with the creation of ‘selective incentives’ (i.e.
private, excludable rewards), that only active contributors will reap in addition to the
public good which can be enjoyed by all (public, non-excludable reward)
 This would lead one to believe that loosely coordinated efforts at large-scale collective
action would be doomed to failure as coordination would be too costly, private rewards
may not be strong enough to generate a critical mass of contributions, and many
potential contributors would rather wait-and-see rather than risk a significant personal
investment of time and resources with possibly minimal impact
Yet, we have many examples of online collective action that works just like
that can be considered at least a partial if not always complete success!
3 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

4. Examples
Many online communities work at the provision of openly shared tools and resources.
Large online Wikipedia is a prominent example of a public good that can be enjoyed by all. Many
repositories more examples in the production of cultural, educational and functional public goods
(music and visual repositories, open educational resources, open source software, etc.)
Several successful attempts at utilizing online communication to gather individuals with
Flash mobs little or no prior affiliation at a specific location for a public performance that is usually
meant to surprise and entertain
Many examples of information and digital content disseminated extremely quickly
Large-scale online thanks to the largely uncoordinated actions of large numbers of users
dissemination (document leaks of public interest, internet memes, news, reports on state censorship
and violations of human rights, internet vigilantism, human flesh search engine)
User-driven dissemination of political statements and protest messages, via email, blogs,
Online and other social media platforms. Displays of support and solidarity with distant others,
protest e.g. during the recent Iran elections and ensuing violence, during the heated debates on
the US health care reform bill, or in criticism of state censorship in China.
Use of online communication for the coordination of street protests in many parts of
Offline the world, famously in the ‘Battle of Seattle’, but more recently for nearly any large-
protest scale protest, especially where highly distributed and otherwise uncoordinated groups
need to coalesce together and where public offline communication may be suppressed
4 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

5. Caveat
 Not all collective actions will be to
everyone’s liking; they may often challenge
the status quo, for better or worse
 Many of the examples in the literature are
situated in the space of oppositional and
usually left-wing politics
 Some protests will be forbidden in the
countries where they take place
 The same communication tools that are
used by, say, political dissidents, could also
be used by environmentalists, but also by
terrorists
Our aim is thus not to celebrate any and all forms of online collective action, but to
appreciate how they depart from traditional conceptions of such action and to recognize
the potential for ICTs to enable new forms of bottom-up collectivity
5 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

6. The Internet effect
The more obvious reason why large-
scale collective action online is more
feasible is the lower communication
costs for individuals, as well as the
increased symmetry in online
communication, where anyone can be a
broadcaster to one’s social circles
6 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

7. Communication is central for collective action
“Many of the largest obstacles to collective action efforts are
communicative and organizational in nature”
Bimber et al, 2005
Locating and Persuading them
Coordinating their
contacting to contribute in
actions as their
potential short and long
numbers increase
participants term
7 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

8. Crossing the boundaries
 Interestingly, Internet communication,
especially social media platforms not
only reduce the overall cost of
communication and coordination, but
also promote the open publication
and sharing of individual speech acts,
thus making it easier to cross the
boundaries between private and
public communication
 Thus enabling the formation of
distributed spaces of affinity, collective
identity and knowledge which can be
tapped into for collective action
 At the expense of some lost privacy
in communication
8 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

9. Traditional vs. modern collective action
public-private boundary
Goal Goal
Strengths to
Organizers*
both approaches;
in practice, they
may fuse into
mixed model of
interaction and
Participants engagement
Traditional approach New approach
hierarchical, more rigidly loosely coordinated,
coordinated collective goals emerge
from individual goals
* event organizers, political parties, civil society organizations, special interest groups, lobbies, etc.
9 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

10. Who is influential in new landscape?
 Hacker-activists, or ‘hacktivists’ who  This does not mean that established
combine advanced digital literacies structures of power disappear
with the pursuit of a social-political  Several cases of politically motivated
agenda persecution and even jailing of
 Bloggers, and especially networks of bloggers around the world, when
bloggers, which are collectively deemed a threat to social order
powerful, even if individually  Increased state monitoring of online
powerless, circumventing censorship communication and clampdown on
and other forms of speech the dissemination of sensitive
suppression using ICT’s information or calls to unrest
 Anyone with a high digital  Outside of politics, mainstream
“L”/literacy, i.e. anyone who knows media attempts to retain dominant
how and what to effectively position by cultural-economic and
communicate online (beyond legal means
technical skills)
10 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

