MANUFACTURING COMMUNITY IN AN ONLINE ACTIVIST ORGANIZATION

Marc A. Eaton

36 citations0/0 files storedInformation Communication & Society

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Social Media and Politics Rhetoric and Communication Studies Social Movements and Cultural Identity

Abstract

Using the online activist organization MoveOn.org as a case study, I examine how an Internet-based organization constructs an image of community in the absence of traditional avenues for community development. Through the rhetoric in its e-mails, MoveOn constructs an image of ‘the MoveOn community’ and uses this image to mobilize members for political activism. To be successful, MoveOn must define community boundaries, empower members, and activate them. This top-down community construction does not allow members to negotiate the meaning or values of the community. I refer to this community form as a manufactured community because it is produced and marketed to activists much like a product. I also argue that the model of fast activism inherent to online activist organizations is adaptive to our current fast-paced society. Moreover, this model of activism allows new segments of the population to become ‘biographically available’ (McAdam 1986, 1999) for political participation.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 36 citations exist upstream.

References

1967The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge.1981Snowball Sampling: Problems and Techniques of Chain Referral Sampling 1999Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 1940Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive 2011Folk Devils and Moral Panics 201561. The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life 1986Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer 2001Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement Social Capital?

Cited by

2012Advocacy 2.0: An Analysis of How Advocacy Groups in the United States Perceive and Use Social Media as Tools for Facilitating Civic Engagement and Collective Action 2011Inside the "People of the Wheelbarrows": participation between online and offline dimension in the post-quake social movement 2019Where Truth Lies 2018Red Pillers, Sad Puppies, and Gamergaters 2018Two modes of participation: A conceptual analysis of 102 cases of Internet and social media participation from 2005–2015

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.