A considerable amount of public discourse exists around the stay-at-home orders issued by governm... more A considerable amount of public discourse exists around the stay-at-home orders issued by government and health officials to stop the spread of the coronavirus. In this study, we explore COVID-19 antiquarantine protests in Michigan, USA that resulted in the shutdown of the Michigan State Capitol. We examine theories of connective action by analyzing the online social media protests through Twitter that led to Operation Gridlock and the armed protests at the Michigan State Capitol. A qualitative and quantitative approach using social networking analysis was used to determine if certain groups were more involved in organizing these protests or if crowds appeared to self-mobilize. Social network analysis techniques were used to measure modularity, betweenness centrality, and degree centrality metrics in comparing loosely organized connective action networks vs more formal organization in a collective action. A content analysis of tweets was performed revealing the major topics and them...
The S-shaped signatures from connective action events offers insights into past social science th... more The S-shaped signatures from connective action events offers insights into past social science theories that support characterizing these events through a quantitative approach. The observational approach taken in this analysis builds on the diffusion of innovations theory, critical mass theory, and previous s-shaped production function research to provide ideas for modeling future campaigns. A key benefit to this approach is that these technologies have been studied extensively and the adoption curves from online social movements are platform independent and occur across a range of industries, technologies, and platforms. For this analysis we analyze 9 misinformation and public discourse hashtags which cover a range of topics related to COVID-19 such as lockdowns, face masks, and vaccines. Plotting the cumulative frequency of Tweets from January 1 to December 31, 2020 we observe s-curve signatures representing the adoption of connective action for these campaigns. We then categorize each of these campaigns by examining their affordance and interdependence relationships by assigning retweets, mentions, and original tweets to the type of relationship they exhibit. This will help researchers understand the relationships between users, characterize what actions take place, and how information flows through users as adoption occurs. The contribution of this analysis provides a foundation for mathematical characterization of connective action signatures, and further, offers ideas on how to design support or countermeasures for the type of campaign taking place. The first approach will drive future work toward developing a predictive model, while the affordance approach will help us to understand the organizational components.
A considerable amount of public discourse exists around the stay-at-home orders issued by governm... more A considerable amount of public discourse exists around the stay-at-home orders issued by government and health officials to stop the spread of the coronavirus. In this study, we explore COVID-19 antiquarantine protests in Michigan, USA that resulted in the shutdown of the Michigan State Capitol. We examine theories of connective action by analyzing the online social media protests through Twitter that led to Operation Gridlock and the armed protests at the Michigan State Capitol. A qualitative and quantitative approach using social networking analysis was used to determine if certain groups were more involved in organizing these protests or if crowds appeared to self-mobilize. Social network analysis techniques were used to measure modularity, betweenness centrality, and degree centrality metrics in comparing loosely organized connective action networks vs more formal organization in a collective action. A content analysis of tweets was performed revealing the major topics and them...
The S-shaped signatures from connective action events offers insights into past social science th... more The S-shaped signatures from connective action events offers insights into past social science theories that support characterizing these events through a quantitative approach. The observational approach taken in this analysis builds on the diffusion of innovations theory, critical mass theory, and previous s-shaped production function research to provide ideas for modeling future campaigns. A key benefit to this approach is that these technologies have been studied extensively and the adoption curves from online social movements are platform independent and occur across a range of industries, technologies, and platforms. For this analysis we analyze 9 misinformation and public discourse hashtags which cover a range of topics related to COVID-19 such as lockdowns, face masks, and vaccines. Plotting the cumulative frequency of Tweets from January 1 to December 31, 2020 we observe s-curve signatures representing the adoption of connective action for these campaigns. We then categorize each of these campaigns by examining their affordance and interdependence relationships by assigning retweets, mentions, and original tweets to the type of relationship they exhibit. This will help researchers understand the relationships between users, characterize what actions take place, and how information flows through users as adoption occurs. The contribution of this analysis provides a foundation for mathematical characterization of connective action signatures, and further, offers ideas on how to design support or countermeasures for the type of campaign taking place. The first approach will drive future work toward developing a predictive model, while the affordance approach will help us to understand the organizational components.
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