[Air-L] Research of Facebook public groups

[Mercea, Dan]

Dear Ruth, 


You might be interested in this article I wrote on the public Facebook groups of two social movement organisations, the Climate Camp in the UK and Occupy the Hague in the Netherlands. In it I discuss the organisational implications of setting up and running activist Facebook groups for movement organisations and their Facebook following. The article came out last year in Information, Communication and Society. The data was collected/coded manually. 

All the best,
Dan 

'Probing the implications of Facebook use for the organizational form of social movement organizations' http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2013.770050?journalCode=rics20#.UuErGLTFLcs 

Abstract:  This article examines the use of Facebook by social movement organizations (SMOs) and the ramifications from that usage for their organizational form. Organizational forms have been viewed to be in flux as networked communication becomes embedded in mobilization repertoires. In what follows, it is shown that the utilization of Facebook by networked heterarchical organizations is seen to grant them access to a hitherto untapped demographic for the purpose of mobilization. Concurrently, questions are raised pertaining to organizational form, particularly in relation to the role the Facebook audience plays in movement organizations. Communication on Facebook may catalyze deliberation, information sharing and mobilization. Moreover, evidence was found pointing to its use for the self-organization of protest participation. Yet, engagement between SMOs and their Facebook audience bore little on decision-making within the organizations. Although limited in scope, the emerging contribution of such communication may be by way of channelling items into decision-making agendas.



-----Original Message-----
From: Page, Ruth (Dr.) [mailto:rep22 at leicester.ac.uk] 
Sent: 22 January 2014 09:49
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: [Air-L] Research of Facebook public groups

Dear AoIR list members,

I'm doing some work from a discourse analysis perspective on the way interactions on Facebook public groups take place. I'm specifically looking at the RIP pages set up in response to the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

I'm familiar with a lot of the research literature on Facebook, but most of what I know is based on studies that examined personal Facebook accounts/wall interactions.

Can anyone please recommend studies of Facebook groups? I'm especially interested in anything that has a linguistic/discourse analysis focus, but it would also be good to learn from studies from a more general social science perspective too.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Ruth

Dr Ruth Page
Room 1509, Attenborough Tower
School of English
University of Leicester
Leicester
LE1 7RH
UK
+44 (0)116 223 1286
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