University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 Collective Action and Digital information Communication Technologies: The Search for Explanatory Models of Social Movement Organizations' Propensity to Use Dicts in Developed Democracies Felicity Duncan University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Duncan, Felicity, "Collective Action and Digital information Communication Technologies: The Search for Explanatory Models of Social Movement Organizations' Propensity to Use Dicts in Developed Democracies" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1048. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1048 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1048 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Collective Action and Digital information Communication Technologies: The Search for Explanatory Models of Social Movement Organizations' Propensity to Use Dicts in Developed Democracies Abstract Digital information communication technologies (DICTs) play an ever-more prominent role in politics, from the technologically sophisticated presidential campaign of Barack Obama to the Twitter-inspired Occupy Wall Street movement. However, not all political groups embrace technology to the same degree. Little scholarly attention has been paid to understanding why some groups adopt DICTs and use them to achieve political goals, while others do not. This dissertation attempts to remedy this by examining what drives DICT adoption among 48 organizations involved in advocacy activities in support of and in opposition to gay rights and marriage equality. It further contributes to the literature on DICTs and politics by considering the role of national context in DICT adoption, selecting organizations based in the United States, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, and comparing patterns of DICT adoption cross-nationally. Several important findings emerge from this research. First, there is significant ariationv in the extent to which the 48 organizations under study adopted DICTs. There appears to be no relationship between organizational ideology and an organization's tendency to adopt DICTs, nor do the characteristics of the organizations' staff or target publics appear to influence their adoption of DICTs, although this does seem to affect the extent to which they deploy offlineools. t The paper finds that first-mover advantage plays a key role in DICT adoption, with laggards finding it hard to build online momentum. Further, the amount of resources an organization is able to deploy strongly affects their ability to adopt DICTs. A number of national factors also appear to play a role in DICT adoption, particularly the competitiveness of the issue that organizations are engaged with, and the political traditions of the nation in which organizations are domiciled. Overall, this paper finds that the adoption of DICTs is a complex process, born of an interaction between an organization and its characteristics, and the environment in which it operates. The dissertation concludes by offering a model of this process, suggesting that it could help organizations build better strategies for DICT adoption, particularly when circumstances are challenging. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Communication First Advisor Michael X. Delli Carpini Second Advisor Monroe Price Keywords dicts, digital communication, digital information communication technologies, social movement organizations, social movements Subject Categories Communication This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1048 COLLECTIVE ACTION AND DIGITAL INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES: THE SEARCH FOR EXPLANATORY MODELS OF SOCIAL MOVEMENT ORGANIZATIONS’ PROPENSITY TO USE DICTS IN DEVELOPED DEMOCRACIES Felicity Jane Duncan A DISSERTATION in Communication Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 Supervisor of Dissertation Co-Supervisor of Dissertation ____ _____ ____ ___________ ____ _____ ____ ___________ Michael X Delli Carpini Monroe Price Walter H. Annenberg Dean Professor of Communication and Professor of Communication Graduate Group Chairperson Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Dissertation Committee Michael X Delli Carpini, Walter H. Annenberg Dean and Professor of Communication Monroe Price, Professor of Communication Marwan Kraidy, Anthony Shadid Professor of Communication Devra Moehler, Assistant Professor of Communication DEDICATION I am grateful to my adviser, Dr. Michael X. Delli Carpini, my co-adviser Monroe Price, and to Dr. Devra Moehler and Dr. Marwan Kraidy for their help, advice, and guidance. In particular, however, I would like to thank the friends and family who saw me through this process, and of course, Tim. ii ABSTRACT COLLECTIVE ACTION AND DIGITAL INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES: THE SEARCH FOR EXPLANATORY MODELS OF SOCIAL MOVEMENT ORGANIZATIONS’ PROPENSITY TO USE DICTS IN DEVELOPED DEMOCRACIES Felicity Duncan Michael X Delli Carpini Monroe Price Digital information communication technologies (DICTs) play an ever-more prominent role in politics, from the technologically sophisticated presidential campaign of Barack Obama to the Twitter-inspired Occupy Wall Street movement. However, not all political groups embrace technology to the same degree. Little scholarly attention has been paid to understanding why some groups adopt DICTs and use them to achieve political goals, while others do not. This dissertation attempts to remedy this by examining what drives DICT adoption among 48 organizations involved in advocacy activities in support of and in opposition to gay rights and marriage equality. It further contributes to the literature on DICTs and politics by considering the role of national context in DICT adoption, selecting organizations based in the United States, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, and comparing patterns of DICT adoption cross-nationally. Several important findings iii emerge from this research. First, there is significant variation in the extent to which the 48 organizations under study adopted DICTs. There appears to be no relationship between organizational ideology and an organization’s tendency to adopt DICTs, nor do the characteristics of the organizations’ staff or target publics appear to influence their adoption of DICTs, although this does seem to affect the extent to which they deploy offline tools. The paper finds that first-mover advantage plays a key role in DICT adoption, with laggards finding it hard to build online momentum. Further, the amount of resources an organization is able to deploy strongly affects their ability to adopt DICTs. A number of national factors also appear to play a role in DICT adoption, particularly the competitiveness of the issue that organizations are engaged with, and the political traditions of the nation in which organizations are domiciled. Overall, this paper finds that the adoption of DICTs is a complex process, born of an interaction between an organization and its characteristics, and the environment in which it operates. The dissertation concludes by offering a model of this process, suggesting that it could help organizations build better strategies for DICT adoption, particularly when circumstances are challenging. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ........................................................................................... viii INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................ 4 DICTS and Politics.......................................................................................................... 4 Social Movements and Collective Action ....................................................................... 8 DICTs and Social Movements ...................................................................................... 15 CHAPTER 2: TOWARDS AN EXPLANATORY MODE OF VARIATION IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS ORGANIZATIONS’ ADOPTION OF DICTS ...................................... 38 Diffusion........................................................................................................................ 38 Group Characteristics .................................................................................................... 40 Ideology ......................................................................................................................... 41 Out-party Innovation ..................................................................................................... 42 First-mover Advantage .................................................................................................. 45 A Proposed Model for Understanding Social Movement Adoption of DICTs ............. 47 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN, DATA, AND METHODS .................................