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Collectivity and Power on the Internet pp 31–55Cite as

Social Movements: The Sociotechnical Constitution of Collective Action

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Abstract

For some years, the field of research on social movements has undergone fundamental changes. This is due above all to the internet and social media platforms that have become an integral part of the emergence, organization and mobilization of protest. This article examines the role which these new technical infrastructures play in the development and stabilization of political protest and social movements. For this, it pursues two main objectives: One, a more precise identification of the technical foundations of collective behavior and action, which show the internet to be not only an enabling but also a regulatory and action-structuring infrastructure with a considerable degree of intervention. And two, the analysis of the new and close interplay of social and technical conditions under which collective protest and social movements take shape in the digital age, referred to as “technically advanced sociality”.

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  1. Institute for Social Sciences (SOWI VI), University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Ulrich Dolata

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Dolata, U. (2018). Social Movements: The Sociotechnical Constitution of Collective Action. In: Collectivity and Power on the Internet. SpringerBriefs in Sociology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78414-4_3

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