Conference report: Connected Life 2016

Over the course of two days, participants from the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences came together to discuss the multifaceted effects of internet-supported practices at Connected Life 2016, hosted by the Oxford Internet Institute. A focus was placed on how the Internet affects collective action, both in big social movements, and more everyday forms of collaboration.

A recurring storyline emerged throughout the talks and discussions. It goes approximately as follows… because digital technologies have lowered barriers for participation, a collective identity is no longer required before collective action can take place. Instead, action often prefigures forms of collective identity. While organisations may then emerge out of this, in the more immediate sense this reduced barrier to action also fosters greater instability.

Collective action theory of past decades still finds use in this context, most notably Olson’s “Logic of Collective Action” (1965). However much new theory is still emerging. Among these, Bennet and Soderberg’s “Logic of Connective Action” (2013) was probably most widely discussed at the event, and it became evident that their book has transformed how collective action is discussed in an online context. Yet a key theoretical challenge remains that collective processes may incorporate different modes of coordination, are often emergent rather than planned, and are likely to change over time. As a result, organisers of collective processes often don’t have clear models to follow, and instead are making their own experiences, and hopefully comparing notes…

Collective action online

An opening keynote by Helen Margetts of the OII set the stage: she provided a broad overview of current thinking around collective action online, along with some specific case studies. (If you’ve read the “Political Turbulence” book you may already be familiar with the themes.) Digital tools make it easier for individuals to engage in certain collective processes. While this may potentially allow for a kind of democratisation of public discourse (broader participation, lower barrier to entry) it can actually yield greater political instability. In part this is because such digital collective action is rarely the result of slow institution-building, but rather a result of lowering barriers of participation, allowing for many small acts at low effort.

Margetts shared that one of the motivations behind the research in Political Turbulence was an absence of empirical evidence of large collective processes, and in her talk she outlined some key findings from the book. Research of participation in online petitions revealed that most campaigns fail or succeed very quickly. It also revealed patterns of a new kind of political engagement: some participants started on the petitions homepage rather than a specific campaign, then chose to participate in a number of campaigns that spoke to their their interest, a behaviour Margetts called “my 10 minutes of democracy for today”. The research further demonstrated how interfaces can influence outcomes. The introduction of a “top campaigns” listing on the homepage resulted in a “rich get richer” outcome, where the same number of overall signatures were gathered as before, but less prominent campaigns received fewer support as before.

Tamar Ashuri and Yaniv Bar-Ilan presented work on recruitment strategies in collective action. They suggested two analytical dimensions: organisational risk (may the volunteer harm the organisation?), and growth (does the organisation seek to grow, or remain exclusive?) They observed that thanks to declining transaction costs, organisations can tolerate episodic volunteers, however that formal mechanisms still often maintain a substantive role in defining the scope of participation. In particular when collective action has some “real-world” impact, organisations still need to balance openness with problems involving free riders and high-risk volunteers.

Richard Heeks spoke on the emergent research domain of institutional logics, seeking to understand why certain organisational patterns emerge, and what they then bring about in return, with a focus on digital development and ICT4D. He offered some punchy taglines to frame his inquiry. Is “digital development” the process of networked society moving to the global south? How can the same technology that is supposed to empower disenfranchised women also be a key distribution mechanism for porn? In his talk he provided a broad and thoughtful overview of existing thinking on organisational order, models of power (network models, culturally contingent power, competitive and cooperative logics), but also found that much theory is still missing or incomplete.

The invisible hand of collective action

Such organisation-focused work that looks at activities in the aggregate are complemented by work that seeks to understand how the local interactions of individual participants can build up to yield momentum. Jun Yu introduced a qualitative study of solidarity on Facebook, in part framed as a connective action study. According to Yu, solidarity can provide a bond among large groups where small-group strong ties don’t exist. However the two processes are not entirely comparable, for example solidarity does not necessarily engender trust.

Daniel Lundgaard asked: what drives engagement at scale? Why do individuals engage? What’s the “invisible hand” behind this kind of collective action? He compared social media participation in #BlackLivesMatter, #YesAllWomen, and the ALS ice bucket challenge. He found that the former two yielded collective action frames of a shared identity, while in the case of the ice bucket challenge there was no “united we”. Instead he encountered a personalised action frame: contributions were acts of self-expression. In all cases he encountered instances of connective action: there was no longer a need for a collective identity before participants were able to act. Instead, small acts can yield a “we” later. However Lundgaard further found a lack of commitment in all three cases: an absence of participation boundaries, which meant a low barrier to participation, but also a tendency for disruption.

