Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research <s> Studies finding that CMC does not support identity processes. <s> This article reviews the main findings of a three-year empirical study that examined the possible contribution of computer-mediated communication (CMC) to participation in offline social movement protest events. Participation was examined as manifest in mobilization, identity building and organizational transformation. Digital prefigurative participation is a tentative construct that attempts to capture the CMC aspect of engagement in the three processes. The participatory processes were probed in the contrasting circumstances of high- and low-risk protest events. This distinction has revealed some important differences in the structural factors that foster participation, primary among which has been organizational affiliation. Yet, it has remained largely unexplored in studies of internet use in protest politics. Findings from two case studies of environmental protests in Romania and the UK suggest that digital prefigurative participation may be extensive among unaffiliated participants at a low-risk event and the affiliated at a high-risk one. <s> BIB001 </s> Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research <s> Studies finding that CMC does not support identity processes. <s> This paper explores the impact of communication protocols on the development of collective identity in networked movements. It focuses primarily on how communication protocols change patterns of interactions and power relationships among the constituents of social movements. The paper suggests that the communication protocols of commercial social networking media lead to organizational centralization and fragmentation in social movements by eroding one of the preconditions of collective identity, namely solidarity. The empirical material presented is part of a PhD dissertation on a political protest movement and their use of Facebook as a core communication and organizational platform. The data gathering is multi-methodological and relies on both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques in the form of a historical analysis of interaction patterns, and a content analysis of online conversations among activists. <s> BIB002 </s> Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research <s> Studies finding that CMC does not support identity processes. <s> The period following the social mobilizations of 2011 has seen a renewed focus on the place of communication in collective action, linked to the increasing importance of digital communications. Framed in terms of personalized ‘connective action’ or the social morphology of networks, these analyses have criticized previously dominant models of ‘collective identity’, arguing that collective action needs to be understood as ‘digital networking’. These influential approaches have been significantly constructed as a response to models of communication and action evident in the rise of Independent Media Centres in the period following 1999. After considering the rise of the ‘digital networking’ paradigm linked to analyses of Indymedia, this article considers the emergence of the internet-based collaboration known as Anonymous, focusing on its origins on the 4chan manga site and its 2008 campaign against Scientology, and also considers the ‘I am the 99%’ microblog that emerged as part of the Occupy movement. The emergence of Anonymous highlights dimensions of digital culture such as the ephemeral, the importance of memes, an ethic of lulz, the mask and the grotesque. These forms of communication are discussed in the light of dominant attempts to shape digital space in terms of radical transparency, the knowable and the calculable. It is argued that these contrasting approaches may amount to opposing social models of an emerging information society, and that the analysis of contemporary conflicts and mobilizations needs to be alert to novel forms of communicative practice at work in digital cultures today. <s> BIB003
In the literature, we find studies that demonstrate how CMC does not support identity processes (T4). First, communication protocols, organisational centralisation and fragmentation of certain online groups and communities in social media impede the formation of solidarity and strong ties between members, which precludes the development of a collective identity BIB002 . Such a failure is due to the lack of fit between social media infrastructures and people's need to act together. Second, CMC facilitates more organisational activities during collective action (e.g. garnering information, coordinating and promoting mobilisation) than symbolic ones, such as building a collective identity BIB001  . Furthermore, CMC routinisation (e.g. sending email is a common practice in our daily lives) can explain why people do not use these tools to build a collective identity  . Third, although some research on anonymity has shown the positive role of CMC in fostering identity processes (e.g.  , other scholars find opposite results. In a case study about Anonymous, BIB003 argues that activists adopt less stable practices of digital collaboration (use of a mask, the grotesque, the ephemeral), which explains action in online cultures more efficiently than identity does. Hiding behind a mask is claimed to be a clear rejection of identity.