Online Collective Action: Dynamics of the Crowd in Social Media (Lecture Notes in Social Networks Book 4)

This work addresses the gap in the current collective action literature exposed by the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) landscape by bringing together qualitative and quantitative studies from computational and social sciences. The book offers a rigorous and systematic investigation of both methodological and theoretical underpinnings and, thus, collectively promotes a symbiotic and synergistic advancement of the multiple interconnected disciplines in studying online collective actions. More specifically, the book is intended to illuminate several fundamental and powerful yet theoretically undeveloped and largely unexplored aspects of collective action in the participatory media (e.g., social media). Through in-depth exploration of relevant concepts, theories, methodologies, applications, and case studies, the reader will gain an advanced understanding of collective action with the advent of the new generation of ICTs enabled by social media and the Internet. The developed theories will be valuable and comprehensive references for those interested in examining the role of ICTs not only in collective action but also in decision and policy making, understanding the dynamics of interaction, collaboration, cooperation, communication, as well as information flow and propagation, and social network research for years to come. Further, the book also serves as an extensive repository of data sets and tools that can be used by researchers leading to a deeper and more fundamental understanding of the dynamics of the crowd in online collective actions. Front Matter....Pages i-xxii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Sentiment Analysis in Social Media....Pages 3-17 Emotion Analysis on Social Media: Natural Language Processing Approaches and Applications....Pages 19-37 Discovering Flow of Sentiment and Transient Behavior of Online Social Crowd : An Analysis Through Social Insects....Pages 39-57 Collective Emotions Online....Pages 59-74 Evaluation of Media-Based Social Interactions: Linking Collective Actions to Media Types, Applications, and Devices in Social Networks....Pages 75-95 Front Matter....Pages 97-97 The Studies of Blogs and Online Communities: From Information to Knowledge and Action....Pages 99-119 Using Contemporary Collective Action to Understand the Use of Computer-Mediated Communication in Virtual Citizen Science....Pages 121-132 Socially Networked Citizen Science and the Crowd-Sourcing of Pro-Environmental Collective Actions....Pages 133-152 Front Matter....Pages 153-153 The Spanish “Indignados” Movement: Time Dynamics, Geographical Distribution, and Recruitment Mechanisms....Pages 155-177 The Strength of Tweet Ties....Pages 179-195 The Arab Spring in North Africa: Still Winter in Morocco?....Pages 197-211 Online and Offline Advocacy for American Hijabis: Organizational and Organic Tactical Configurations....Pages 213-228 Back Matter....Pages 229-231