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Achieving Organizationality Through Authorship Affordances — A Communicative Episode of Telegram Polling from 2019 Hong Kong.
- Source :
-
Social Movement Studies . May2024, Vol. 23 Issue 3, p391-412. 22p. - Publication Year :
- 2024
-
Abstract
- In 2019, Hong Kong activists mobilized against the proposed Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) and relied on a mobile chat-app's polling feature to make collective decisions. To understand the chat-app's role in the movement's 'backstage' dynamics — i.e., building coalitions, making decisions, and coordinating action away from public view — I analyzed a series of Telegram polls during the Anti-ELAB movement's airport sit-in/takeover. To generate insights into social movement studies, I combined aspects of a vibrant stream of research known as Communication as Constitutive of Organizing (CCO) with a nuanced use of the affordances concept. To identify the backstage dynamics of the movement, I applied criteria from the organizationality concept to assess the extent to which the movement communicatively exhibited organizational characteristics. Therefore, I addressed how chat-app polling facilitated collective decision-making and cultivated the movement's social address and collective identity. Recognizing chat-app polling as pivotal in transforming voiced concerns to legitimized authority, I identified three authorship affordances that fostered authority practices: anonymity, hyper-temporality, and affectivity. This study makes three contributions: (1) it extends the understanding of backstage organizational dynamics of social movements by adding two additional criteria of collective decision-making and collective actorhood to the extant criteria of collective identity, (2) it refines the affordances concept to explore how chat-apps influence data-related practices in contentious politics, and (3) it provides a novel method of analysis to isolate and investigate the processual dynamics of authority practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 14742837
- Volume :
- 23
- Issue :
- 3
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Social Movement Studies
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 176474467
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2023.2296868