Collective Action in Organizations: Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change (Communication, Society and Politics) - Hardcover

Bimber, Bruce; Flanagin, Andrew; Stohl, Cynthia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521191726 ISBN 13: 9780521191722

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Challenging the notion that digital media render traditional, formal organizations irrelevant, this book offers a new theory of collective action and organizing. Based on extensive surveys and interviews with members of three influential and distinctive organizations in the United States - The American Legion, AARP, and MoveOn - the authors reconceptualize collective action as a phenomenon in which technology enhances people's ability to cross boundaries in order to interact with one another and engage with organizations. By developing a theory of Collective Action Space, Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl explore how people's attitudes, behaviors, motivations, goals, and digital media use are related to their organizational involvement. They find that using technology does not necessarily make people more likely to act collectively, but contributes to a diversity of "participatory styles," which hinge on people's interaction with one another and the extent to which they shape organizational agendas. In the digital media age, organizations do not simply recruit people into roles, they provide contexts in which people are able to construct their own collective experiences.

About this title

Book Description:

This book explores how people participate in public life through organizations in a time when digital media can make organizations seem irrelevant. The authors examine three of the largest organizations in the United States - The American Legion, AARP, and MoveOn - showing surprising similarities. In each, people use technology when they participate, but the technology does not make them participate more. The authors divide people into four groups: Individualists, Enthusiasts, Traditionalists, and Minimalists, each having its own distinctive profile.

About the Author:

Bruce Bimber is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is also affiliated with the Department of Communication, and is founder and former director of the Center for Information Technology and Society. His interest in digital media and society arises from his training as an electrical engineer as well as a political scientist and from many years of observing the interconnections between social and technological innovation. He is author of Campaigning Online: The Internet in U.S. Elections (with Richard Davis) and Information and American Democracy (Cambridge University Press 2003). Bimber is a former Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0521191726
• ISBN 13: 9780521191722
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240