Connective action or collective inertia? Emotion, cognition, and the limits of digitally networked resistance

ABSTRACT

Connective action, or individuals networking with each other online to form social movements, rarely leads to lasting change. In this study, we argue that such movements are ultimately ineffective because they struggle to sustain themselves over time and identify the reasons behind their transience. Our analysis focuses on Twitter conversations about Aadhaar, a biometric ID project that has raised concerns about data privacy and civil liberty in India, the world’s largest democracy. A computational mixed-methods approach incorporating social network analysis, sentiment analysis, and structural topic modeling demonstrates that connective action against Aadhaar failed to produce a sustained discourse of resistance, with people’s feelings toward and beliefs about Aadhaar vacillating sharply. The analysis draws attention to the power of brick-and-mortar social institutions, including the state and its agencies, political parties, courts, technology companies, and ‘legacy’ news media, in shaping and reshaping seemingly bottom-up discourses on digital platforms. It also identifies three interlinked weaknesses of connective action – the individualized nature of mobilization, excessive flexibility of social networks, and a negative emotional culture. We contend that in order to be effective, contemporary social movements need to utilize digital technologies for ‘collective’ action by forging collective identities that bind participants affectively and cognitively, empower them against structures of social control, and enable them to commit to non-personal and long-term objectives.

KEYWORDS:

• Twitter
• social movement
• emotion
• influencer
• sentiment analysis
• topic modeling

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Saif Shahin

Saif Shahin (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at American University, Washington, D.C., where he also serves as a Faculty Fellow with the Internet Governance Lab. His research, which focuses on critical data studies and digital culture, has been published in journals such as New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, American Behavioral Scientist, The International Journal of Press/Politics, and Communication Methods and Measures.

Yee Man Margaret Ng

Yee Man Margaret Ng (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and the Department of Computer Science (faculty affiliate) at The University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Her research interests include computational social science, journalism, and communication technology. Her research has been published in journals such as Journal of Communication, Computers in Human Behavior, Social Media + Society, and Journal of Information Technology & Politics.