دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی اقدامات آنلاین، ادراکات کارآیی و ترکیب تجربه قبلی تا تأثیرگذاری در فعالیت جمعی آینده - الزویر 2019

Abstract

Social media is increasingly used for social protest, but does internet-enabled action lead to ‘slacktivism’ or promote increased activism? We show that the answer to this question depends on prior level of activism, and on beliefs about the effectiveness of individual contribution to the collective campaign. Internet-enabled action was varied quasiexperimentally, with participants (n = 143) choosing whether or not to share a campaign on social media. Participants were then informed that sharing on social media had a big (high action efficacy) or small (low action efficacy) impact on achieving the campaign’s goal. Prior levels of activism were measured before the experiment, and general levels of collective action were measured one week after the experiment. Taking internet-enabled action for one campaign increased future activism for other campaigns – but only in individuals who were already active and who perceived their actions to be an effective contribution to the campaign.

Discussion

The relationship between internet-enabled action and future engagement has been widely debated in popular culture. Echoing this concern, recent research has considered whether participating in internet-enabled action facilitates or inhibits engagement in traditional and more demanding forms of collective action (e.g., Vaccari et al., 2015). However, limited research has tested the causal effects of online participation (for an exception see Schumann & Klein, 2015) or how online participation for one cause affects engagement across different social issues. In this study, we examined how internet-enabled action affects future action for other causes, extending previous literature by manipulating action efficacy perceptions and measuring subsequent collective action relating to different social issues. Findings indicate that participating in internet-enabled collective action can indeed affect longer-term, crossdomain collective action. However, rather than a universal facilitation or inhibition effect, the relationship between internet-enabled action and higher-threshold engagement is sensitive to prior activism experience and perceptions about the efficacy of the action taken. Replicating previous literature (Schumann & Klein, 2015), we found that participating in internet-enabled action reduced willingness to engage in higher-threshold action for the same cause. This finding is consistent with the slacktivism hypothesis which suggests a demobilising role for online participation (e.g., Morozov, 2011). However, our results also extend this literature by demonstrating that internet-enabled action can in fact facilitate future collective action under specific conditions. In the longer-term, when participants had the opportunity to engage in action for other causes outside of the experimental setting, no detrimental effect of online participation occurred. On the contrary, taking internet-enabled action actually predicted greater levels of longer-term, cross-domain collective action when participation led to greater participative efficacy beliefs.