Although the connective action model was referred in many studies and discussions, it was not always found sufficient. Verity Trott offered a feminist critique of the model, using a number of case studies to highlight where its descriptive capacities fall short. In particular she highlighted cases where groups can transition between states over time. In one example, an organic hashtag campaign lead to the establishment of some initial social links and simple coordination practices, with many individuals encountering new allies among the many voices. A private organiser network formed from these early bonds, inviting new members slowly and carefully. This private organiser network then successfully coordinated a large public online campaign, relying on trust networks that had been established in the earlier campaign, but without using the same hashtags. When describing such transient forms of organisation, Trott suggested to also consider Chadwick’s “organisational hybridity” (2008) as a potentially useful social movement model.

The power of the personal story?

In a longer panel discussion, practitioners from campaign organisations and industry discussed the role of online collective action in the context of politics and policy. Alistair Alexander of the Tactical Technology Collective talked about the challenges of mobilising participants in direct action campaigns, observing that activist groups risk being stuck in a small niche of already well-informed supporters, unless they think carefully how to address people outside their immediate circle. As a key success story he mentioned the UK fracking debate: according to Alexander, climate activism was stuck in a policy debate, global summits with little tangible outcome, and a Copenhagen summit which had been a big disappointment. Then the UK fracking debate brought the issue home, and revitalised the debate: it turned climate change and energy policy into a personal concern. Alexander further stressed that direct action campaigns need to foster an honest belief that people’s small actions can have an impact, and to make use of practices which support this.

Kajal Odedra of Change.org UK further spoke about the power of the personal story, or of what she called the “little big thing”: managing to narrow a complex debate down to one tangible issue. As example she mentioned the tampon tax campaign. Odedra further recommended to have multiple groups collaborate on larger campaigns, for example to connect individual campaigners around a shared issue, and to then grow their personal voices into an emergent discourse.

Andrew Puddephatt of Global Partners Digital reinforced the importance of coalition-building. According to him, systemic change is not brought about by interest groups, but by coalitions of divergent voices; big movements require institutions that can unite larger groups of people. In such settings, compromises are important, as is consensus-building across wide spectrums of perspectives. Yet he also observed that some activists may not like to compromise their visions in this manner; in his readings this often prevents movements to grow. Furthermore he warned against a politics of personal self-fulfilment, which he contrasted with the more classical politics as means of social change. Puddephatt explained that worker’s movements and other political movements were not about “your issue”, they were about providing support for disenfranchised groups. Contemporary politics in the UK is further confronted with a technical imbalance across the parties: according to Puddephatt, conservatives have more funds for highly targeted campaigning than the other parties. When asked about the roles academia can play in political campaigning, he posed a challenge: activist groups tend to be outgunned in any multi-stakeholder policy setting, in part because they may lack the funds and resources to develop extensive policy proposals.

Collective action in practice

In a civic tech showcase, Amy O’Donnell of Oxfam presented a wide range of projects by the multinational organisation, from a radio project in Haiti to assist in cholera prevention, securing land rights in Kenia in the context of oil extraction, participatory video work in Bangladesh to strengthen women’s voices and document chilli supply chains, to the development of alternative payment systems in the Phillipines. Informed by this wide range of activities Amy identified a conceptual design gap: few projects appropriately account for self-interest and individual needs around larger social concerns. She closed with some recurrent fundamental questions about the nature of civic tech platform design (see photo.)

Towards the end of the second day, and inspired by a lunchtime chat, I suggested an unconference session which brought together researchers and practitioners to debate how collective engagement may be fostered at large scale. Rodrigo Hernandez Gallegos presented a scenario of a national platform for political discourse, outlining different strategies for structuring the discourse and fostering participation. Unconference participants offered a wide range of perspectives on how one might foster engagement in such a setting. Suggestions included piggybacking on existing communities that brought together people over shared concerns, considering the specific needs by individuals which may motivate them to join and participate, identifying key moments of emergent political discourse where new information needs arise, and others. Good framing was considered an important engagement factor, particularly for late adopters who are not currently engaged in political discourse. It was pointed out that a wide range of academic literature has looked at many engagement aspects of such participatory systems, however also that there was no simple entry-point for non-academic outsiders to acquire this knowledge. Organisers may struggle to find simple design models that can guide their choices. While new ventures can develop commercial strategies with a business model canvas, and make use of agile methodologies to improve their processes, there currently is no systematic framework to design large-scale participatory systems. An opportunity for bridging work, to popularise the research and make the knowledge accessible to organisers?