Clay Shirky (2008) addressed the issue by stressing the difference between the picture-sharing platform Flickr and Google: as Flickr users use hashtags to label their uploaded pictures, the platform offers them related hashtags that have already been used by others and automatically links pictures with same or similar hashtags. In this manner, a collection of pictures, a pictured documentation of an event, for example, can be created by an otherwise uncoordinated group of people. Shirky correctly emphasizes that there is a distinction between a central coordination of people—as in the classical form of organizations—and the platform’s ability—Flickr, in this case—to support groups of people to coordinate themselves: “Flickr is simply a platform; whatever coordination happens comes from the users and is projected onto the site” (Shirky, 2008, p. 46).

In other words, social media (as ICT) have in some cases the ability to facilitate a decentralized synchronization and coordination of individual actors by creating information links of their actions.¹ In this manner, the formation of (an instance of) collective action can be supported, become more efficient, or even enabled, as social media offer substitute or alternative ways of access to other mechanisms that are crucial for the formation of collective action, such as shared awareness, on-site organization and synchronization of actions, investment and mobilization of resources, social networks (with strong and/or weak ties), or institutional involvement.²

Even though social media can in some cases enable collective behavior and/or action that otherwise would not have been possible or even thought of, it is not a creatio ex nihilo, let alone a creation of the system itself. Such a facilitation or coordination requires active actions from the individuals; it requires agency³ on behalf of the individuals, who use the platform. Furthermore, as the platform is designed and perceived as social media, its social affordance means people use it to interact, share information, communicate, perceive, and cooperate with their social environment. Thus they deliberately contribute to a collective behavior and/or action, also if in a spontaneous, unregulated, and unstructured manner and in some cases even without being unaware of its ends.

A further key aspect of social media facilitating and enabling collective behavior is that the platform supports the communication and interaction between individuals, even if in a symbolic manner. By deploying and suggesting hashtags, for example, Flickr both enables and facilitates a meta-level communication between the individuals who upload pictures onto the platform, to share them with others, and creates a connection between those pictures and individuals, connection that otherwise would not have been created.

A similar example is the usage of hashtags on further social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram: on both platforms, individuals can mark their content—tweets and pictures—with hashtags using the hash sign “#” and receive from the platform recommendation for hashtags to use.⁴ Thus not only the creation of picture collections—of events, of locations, of #selfie—is possible, but also (to name a few examples) the statement or positioning of opinion in discourse. For example:

This comes to show that on social media, initially unstructured collective behavior—the tagging of statements, pictures, and other contents—can in many cases promote the emergence of norms and forms of order, both taking place within the respective platform and, when a critical mass is achieved, across platforms. Furthermore, it is not only that the platforms’ design and algorithms support this phenomenon, the institutions behind the different social media platform react to such trends, norms, and forms of order that emerge within their own platform as well as other platforms and adjust their platform’s design and functionalities accordingly.

Lastly, as mentioned earlier, collective behavior requires less complex strategies of action and rely mainly on the quantity of participants. The reliance on the quantity of participants (users) is a factor that is central for the relevance—and, regarding the institutional dimension, economical success—of social media platforms. In certain cases of collective behavior facilitated and/or enabled by social media, as in the above-mentioned examples, the platform offers individuals the means to join their actions into a collective or “group effort” without the need for strategic planning and organization on the one hand. On the other hand, such facilitation on behalf of the platform relies on the quantity of participant. For the system’s algorithms to identify trends and calculate relevance, they rely on the quantity of users who act in a similar way within the platform (e.g., share pictures from the same location, use the same hashtags, share similar information and links, use similar phrasing and terminology, communicate with each other, etc.). In other words, they rely on collective behavior within the virtual (rather than spatial) spaces of the respective social media platform.

The aspects of agency and deliberate contribution distinguish social media from other ICTs or information platforms that aggregate information, which is generated by users, for a common good but without users’ active participation. To stress this notion, Shirky compares Flickr with Google’s search engine index: “There are also ways of unknowingly sharing your work, as when Google reads the linking preferences of hundreds of millions of Internet users. These users are helping create a communally available resource, as Flickr users are, but unlike Flickr, the people whose work Google is aggregating aren’t actively choosing to make their contributions” (Shirky, 2008, p. 49).