11. Viral information and internet memes
 Loosely coordinated networks of internet users rely on some shared
affinities and the quick transmission of commonly understood messages
across large numbers of users
 This begs the question: what forms of content are more ‘viral’ online, i.e.
more likely to ‘infect’ the minds of those who receive them and get
processed and resent, instead of being filtered out?
 Advertisers have been pondering these questions for a long time now;
same for scholars studying the evolution of human culture and the
spreading of powerful ideas (e.g., ideologies, stereotypes, religious dogmas,
etc.)
 Of special interest in social media is the phenomenon of internet memes,
i.e. user-generated content that spreads like wildfire from one user to
another through imitation and replication, often becoming an integral part
of contemporary internet culture
11 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

12. What is a successful meme?
 According to the original definition by Dawkins, a
successful meme is characterized by
 Fidelity: maintains its identity while spreading
 Fecundity (includes concept of susceptibility): high
probability of infection
 Longevity: sustainable infection
 Several scholars have attempted to theorize
culture as the dissemination of memes which
have agency and infect human carriers who feel
compelled to propagate them
 The study of ‘memetics’ has been plagued by
problems in reaching a consensus over what
exactly constitutes a meme, and in finding
irrefutable evidence for their existence, leading to
much criticism
 But the concept of memes is appealing to many
and the word has escaped both memeticists and
Dawkins, to become a staple of internet culture
12 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

13. Preliminary lessons from the study of memes
 Although a major feature of internet culture, memes have not yet received the
academic attention and study they deserve
 Possible reasons: moving targets, hard to accurately trace online, controversial and
comedic content, fueled by subcultures that are not widely understood
 According to study by Knobel and Lankshear (2006), successful internet memes
operate in affinity spaces and are characterized by:
Rich Anomalous
Humor
intertextuality juxtapositions
Intentionally quirky, Filled with Juxtaposing starkly
offbeat, bizarrely references to contrasting themes,
funny , not to popular culture and moods, ideologies,
everyone’s taste often to specific in a playfully
subcultures provocative manner
The same elements can be traced in mainstream popular culture and
advertizing; also becoming increasingly common online
13 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

14. Role of memes in oppositional politics
 Successful memes, even those more squarely aimed at entertaining their
receivers, exhibit often a subversive character, perhaps also a
deconstructive character, as elements of a counter-culture that aims to
challenge established conventions on propriety, values and communication
“If we don’t like their contagious ideas, we need to produce some of
our own” (Knobel and Lankshear, 2006)
Memes constantly change, evolve, through appropriation and remixing, while retaining their
original character, thus becoming more viral and increasing their longevity by staying fresh
Countermemes can be produced to attack and neutralize undesirable memes
Memes can be easily misunderstood by viewers outside of the affinity space in which they
were developed and are thus distinct from mainstream broadcast content: often aiming to
reinforce and propagate subcultures rather than appeal to a wide audience; but some escape
these limitations to achieve broader appeal
14 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

15. Thoughts on design…
How does a social media platform encourage the crossing
of private-public boundaries to ease collective action?
How much coordination, organization and a priori goal-
setting is necessary in order to be effective?
Under which circumstances are users more likely to
produce viral content that can infect the minds of many?
How can a community encourage this?
What is an optimal trade-off between protecting users’
privacy and identity on the one hand and encouraging public Think about types of online
contribution on the other? content that have made an
impression on you and what
it is about it that is so
How can an online community help users develop the types of
appealing; also, about its
literacies necessary for living in an internet culture and
origins and message
effectively communicating with others in it?
15 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

16. Credits and licensing
 Front page photo by a trying youth (license: CC BY-NC-ND)
 Protest photo by slimmer_jimmer (license: CC BY-NC-ND)
 Keyboard photo by julian- (license: CC BY-NC-ND)
 Loudspeaker photo by corono (license: CC BY)
 Photo collage by jek in the box (license: CC BY-NC-ND)
Original content in this presentation is licensed under the Creative Commons
Singapore Attribution 3.0 license unless stated otherwise (see above)
16 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)