[ecrea] Information & Organization - Special Issue on: “Collective Action, Social Movements and Digital Technology”

*Information & Organization*

Special Issue on: “Collective Action, Social Movements and Digital 
Technology”

*_Special Issue Editors:_*

Lisen Selander, University of Gothenburg

Amber Young, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Emmanuelle Vaast, McGill University

Elizabeth Davidson, University of Hawai’i

*_Motivation and Overview_*

Technological advances have revolutionized both the means and ends of 
collection actions and movements. It seems what we are witnessing is not 
only changes in how individuals approach protest and resistance, but 
also what it means to /be/ organized.  This fundamental shift in the 
nature of organization beyond formal boundaries of established 
organizations and firms demands a renewed effort to understand 
organization and organizing in its current form (Winter et al., 2014). 
On the one hand, digital technologies bring unprecedented opportunities 
to organize masses of individuals in democratic actions, lower 
participation costs, and foster new information and action repertoires 
that go beyond offline communities. On the other hand, questions remain 
regarding the actual impact of technology-enabled collective action, its 
consequences for inequality, and the ethical implications of ideologies 
championed through collective action.

There is an emerging literature on the uses of Internet and social media 
technologies in social protests and in technology use for collective 
actions within the communications field (cf. Bennett & Segerberg, 2012; 
Bimber et al., 2012), but research on digital technologies’ implication 
for organizing, or the ability to help reach collective action goals is 
nascent in the information and organizational fields. Topics that have 
been addressed include: digital action repertoires of social movement 
organizations (Selander & Jarvenpaa, 2016), cyberactivism (Benjamin, 
Chen & Zimbra, 2014; Yetgin, Young & Miranda, 2012), systems 
standardization as collective action (Markus, Steinfield, Wigand & 
Minton, 2006), collective efforts to complete tasks in a dispersed work 
context (Subramaniam, Nandhakumar & Baptista, 2013), collective action 
and knowledge contribution in voluntary, computer-mediated settings 
(Wasko, Faraj & Teigland, 2004), and ICT tool use in social movements 
(Young, 2017).

Important research opportunities yet to be explored include using 
collective action and social movements lenses to consider organization 
more broadly, including large-group collaboration phenomena such as 
collaborative innovation networks or crowd funding. This research stream 
has the potential to contribute to IS and reference discipline theories 
as well as develop practical insights for organizations, practitioners, 
activists, and policy makers.

*_Scope and Focus of the Special Issue _*

The purpose of this special issue is to develop understanding around the 
roles of digital technologies in collective action and movement 
phenomena and to contribute theoretical insights related to collective 
actions in the digital age. We encourage submissions that explore the 
roles of digital technology in collective action generally as well as 
those focused social movement phenomena. In keeping with the aims and 
scope of /Information & Organization/, we are particularly interested in 
papers that examine in depth the social and material interplay of 
information technologies and organizational and organizing phenomena.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:

  * Online resource mobilization and digital opportunity structures for
    collective action
  * Social and material implications of digital activism
  * Fake news movements, propaganda diffusion and organizing responses
  * Corporate strategy / involvement in social movements to shape public
    policy
  * Botivists (web bot programmed for activism), online petitions, and
    other tools for digital protest and engagement
  * Digital marketing of social agendas
  * Empowerment / marginalization campaigns enacted in online digital
    technologies
  * Social media capabilities and facilitation of echo chambers
  * Media capabilities for voice-giving and perspective-shaping
  * Financing of social agendas through crowd funding or bitcoin exchanges
  * Crowd funding, bitcoin exchange or similar phenomena examined as
    social movements or collective actions
  * Privacy and ethical issues in researching online collective action
  * Methodological challenges in researching collective action and new
    digital technologies



    *_Special issue timeframe:_*



    Submission Deadline: November 1, 2017

    First round decisions: March 1, 2018

    Revisions due:            July 1, 2018

    Second round review: October 1, 2018

    Final papers due:        December 1, 2018

    Publication:                Issue 1, 2019 (available online
    approximately 1/1/2019)





    *_References_*

Benjamin, Victor, Hsinchun Chen, and David Zimbra. "Bridging the virtual 
and real: the relationship between web content, linkage, and 
geographical proximity of social movements." /Journal of the Association 
for Information Science and Technology/ 65.11 (2014): 2210-2222.

Bennett, W. Lance, and Alexandra Segerberg. "The logic of connective 
action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics." 
/Information, Communication & Society/ 15.5 (2012): 739-768.

Bimber, Bruce, Andrew Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl. Collective action in 
organizations: Interaction and engagement in an era of technological 
change. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Markus, M. Lynne, Charles W. Steinfield, and Rolf T. Wigand. "Standards, 
Collective Action and IS Development-Vertical Information Systems 
Standards in the US Home Mortgage Industry." /MIS Quarterly/ 30 (2006): 
439-465.

Selander, Lisen, and Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa. "Digital Action Repertoires 
and Transforming a Social Movement Organization." /MIS Quarterly/ 40.2 
(2016): 331-352.

Subramaniam, Niran, Joe Nandhakumar, and John Baptista. "Exploring 
social network interactions in enterprise systems: the role of virtual 
co‐presence." /Info Systems J./ 23.6 (2013): 475-499.

Wasko, Molly McLure, Samer Faraj, and Robin Teigland. "Collective action 
and knowledge contribution in electronic networks of practice." /Journal 
of the Association for Information Systems/ 5.11 (2004): 2.

Winter, Susan, et al. "Beyond the organizational ‘container’: 
Conceptualizing 21st century sociotechnical work." /Information and 
Organization/ 24.4 (2014): 250-269.

Yetgin, Emre, Amber G. Young, and Shaila M. Miranda. "Cultural 
production of protest frames and tactics: Cybermediaries and the SOPA 
movement." /International Conference on Information Systems /(2012).

Young, Amber G. “Using ICT for social good: Cultural identity 
restoration through emancipatory pedagogy.” /Info Systems J./ 2017. 
https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12142





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