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In Expect Us, Beyer's remarkably rich empirical research on online spaces and groups turns conventional thinking about what generates protest on its head. Most social movement scholars assume that close, personal, and long-term relationships are necessary for high-cost activism. But Beyer shows that online, anonymous spaces can actually be far more supportive of high-cost activism and that online spaces that facilitate close, personal relationships actually decrease the likelihood of activism. Contrary to many scholars' assumptions that entertainment-based media uses are corrosive to political participation, Beyer shows that a large amount of political talk and notable political action can develop from entertainment-focused spaces. This book is a must read for scholars of online activism and contemporary activism more generally.
Expect Us should radically change how we think about the origins of protest in a networked society." --Jennifer Earl, Prof. of Sociology, Univ. of Arizona
"lExpect Us makes an important contribution to movement scholarship. In particular it upends the notion that mobilization relies on close and preexisting social networks."
--Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, University of San Diego
"lExpect Us is most fascinating in its ethnographic narrative of the operations and interactions in the individual online communities, a narrative that can only come from long periods of immersion." --Guobin Yang, University of Pennsylvania, American Sociological Association