Internet and Activism

Professor Earl has been studying the relationship between digital media usage and activism since 2000. Several major projects are outlined and have materials archived below, but recent publications and Professor Earl’s c.v. are better publication resources.

Strategic Voting

This project, conducted with Alan Schussman, examined strategic voting websites and their creation and operation in the 2000 Presidential Election. It resulted in several publications, including:

Earl, Jennifer and Alan Schussman. 2003. “The New Site of Activism: Online Organizations, Movement Entrepreneurs, and the Changing Location of Social Movement Decision-Making.” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 24: 155-187.

Schussman, Alan and Jennifer Earl. 2004. “From Barricades to Firewalls? Strategic Voting and Social Movement Leadership in the Internet Age.” Sociological Inquiry 74(4): 439-463. (Lead article) http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2004.00100.x

Earl, Jennifer and Alan Schussman. 2004. “Cease and Desist: Repression, Strategic Voting and the 2000 Presidential Election.” Mobilization 9(2): 188-202. http://www.metapress.com/content/J1UQ072540827Q77

Earl, Jennifer. 2007. “Leading Tasks in a Leaderless Movement: The Case of Strategic Voting” Special Issue on Social Movement Leadership in the American Behavioral Scientist 50(10): 1327-1349. http://abs.sagepub.com/content/50/10/1327

E-Tactics

This project, assisted by many undergraduates and graduate students, and conducted in collaboration with Katrina Kimport, developed a way to randomly sample online content on a specific topic and applied this method to studying random samples of online petitions, boycotts, letter-writing, and emailing campaigns. It resulted in a book and numerous articles, including (but not limited to) the following publications:

Earl, Jennifer. 2006. “Pursuing Social Change Online: The Use of Four Protest Tactics on the Internet.” Social Science Computer Review 24(3): 362-377. http://ssc.sagepub.com/content/24/3/362.

Earl, Jennifer and Katrina Kimport. 2011. Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Earl, Jennifer and Katrina Kimport. 2008. “The Targets of Online Protest: State and Private Targets of Four Online Protest Tactics.” Information, Communication & Society 11(4): 449-472.

Earl, Jennifer and Katrina Kimport. 2009. “Movement Societies and Digital Protest: Fan Activism and Other Non-Political Protest Online” Sociological Theory 23(3): 220-243.

Earl, Jennifer. 2010. “The Dynamics of Protest-Related Diffusion on the Web.” Information, Communication & Society. 13(2): 209-225.

Earl, Jennifer and Katrina Kimport. 2010. “The Diffusion of Different Types of Internet Activism: Suggestive Patterns in Website Adoption of Innovations.” Pp. 125-139. in Dynamics of Diffusion in Social Movements, edited by Becky Givans, Kenneth Roberts and Sarah Soule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Digital and Social Media across 20 Social Movement Industries

This project and lab were funded by a NSF CAREER Award Project awarded in 2006. You can read the project description on the NSF website or here. The project collected data from 2006-2011 on how 20 different causes were being pursued online through education and protest. Goals of the project included understanding how formal organizations like ACLU or National Organization of Women use digital and (social media later on) for social change compared to individuals or less formalized groups and understanding the distribution of online protest actions available across time. Soooooo many undergraduates participated in this project, as well as many grads. To honor their contributions, while I list a few sample publications here, most of the focus is on the people who made this project possible.

Select Publications:

Earl, Jennifer, Katrina Kimport, Greg Prieto, Carly Rush, and Kimberly Reynoso. 2010. “Changing the World One Webpage at a Time: Conceptualizing and Explaining ‘Internet Activism” Mobilization 15(4):425-446.

Earl, Jennifer. 2012. “Private Protest? Public and Private Engagement Online.” Information, Communication & Society 15(4): 591-608.

Earl, Jennifer, Heather McKee Hurwitz, Analicia Mejia Mesinas, Margaret Tolan, and Ashley Arlotti. 2013. “This Protest Will Be Tweeted: Twitter and Protest Policing during the Pittsburgh G20.”

Earl, Jennifer. 2013. “Studying Online Activism: The Effects of Sampling Design on Findings.” Mobilization 18(4): 389-406.

Earl, Jennifer. 2013. “Spreading the Word or Shaping the Conversation: “Prosumption” in Protest Websites.” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 36: 3-38. (Lead Article)

Selected Lab Members (some pictured below): Ashley Arlotti, Jennifer Barraza, Rachel Baudoin, Ashley Cardenas, Ashley Cha, Andrea Cruz, Sandy De Sauvage, Jackie Fields, Cari Hitzeman, Heather McKee Hurwitz, Jayson Hunt, Carly Jones, Katrina Kimport, Michelle Kitson, Remy Krumpak, Michaela Laird, Karina Layugan, Rebecca Levy, Ruisi Li, Tritia Macaranas, Forrest McClellen, Analicia Mejia-Mesinas, Sarah Miers, Emily Michaelson, Matthew O’Sullivan, Giulia Pellegrino, Kathryn Porter, Greg Prieto, Brad Rapanut, Kimberly Reynoso, Carly Rush, Carly Saltzman, Lauren Serkland, Alyssa Sherman, Robin-John (RJ) Stewart, Maggie Tolan, Zelda Vassar, and Christel Werner.

Here are some archived pages also related to this project:

Call for Proposals

Completed and In-Progress Data Uses

Potential Collaborators

Data Documentation