With the increasing use of online groups via Facebook, Twitter, and other digital media platforms to mobilize citizens for protests and other forms of political activities, conventional wisdom suggests that role of formal political and civic organizations should be declining.  However, in Collective Action in Organizations: Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change (Cambridge University Press 2012), Professor Bimber and his  co-authors Professors Andrew Flanagin and Cynthia Stohl of UCSB’s Department of Communication), the authors argue that “formal organizations are thriving in the age of digital media, alongside new organizational forms and self-organized groups.” 

To explain this, the authors conducted extensive interviews and surveys with members of three distinctly different American organizations:  The American Legion, AARP, and MoveOn.  What they discovered is that the use of digital media actually expands and enhances the ability of members to participate on their own terms within the organization.  Digital media permit members to choose how to interact personally with others in the organization, and also “to act entrepreneurially with respect to the organization’s goals and activities.”

Past theories of collective action and organization tend to take a top-down approach, emphasizing how political and social organizations define membership and roles for people.  The authors propose instead a theory of “Collective Action Space.” Using that theory, Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl show that in the digital media age, formal organizations provide context in which people can construct their own roles and express their own participatory styles.

More information about the contents and scope of the book is available at http://www.collectiveactionspace.org.