Digital organizing for social impact: Current insights and future research avenues on collective action, social movements, and digital technologies

摘要

Digital technologies such as social media have drastically transformed the contexts and processes associated with collective action. New actors have gotten involved in efforts at changing the societal status quo, existing actors have adjusted to new ways of organizing digitally, and original forms of social movements have emerged and grown. All these developments do not, however, hold the potential for unequivocally positive societal impact. New forms of abuse and many unintended consequences have also multiplied. It is high time to take stock of the insights from current scholarship on these important issues.Here we bring together major findings from existing scholarship and introduce the papers of this special issue. We also propose an agenda for future research by highlighting ongoing debates and issues that require further consideration. Questions associated with the increasingly intricated participation of human and technological agents deserve attention, for instance. Careful considerations of the actual impact of digital organizing at different levels (e.g., individual, group, organization, society) also require further scholarship. We finally caution researchers to be ethical and to remain careful of the potential for use and misuse of their scholarship on these important and often polemical topics.