Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses Spring 6-19-2017 The Efficacy of Virtual Protest: Linking Digital Tactics to Outcomes in Activist Campaigns Rina Lynne James Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.edu/open_access_etds Part of the Sociology Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits you. Recommended Citation James, Rina Lynne, "The Efficacy of Virtual Protest: Linking Digital Tactics to Outcomes in Activist Campaigns" (2017). Dissertations and Theses.5892 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar.
Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: pdxscholar@pdx. The Efficacy of Virtual Protest: Linking Digital Tactics to Outcomes in Activist Campaigns by Rina Lynne James A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science in Sociology Thesis Committee: Ginny Garcia-Alexander, Chair Amy Lubitow Robert Liebman Portland State University 2017 Abstract Activists are increasingly relying on online tactics and digital tools to address social issues. This shift towards reliance on the Internet has been shown to have salient implications for social movement formation processes; however, the effectiveness of such actions for achieving specific goals remains largely unaddressed. This study explores how the types of Internet activism and digital tools used by activism campaigns relate to success in meeting stated goals.
To address these questions, the study builds on an existing framework that distinguishes between four distinct types of Internet activism: brochure-ware, which is oriented towards information distribution; e-mobilizations, which treats digital media merely as a tool for mobilizing individuals offline; online participation, which is characterized by wholly online actions such as e-petitions or virtual protests; and online organizing, where organization of a movement takes place exclusively via the internet with no face-to-face coordination by organizers. Ordinal regression models were conducted utilizing cross-sectional data from the Global Digital Activism Data Set (GDADS), a compilation of information on 426 activism campaigns from around the world that began between 2010 and 2012; additional data regarding the types of Internet activism used was also appended to the GDADS using source materials provided within the data set. The findings suggest that use of the Internet for mobilizing offline actions is negatively associated with campaign success, but that this does not hold true for protest actions organized without use of digital tools. E- petition use was also found to be negatively related to achievement of campaign goals.
i Table of Contents Abstract. 1 Chapter 2: Literature Review. 7 Affordances and Risks of Online Activism. 8 Defining Internet Activism.
11 Theoretical Implications: Revising Theory and Updating Definitions. 17 Scale versus Model Changes. 17 Shifts in Organizational Forms. 20 Studying the Effectiveness of Internet Activism.
25 What Predicts Success?. 25 Measuring the Effectiveness of Internet Activism. 39 ii Analytic Plan. 45 Ordinal Logistic Regression Results Predicting Campaign Outcome.
51 Effectiveness of Types of Internet Activism. 51 E-petition Use and Implications for Efficacy. 63 iii Tables Table 1: Indicators for Categories of Internet Activism. 36 Table 2: Descriptive Statistics.
45 Table 3: Distribution of Outcome Across Predictors. 47 Table 4: Proportional Odds Ratios from Ordinal Logistic Regression Predicting Success. 49 iv Figures Figure 1: Theoretical Implications of the Four Categories of Internet Activism. 19 v Chapter 1: Introduction As the Internet continues to grow increasingly accessible across populations and geographic borders, its use has garnered a great deal of attention from those interested in exploring how digital technologies are shaping the social landscape and altering the ways that individuals communicate and form networks.
Of particular interest is the question of whether online engagement plays a useful role in motivating or facilitating civic participation or, more broadly, social change. Activists worldwide are more frequently relying on information and communication technologies and digital media – that is, online participatory media such as websites, blogs, or social networking sites – to inform and connect individuals, creating interest in determining digital media’s effectiveness as a means of disseminating information, mobilizing individuals for online and offline actions, and exerting influence on specific targets. Despite the existence of numerous studies examining the impact of Internet use for activism, previous research is somewhat unclear on how digital media is altering the activist landscape, with investigations into the implications of Internet activism offering disparate results in a number of areas. Previous studies exploring the theoretical implications of Internet activism are in disagreement regarding whether digital media is altering the underlying logic behind social movement formation processes.
Some work suggests that theoretical models such as the resource mobilization and political processes models must be revised or replaced in order for these frameworks to reflect how the Internet is altering the way that individuals are mobilized (Anduiza, Cristancho, and Sabucedo 2014; Bennett and Segerberg 2012; Earl et al. Other scholars argue that the Internet changes very little about the way 1 that social movements form. Still others claim that the Internet is not only not changing the way that individuals mobilize, but that it is actually discouraging them from doing so all together (Couldry 2015; Kristofferson, White, and Peloza 2014; Schumann and Klein 2015). In the case of studies identifying need for new theoretical models, the use of digital media as a mobilizing agent has been linked to profound differences in mobilization processes when compared to mobilizations not utilizing digital technologies; in particular, formal organizations are implicated as being less important to social movement processes than they were previously (Bennett and Segerberg 2012; Earl 2015).