The Google Index therefore and according to Shirky is not a result of collective behavior, collective action, or “group effort.” The creation of the Google Index may have some similarities to the creation of a picture database in Flickr or a themed timeline on Twitter on the level of aggregation and linking of information, but it excludes other important factors of collective action, such as the individuals’—the platform’s users—agency as well as the platform’s social affordance and the users’ reaction to and interaction with it.

Furthermore, on social media platforms, individuals are able to perceive that their actions become part of a collective or movement through feedback they receive in real time both from other individuals on the platforms (e.g., through likes and favorites, shares, and retweets, perceiving similar content shared by other individuals, etc.) and from the platform itself (e.g., through suggestions for relevant hashtags based on the ones other individuals used as well as the presentation of other individuals’ content that is related to the same subject of action).

This approach and the notion that social media can facilitate and enable some instances of collective behavior pose two crucial questions:

First, collective behavior, as with other forms of collective action and especially when leaving out the notion of irrationality, is theorized to require some motivation or needs—cultural drifts, relative deprivation, strain and breakdown, or grievances—as preconditions to take place. By arguing that social media can facilitate and enable instances of collective behavior, we need to address the question, what can be the motivations or needs for collective behavior that is facilitated by social media? And how do they connect to the individuals’ agency?

The examples presented earlier show that in cases that can be considered as instances of collective behavior and/or action, needs and motivations on behalf of the individuals and their actions as agents are present, even if not always compatible with the terminology of grievances or stain and breakdown. In more clear cases of collective behavior and/or action, these are the self-expression in social and political discussions or expressions of solidarity and grief. In less clear cases, such as sharing and tagging of pictures, the motivations might be the simple desire to share one’s “products” (e.g., pictures), the basic need of communicating with others, or even a somewhat narcissist desire to obtain attention, appreciation, and reputation (in form of likes, favorites, shared and retweets, etc.).⁶

Second, derived from these motivations, also the goal of the collective behavior poses—at least a theoretical—problem. On the one hand, in the Flickr example Shirky argues that individuals deliberately contribute to a collective action, also if sometimes unaware of its ends. On the other hand, further deploying the Flickr example, the documentation of the event (the ends) emerges as such not before someone searches for it (for the correlating hashtag) on the platform and perceives the results as an event documentation.

This, conjoint with the aspect of motivations and needs, comes to show the limitations of collective behavior and/or action that takes place within the borders of social media. Be it a photo collection, a political discussion, or an expression of solidarity, collective actions that are facilitated and enabled by social media—and therefore, take place within the borders of social media at first—pursue and obtain relatively moderate goals that usually have a minor or symbolic impact on the actions’ broader context (e.g., fundamental political issues, war on terror, protests). In some cases, the goal pursued by the individual agent does not even have to do much with the outcomes of the algorithmic-facilitated collective action, as is the case with many forms of collective behavior. To achieve greater impact, the collective action needs to extend beyond merely communication and activities on social media or algorithmic collection and linking of information; that is to say, take the issues to the streets, draw the attention of mainstream/mass media, put pressure on political decision makers, etc.

Applying this model to the discussion in this chapter, integrated sociality is the mechanism that makes social media (as ICT as well as media) susceptible to facilitate and enable instances of collective behavior and/or action in the same manner that public spaces offer individuals and groups places to meet up, form a collective, communicate, and cooperate; in the same manner that a variety of—analog and digital—ICTs support processes of cognition and cooperation; in the same manner that more and less formal institutional and/or organizational frameworks support cooperation; and so on.

Social media’s integrated sociality converges these spaces, mechanisms, and tools in one digital space—one social media platform—thus providing many of the needed conditions for the emergence of collective action and lowering its barriers. That is to say, the argument that social media facilitate and/or enable collective action refers to the manner in which social media may provide the needed conditions for collective action to emerge and support its participators in various ways (as Chapters 3–6 discuss). It is not, however, arguing that social media, or any other ICT or media for that matter, creates or produces actions—collective or not collective ones—taking action is done by human beings and their agency, i.e., by human actors.

