Abstract
Framing a collective identity is an essential process in a social movement. The identity defines the orientation of public actions to take and establishes an informal interaction network for circulating important information and material resources. While domestic social movements emphasize the coherence of identity in alliance, global or cyber-activism is now flexible in its collective identity given the rise of the Internet. A campaign may include diverse social movement organizations (SMOs) with different social agendas. This flexible identity framing encourages personal involvement in direct action. On the other hand, it may damage solidarity within SMOs and make campaigns difficult to control. To assess the sustainability of an SMO, it is important to understand its collective identity and the social codes embedded within its associated cyber-societies and cyber-artifacts. In this study, we took a cyber-archeology approach and used the international Falun Gong (FLG) movement as a case study to investigate this identity-framing issue. We employed social network analysis and Writeprint to analyze FLG’s cyber-artifacts from the perspectives of links, web content, and forum content. In the link analysis, FLG’s websites linked closely to Chinese democracy and human rights SMOs, reflecting FLG’s historical conflicts with the Chinese government after the official ban in 1999. In the web content analysis, we used Writeprint to analyze the writings of Hongzhi Li and of his editors, and found that Hongzhi Li’s writings center around the ideological teaching of Falun Dafa while the editors post specific programs to realize Li’s teaching. In the forum content analysis, FLG comprehensively organizes several different concepts on a continuum: from FLG ideology to life philosophy and mysterious phenomena, and from mysterious phenomena to anti-Chinese Communist Party and persecution by conceptualizing the Chinese government as the Evil. By deploying those cyber-artifacts, FLG seamlessly connects different ideologies and establishes its identity as a Qi-Gong, religious, and activist group.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abbasi A, Chen H (2005) Applying Authorship Analysis to Extremist-Group Web Forum Messages. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 20: 1541–1672
Abbasi A, Chen H (2006) Visualizing Authorship for Identification. In: Intelligence and Security Informatics. San Diego, pp. 60–71
Ackland R, O’Neil M, Bimber B, Gibson RK, Ward S (2006) New Methods for Studying Online Environmental-Activist Networks. In: 26th International Sunbelt Social Network Conference, Vancouver
Almind TC, Ingwersen P (1997) Informetric Analyses on the World Wide Web: Methodological Approaches to Webometrics. Journal of Documentation 53: 404–426
Bell MR, Boas TC (2003) Falun Gong and the Internet: Evangelism, Community, and Struggle for Survival. Nova Religio 6: 277–293
Bennett W (2003) Communicating Global Activism. Information, Communication and Society 6: 143–168
Bennett WL (2005) Social Movements Beyond Borders: Understanding Two Eras of Transnational Activism. In: Porta Dd and Tarrow S (eds) Transnational Protest and Global Activism. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., New York, pp. 203–226
Björneborn L, Ingwersen P (2001) Perspective of Webometrics. Scientometrics 50: 65–82
Björneborn L, Ingwersen P (2004) Toward a Basic Framework for Webometrics. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 55: 1216–1227
Clark JD, Themudo NS (2006) Linking the Web and the Street: Internet-based Dotcauses and the Anti-Globalization Movement. World Development 34: 50–74
Cohen R, Rai SM (2000) Global Social Movements. The Athlone Press, New Brunswick
Freeman LC (1978/79) Centrality in Social Networks: Conceptual Clarification. Social Networks 1: 215–239
Garrido M, Halavais A (2003) Mapping Networks of Support for the Zapatista Movement: Applying Social-Network Analysis to Study Contemporary Social Movements. In: McCaughey M, Ayers MD (eds) Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice. Routledge, New York
Gerlach LP (2001) The Structure of Social Movements: Environmental Activism and its Opponents. In: Arquilla J, Ronfeldt DF (eds) Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy. Rand, Santa Monica, pp. 289–309
Jones Q (1997) Virtual-Communities, Virtual Settlements & Cyber-Archaeology: A Theoretical Outline. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 3
Jones Q, Rafaeli S (2000) What Do Virtual “Tells” Tell? Placing Cybersociety Research into a Hierarchy of Social Explanation. In: Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii
Keck ME, Sikkink K (1998) Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Cornell University Press, New York
Klovdahl AS, Potterat JJ, Woodhouse DE, Muth JB, Muth SQ, Darrow WW (1994) Social networks and Infectious Disease: the Colorado Springs Study. Social Science & Medicine 38: 79–88
Langman L (2005) From Virtual Public Spheres to Global Justice: A Critical Theory of Internetworked Social Movements. Sociological Theory 23: 42–74
Larana E, Johnston H, Gusfield JR (1994) New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity. Temple University Press, Philadelphia
Lu Y (2005) Entrepreneurial Logics and the Evolution of Falun Gong. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44: 173–185
McAdam D, McCarthy J, Zald M (1999) Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
McCaughey M, Ayers MD (2003) Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice. Routledge, New York
Morris AD, Mueller CM (1992) Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. Yale University Press, New Haven
Myers DJ (1994) Communication Technology and Social Movements: Contributions of Computer Networks to Activism. Social Science Computer Review 12: 250–260
Ong TH, Chen H (1999) Updateable PAT-Tree Approach to Chinese Key Phrase Extraction using Mutual Information: A Linguistic Foundation for Knowledge Management. In: Proceedings of the Second Asian Digital Library Conference, Taipei
Paccagnella L (1997) Getting the Seats of Your Pants Dirty: Strategies for Ethnographic Research on Virtual Communities. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 3
Penny B (2003) The Life and Times of Li Hongzhi: Falun Gong and Religious Biography. The China Quarterly 175: 643–661
Porta Dd, Diani M (1999) Social Movements: An Introduction. Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Malden
Rahn P (2002) The Chemistry of a Conflict: The Chinese Government and the Falun Gong. Terrorism and Political Violence 14: 41–65
Rosenthal N, Fingrutd M, Ethier M, Karant R, McDonald D (1985) Social Movements and Network Analysis: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Reform in New York State. The American Journal of Sociology 90: 1022–1054
Scott J (2000) Social Network Analysis: A Handbook, 2nd edn. Sage, London
Tesh SN (2002) The Internet and the Grass Roots. Organization & Environment 15: 336
Tong J (2002) An Organizational Analysis of the Falun Gong: Structure, Communications, Financing. The China Quarterly 171: 636–660
Wasserman S, Faust K (1994) Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge University Press, New York
Acknowledgments
Funding for this research was provided by NSF, “CRI: Developing a Dark Web Collection and Infrastructure for Computational and Social Sciences,” 2007–2010.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chen, YD., Abbasi, A., Chen, H. (2010). Framing Social Movement Identity with Cyber-Artifacts: A Case Study of the International Falun Gong Movement. In: Yang, C., Chau, M., Wang, JH., Chen, H. (eds) Security Informatics. Annals of Information Systems, vol 9. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1325-8_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1325-8_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-1324-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-1325-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)