Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research <s> Introduction <s> Mexico’s Zapatista movement was one of the first to use the internet to propel a local struggle onto an international stage. In so doing it originated a new kind of social movement, one that pushes beyond group identities around which social movements have traditionally organized and into the realm of network identity. This analysis of Zapatista websites and listservs examines the ways several key myths - of a universal Marcos, of noble savages and of a neoliberal beast - help structure the relationships among diverse members of the network. Examining the myths around which the movement is organized reveals how people go about creating network identities and helps us assess to what extent they are new and to what extent traditional roles and relationships are being played out in a new environment. <s> BIB001 </s> Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research <s> Introduction <s> This study focuses on three email lists — one used by a professional organization (Friends of the Earth) and two by grass roots, street-level participants (Direct Action Network and People's Global Action) — in the Seattle World Trade Organization protests. Each list was examined in terms of how it contributed to the expression of collective identities online. Each group's list employed at least one of three processes identified here as key to collective identity: the Friends of the Earth list emphasized cognitive framing of the event; Direct Action Network focused on emotional investments among list members; and People's Global Action stressed setting boundaries among movement participants.Yet overall, none of the lists was entirely successful as a vehicle for expressing movement identities, suggesting that while the internet may facilitate certain organizational activities of social movements, it appears to have less impact on their symbolic ones. <s> BIB002 </s> Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research <s> Introduction <s> While communication scholars suggest that the internet can serve as an important resource for social movement communication, few studies examine whether and how social movements actually use the internet. This article examines US-based social movement organization (SMO) internet use at one of its most visible points of access, the world wide web. Drawing on alternative media studies, the article develops a typology of communication functions central to social movements and surveys a random sample of SMO websites in order to determine whether and to what degree they exhibit features or attributes related to these types. The survey results suggest that the majority of US-based SMOs are not utilizing the web to its full potential, and posits a number of reasons why this might be the case, including organizational objectives, organizational resources and resource sharing. <s> BIB003 </s> Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research <s> Introduction <s> 1. Introduction: Networking democracy? Social media innovations in participatory politics BRIAN D. LOADER and DAN MERCEA Part 1: Social Movements: Pushing the Boundaries of Digital Political Participation 2. Digital Media and the Personalization of Collective Action: Social Technology and the Organization of Protests Against the Global Economic Crisis W. LANCE BENNETT and ALEXANDRA SEGERBERG 3. Communication in Movement: social movements as agents of participatory democracy DONATELLA DELLA PORTA Part 2: Participation Dynamics: Intersections Between Social and Traditional Media 4. Poverty in the News: A Framing Analysis of Coverage in Canada and the United Kingdom JOANNA REDDEN 5. The News Media as Networked Political Actors: How Italian Media are Reclaiming Political Ground Political Ground by Harnessing Online Participation CRISTIAN VACCARI 6. Trust, Confidence, Credibility: Citizen Responses on Twitter to Opinion Polls During the 2010 UK General Election NICK ANSTEAD, BEN O'LOUGHLIN, LAWRENCE AMPOFO 7. What the Hashtag? A Content Analysis of Canadian Politics on Twitter TAMARA SMALL Part 3: Digital Political Participation in Stasis or Flux? 8. The Political Competence of Internet Participants- Evidence from Finland HENRIK SERUP CHRISTENSEN and ASA BENGTSSON 9. Reaching Citizens Online: How Youth Organizations are Evolving their Web Presence JANELLE WARD 10. Online Youth Civic Attitudes and the Limits of Civic Consumerism: the Emerging Challenge to the Internet's Democratic Potential ROMAN GERODIMOS 11. Constructing Australian Youth Online: Empowered but Dutiful Citizens? ARIADNE VROMEN 12. Online Participation: New Forms of Civic and Political Engagement or Just New Opportunities for Networked Individualism GIOVANNA MASCHERONI 13. How the Internet is Giving Birth (to) a New Social Order JODI H. COHEN & JENNIFER M. RAYMOND <s> BIB004 </s> Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research <s> Introduction <s> From the Arab Spring and los indignados in Spain, to Occupy Wall Street (and beyond), large-scale, sustained protests are using digital media in ways that go beyond sending and receiving messages. Some of these action formations contain relatively small roles for formal brick and mortar organizations. Others involve well-established advocacy organizations, in hybrid relations with other organizations, using technologies that enable personalized public engagement. Both stand in contrast to the more familiar organizationally managed and brokered action conventionally associated with social movement and issue advocacy. This article examines the organizational dynamics that emerge when communication becomes a prominent part of organizational structure. It argues that understanding such variations in large-scale action networks requires distinguishing between at least two logics that may be in play: The familiar logic of collective action associated with high levels of organizational resources and the formatio... <s> BIB005 </s> Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research <s> Introduction <s> This commentary reviews some of the central theoretical concepts and contentions that represent the intellectual scaffold of this special issue. It looks closely at the notions of collective identity and collective action as they figure in the work of Alberto Melucci. It then critically assesses the argument that these notions should give way to a new model emphasizing how social media connect the actions undertaken by independent individuals. The rich corpus of research reported in the articles is surveyed with the goal to map the positions the different authors take along the collective versus connective dichotomy and to highlight the ways in which their contributions advance our understanding of identity, connectivity and political action in the social media environment. <s> BIB006 </s> Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research <s> Introduction <s> This article develops a conceptual framework for understanding collective action in the age of social media, focusing on the role of collective identity and the process of its making. It is grounded on an interactionist approach that considers organized collective action as a social construct with communicative action at its core [Melucci, A. 1996. Challenging codes: Collective action in the information age. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press]. It explains how micromobilization is mediated by social media, and argues that social media play a novel broker role in the activists' meaning construction processes. Social media impose precise material constraints on their social affordances, which have profound implications in both the symbolic production and organizational dynamics of social action. The materiality of social media deeply affects identity building, in two ways: firstly, it amplifies the ‘interactive and shared’ elements of collective identity (Melucci, 1996), and secondly, it sets in motion a politics of visibility characterized by individuality, performance, visibility, and juxtaposition. The politics of visibility, at the heart of what I call ‘cloud protesting’, exacerbates the centrality of the subjective and private experience of the individual in contemporary mobilizations, and has partially replaced the politics of identity typical of social movements. The politics of visibility creates individuals-in-the-group, whereby the ‘collective’ is experienced through the ‘individual’ and the group is the means of collective action, rather than its end. <s> BIB007 </s> Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research <s> Introduction <s> Protest avatars, digital images that act as collective symbols for protest movements, have been widely used by supporters of the 2011 protest wave, from Egypt to Spain and the United States. From photos of Egyptian martyr Khaled Said, to protest posters and multiple variations of Anonymous' mask, a great variety of images have been adopted as profile pictures by Internet users to express their support for various causes and protest movements and communicate it to all their Internet peers. In this article, I explore protest avatars as forms of identification of protest movements in a digital era. I argue that protest avatars can be described as ‘memetic signifiers’ because (a) they are marked by a vagueness and inclusivity that distinguishes them from traditional protest symbols and (b) lend themselves to be used as memes for viral diffusion on social networks. In adopting these icons, participants experience a collective fusion in an online crowd, whose gathering is manifested in the very ‘masking’ of participants behind protest avatars. These forms of collective identification, while powerful in the short term, can however prove quite volatile, with Internet users often discarding avatars with relative ease, raising the question whether they can provide durable foundational elements of contemporary social movements. <s> BIB008
Since 2011, movements like the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and Movember have gained a global presence, thanks to the massive use of computer-mediated communication (CMC). In this context, the role of identity in the study of collective action has been a source of contention (for a review, see, for example, BIB006    . Scholars from different domains consider identity important to collective action because it explains the coherence and organisation of collective actors using CMC to construct their identity and to mobilise BIB006  . For example, advocacy campaigns such as Movember or Pink Ribbon, which aim to raise awareness about cancer prevention, use symbols (e.g. a moustache or a ribbon) and pose challenges (e.g. do some sport) to make people identify with the cause and construct a collective identity in order to foster participation in the campaign activities (e.g. fundraising, social events). Various scholars acknowledge that CMC has changed the construction, maintenance and negotiation of identities in collective action (see, for example,   BIB007 BIB001 BIB003 BIB002 . For instance, social networking sites like Twitter offer the space and means to quickly, easily and often creatively express, construct, share and negotiate the identities that become symbols of protest movements or advocacy campaigns. However, some scholars argue that the role of identity in collective action via CMC is less relevant since the emergence of 2011 networked movements (e.g. BIB005 BIB004 . New mobilisation forms via CMC are considered 'connective' rather than 'collective': To take action, individuals only need to be connected with each other through networks without explicitly constructing a common identity BIB005 . These claims have moved scholars interested in identity to call for research on the 'conceptual and methodological underpinnings' of how such identities are transformed in the digital era BIB008 Treré, 2015: 870, Milan, 2015) and affect collective action via CMC, in particular by looking at the interaction between identities, networks and media structures BIB006   . Following up on these calls, our research sets out to systematically review and synthesise empirical studies on identity, collective action and CMC since 2011, considered a landmark year in the emergence of the biggest networked movements. In reviewing the articles, we focus on the role of identity in collective action and CMC's impact on identity processes during collective action. We answer two main research questions by conducting a descriptive analysis and a thematic analysis: RQ1. Which concepts, methodological approaches and perspectives are used in the literature on identity and collective action via CMC? RQ2. What are the main findings from the literature on the role of identity in collective action and CMC's impact on identity processes? We offer three main contributions. First, we respond to existing calls for the development of a research agenda regarding the interplay between identity, collective action and CMC BIB006  by developing conceptual and methodological research directions. In this way, we advance multiple research fields (e.g. social movements, collective action, media and communication) by systematically synthesising key concepts, perspectives, methods and findings to better understand the role of identity in collective action and the circumstances under which CMC influences identification processes during collective action. Second, we propose an integrative approach combining the study of identity and networks to address the research directions that the agenda proposes. Thereby, we not only improve our understanding of collective action via CMC but also provide more theoretical nuance and synthesis to the concept of identity in a largely multidisciplinary domain. Third, we show the practical implications of studies on identity, collective action and CMC. Activists not only construct and develop new identities via CMC but also exploit CMC to organise, coordinate and communicate about collective action to achieve social change.