In The Human Condition (Arendt, 1998, 1958), Hannah Arendt offers an instructive notion of Action as one of three fundamental human activities: “If labor for Arendt is the movement of the natural life-process of human being itself, based on biological need, and work is the movement of production that brings forth the works constituting an enduring, stable, material world, the realm of action is the movement of action and speech constituting what Arendt regards as the political realm proper” (Eldred, 2013, p. 79).⁷ For Arendt, it is always a who and not a what, which acts—takes initiative, begins, sets something into motion, exerts power to bring about a change or movement. Furthermore, action, as an interplay, which is also a power play, among a plurality of players (or agents) has a dimension of unpredictability and incalculability of its further ramifications (Eldred, 2013). Lastly, Arendt argues that through actions and words “men distinguish themselves […]; they are the modes in which human beings appear to each other, not indeed as physical objects, but qua men” (Arendt, 1998, 1958, p. 176).⁸

Applying this notion to the question of collective action facilitated and/or enabled by social media—the dilemma between actions and algorithms—taking action and being agents is reserved to the who (the individual human actors, the platform’s users, the activists who deploy social media) which act, rather than the what (the platform and its algorithms on the one hand, the digital representation of a person and one’s identity in form of a social media profile and one’s produced/shared content on the other). Be it an online expression of solidarity, the organization of political protests, the coordination of refugee aid, or the tagging of pictures, the ones who take initiative and act, who set something into motion, who exert power to bring about change or movement are the people who were motivated by their grievances and took action to pursuit certain goals. In the interaction between people and social media (as ICT), the platform and its algorithms do not take action, but rather react to people’s actions within the platform, for example, by calculating probabilities, making information links to similar human (inter-)actions within the platform. Thus social media may support actions taken by human actors and in some cases make the conditions for collective action to emerge more favorable, but not act by themselves.

Considering action as a human activity in a social context,⁹ which is, according to the mathematician, philosopher, and ethicist Michael Eldred, an interplay and a power play between a plurality of players, is instructive for understanding collective action. Collective action, in which the plurality of players means not only the interplay between individual actions but also the manner in which individuals come together to act—to set something into motion, to exert power and bring about change—thus forming a collective, the interplay within this collective, and the interplay between the collective and other agents, groups, institutions, and powers; a power play at its best, an interplay whose development, consequences, and results are neither predictable nor calculable. The latter is the exact opposite of algorithmic functioning, which is by definition calculable and predictable, as the possible outcomes are calculated by the algorithm according to different variables.

When considering social media, many variables are indeed unpredictable, since they are dependent on human actions, thus reinforcing the demarcation between human action and algorithmic functioning. Lastly, for Arendt human beings perceive each other as human beings instead of physical objects through their actions and words. Social media platforms help people perceive their social surrounding, link their actions, and coordinate them. Thus social media platform constitutes a digital space, a medium through which people perceive each other in their words and actions (in form of content creation, sharing, and manipulation, textual and visual interaction, etc.). The interaction between the human actor and the platform is, in turn, an interplay between a person and other human actors from one’s social network who use the same platform.

Consider the following example: in 2008 a company named Waze¹⁰ introduced a navigation system as smartphone app. Waze uses a similar logic to Google Maps’ navigation function, namely, inferring real-time traffic data from all users, that is, their end devices such as smartphones, using the app by tracking the car’s movement (Schneier, 2015). However, Waze’s functionalities go beyond the collection and analysis of traffic data (to offer drivers better routes). Suitable for the time period of Waze’s market penetration and growth of user numbers between the yeas 2009 and 2012, which was the peak of the social media–oriented technical discourse—the Peak of Inflated Expectations in terms of the Hype Cycle discourse—the app functions as a social media platform as well: drivers can send messages to other drivers in their surrounding and report accidents, traffic jams, police controls, speed cameras, and so on. Furthermore, users can edit information regarding street courses, house numbers, dirt roads, construction sites, etc., which keeps Waze’s information base in the system up to date.