Scholarship suggests that activist mobilizations facilitated through the Internet rely less frequently on traditional, organizationally-brokered collective action, and more on a self- mobilized ‘connective action’ made possible through the use of communication technologies (Anduiza et al. 2014; Bennett and Segerberg 2012). Much previous theorizing on social movement formation and maintenance has emphasized formal organizations as necessary to mobilize individuals and provide resources for movements (Gamson 1975; McAdam 1982), and even scholars more critical of relying primarily on bureaucratic organizations have acknowledged the necessity of loose organizational coalitions (cadre organizations) for linking activists and building a broader movement (Piven and Cloward 1977). This suggests that if these organizations are truly being replaced or supplemented with digital technologies, standard theories are called into question and require theoretical revisions.
2 Other scholarship indicates less revolutionary, but still salient, changes to social movement processes due to the increasing use of the Internet to facilitate protest actions. Even when not requiring complete replacement, resource mobilization theories still require significant adjustments to account for digital media’s ability to potentially lower the costs of social movement participation and thus reduce reliance on resources (Earl 2010). Similarly, increased contact between organizations may not change the way that movements form, but may increase inter-organizational contact and communication, increasing the scale of social movement processes (Earl et al. Earl et al.
(2010) provide a potential explanation for variation in the findings regarding digital media’s impact on movement formation processes by introducing a typological framework for examining Internet activism. They suggest that the findings of previous studies are so varied because they treat digital activism as a homogenous phenomenon with uniform impact, when in reality that are four distinct modes of Internet activism: (1) brochure-ware, which is oriented towards information distribution; (2) e- mobilizations, which treats digital media merely as a tool for mobilizing individuals offline; (3) online participation, which is characterized by wholly online actions such as e-petitions or virtual protests; and (4) online organizing, where organization of a movement takes place exclusively via the internet with no face-to-face coordination by organizers Through an analysis of previous studies, Earl et al. find that brochureware and e-mobilizations were frequently linked to scale-related changes in movement formation processes. In contrast, online participation and online organizing – found to be underrepresented in the literature compared to their rate of use by movements – were 3 found to more frequently yield results suggesting changes to models of social movement formation were necessary.
Earl et al. (2010) suggest that future research not only take a more nuanced approach to investigating Internet activism, but that there is also need for exploration regarding how these forms of activism may relate to social movement efficacy. Contemporarily, the question of efficacy is relatively under-addressed in the literature, with previous work typically focusing on the effectiveness of Internet activism as it relates to mobilizing constituents for offline protest actions and largely ignoring the question of whether Internet activism is effective in exerting influence on specific targets regardless of the forms of participation involved (Anduiza et al. 2014; Boulianne 2015; Couldry 2015; Kristofferson et al.
2014; Robles, De Marco, and Antino 2013; Schumann and Klein 2015; Valenzuela 2013). In work that does exist exploring efficacy for achieving goals, individual forms of online participation are addressed without account for whether they were utilized in the context of a broader movement as only one tactic among a more varied repertoire of contention (Shulman 2009; Wright 2016). Similarly, the effectiveness of the specific digital media that are used to engage in such actions has only been examined without regard for the specific ways that activists used these tools, and the specific aims they hoped to achieve (Joyce, Rosas, and Howard 2013). Given the dispute in findings for most other aspects of the literature relating to online activism, examinations of the efficacy of different types of activism and different digital tools are important because the varied results of previous research give cause to believe there may be differences in efficacy as well.
Additionally, the previous work 4 suggesting changes to movement formation processes does not address whether these changes are to the benefit or detriment of movements. Internet activism has been shown to frequently rely on ‘weak-tie’ networks of loosely-connected individuals instead of stronger ties typically built through formal organizations (González-Bailón et al. 2011; González-Bailón, Borge-Holthoefer, and Moreno 2013), which may result in more ephemeral movements instead of enduring ones (Earl 2010, 2015). While previous analysis suggests that these more transitory movements are not necessarily predestined to fail in achieving their goals, discussion on their implications for efficacy rely largely on speculation.
The purpose of this study is to address these gaps and provide a more empirical and nuanced exploration of digital activism’s effectiveness. Specifically, this work seeks to answer the research question: Are certain modes of Internet activism more likely to be effective for achieving stated goals? A second research question asks: Are certain types of digital media more likely to be effective for achieving stated goals? To address this question, quantitative analysis of cross-sectional data is used to explore differences in the effectiveness of different modes of Internet activism. Data for the study comes from Global Digital Activism Data Set 2.0 (GDADS2), which consists of detailed information on more than four-hundred activism campaigns utilizing digital tactics. A unique feature of the GDADS2 is that it includes primarily textual information, providing links to campaign’s digital media pages and to websites reporting on campaign activities; these source materials were utilized to append the data through a quantitative content analysis during which additional variables not initially included in the data were constructed.
Of particular relevance is the construction of variables identifying which of 5 the four categories of Internet activism outlined by Earl et al. (2010) were engaged in during the course of the campaign. As such, this study not only contributes to the literature by identifying more nuanced directions for future research, but also provides a very tangible contribution to the existing data and serves to inform future work by identifying factors that should be included in subsequent data collection efforts regarding online activism. In doing so, this study will help to develop a more detailed understanding regarding how activists’ uses of the Internet relates to their ability to affect social change.