1. Social Media and Collective Action:
From the Middle East to Michigan
Dr. Cliff Lampe
School of Information
November 2, 2011
Flicker: Kemal Y.

3. “May you live in interesting times.”
- ancient curse

4. Social media does not
*cause* collective action, it
facilitates it.

8. The Past Year

9. Mohamed Bouazizi

10. Mohamed Bouazizi

11. Tunisia

12. Bahrain

13. Egypt

14. Libya

15. Syria

16. Wisconsin

17. Oakland

18. Wall Street

19. Michigan

20. People engaged in collective
action

21. Which is not always positive

22. UK Riots

24. Vancouver riots

25. The role of information
technology and social media

26. Social media tools reduce the
cost of distribution

27. Mobile hardware makes
everyone a media producer
Flickr: mbaudier

28. Ubiquity of the tool spread ideas
Guardian.co.uk

29. Distributed and independent

30. A rich social media environment was in
place before the protests - mostly youth

31. Social media provided an alternative
to state controlled media

32. What is social media?

35. Common characteristics
User generated content
Direct user-to-user interaction
Bundles of applications

39. Twitter

40. YouTube

43. Cautions about social media

47. “Slacktivism”

48. More local examples

50. Micheen

51. OMBT site

54. Summary
Social media tools:
Reduce the cost of mass distribution
Work with ubiquitous hardware
Allow for “network effects”
Concerns
Deception
Infrastructure is vulnerable
Slacktivism
Next steps
Education - social media literacy
Research - What worked, what didn’t.

55. Thanks!
Cliff Lampe
cacl@umich.edu
Twitter: @clifflampe
SlideShare: clifflampe