For both of Waze’s functionalities—navigation system based on traffic data derived from users and a social media platform for drivers—the system requires a critical mass of users, both in real time and continuously. But which of Waze’s functionalities can be regarded as (products of) collective action on behalf of its users, the drivers?

The system’s central functionality, the navigation system, is based on location and traffic data that are retrieved without the individuals’ active participation, without their agency being involved,¹¹ and in most cases even without them being aware of that data collection. Although driving a car and actively using the Waze app are forms of action and agency, this case is comparable with the example of building webpages that are analyzed and integrated as data within the Google Index—it lacks many aspects that are crucial for collective action to emerge; it lacks cooperation, communication, and in a sense even cognition. Since the sharing of traffic data is not done cognitively, but rather automatically derived by the system without the individual’s active decision, this functionality does not apply for any of the modes of cognition in terms of the TripleC model. Neither does it apply for being an action both because it does not “set something into motion” but rather reacts to people’s actions (their driving) and because it is per se a calculation, hence calculable. Furthermore, with or without the Waze users being aware of the data collection, they are compelled to accept it via the app’s Terms of Use. That is to say, the functioning of Waze’s navigation system is based on a form of corporate surveillance, which is mandatory for every individual who chooses to use the app.¹²

On the other hand, the notion of integrated sociality applies for the Waze’s social media functionalities, which offer more than the mere sharing of goal-related information (send messages, update the maps, or report accidents, traffic jams, police controls, and speed cameras); not only that individuals, that is, drivers, cognitively share content, they can communicate on it and allow others to manipulate and supplement it. In this manner, content with multiple authorship emerges, which serves as the product of collective action, namely, drivers act together to support their “cause” or goal—avoid traffic jams and speed cameras, reduce accidents, reduce gasoline consumption, etc. Furthermore, through their actions within Waze (as a social media platform), the individual drivers perceive each other as human actors, they have the ability to take initiative and act (by, for example, informing other drivers on accidents or police controls), and they can act to bring about change (e.g., reduce traffic jams). All of which comes down to an interplay between a plurality of players, a plurality of drivers, whose ramifications are incalculable and unpredictable, since the re-action of each individual driver is, unlike an algorithm, incalculable and unpredictable.

The example of Waze comes to show that it is a complex task to draw a clear demarcation of what (parts of a) system/platform can be regarded as social media or social media functionalities. And, based on this demarcation, what functionalities of the system/platform can enable and/or facilitate collective action by making the condition for individual human action becoming a collective one more favorable.

When regarding behavior and/or collective action, whose facilitator and even enabler are social media platforms, one recognizes the limitations of social media’s ability to do so. Such instances of collective action usually take place within the borders of the specific social media platform (and more rarely across platforms) and pursue and obtain relatively moderate goals that usually have a minor or symbolic impact on the actions broader context. To achieve greater impact, the collective action needs to extend beyond merely communication and activities on social media; that is to say, take the issues to the streets, draw the attention of mainstream/mass media, put pressure on political decision makers, etc. However, when such an extension of the collective action takes place, it is crucial to take a step back and address it within the greater context, in which it is embedded.

For example, in January 2013, following a public discussion of sexism in German political parties, the feminist activist Anna Wizorek suggested on Twitter that women will share their personal experiences of sexism and collect them under the hashtag #Aufschrei (German for outcry). Within a week, the #Aufschrei hashtag was mentioned over 49,000 and retweeted 30,000 times (Spiegel, 2013). The action also obtained the attention of mainstream/mass media and was discussed in the printed and online press as well as television talk shows. Considered as an instance of collective behavior and/or action that was enabled by thousands of individuals making their contribution and Twitter’s ability to link the information behind the hashtags, the action resulted with an online collection of experiences, discussions, and opinions (and, of course, a wide social debate of the issue of sexism). Considered as an action that exceeded Twitter’s “borders” and ignited discussions in mass media—and probably in many groups of friends, families, coworkers, and social movements—the #Aufschrei debate needs to be considered in the broader context of sexism, feminism, centuries of women’s struggle, as well as German politics and white male dominance within it.

The following chapter will discuss the aspect that the #Aufschrei example touched upon—the relation of social media and mass or mainstream media when it comes to collective action.