Group Identity, Social Influence, and Collective Action Online

How in 2020 were anti-vaxxer moms mobilized to attend reopen protests alongside armed militia men? This paper explores the power of weaponized narratives on social media both to create and polarize communities and to mobilize collective action and even violence. We propose that focusing on invocation of specific narratives and the patterns of narrative combination provides insight into the shared sense of identity and meaning different groups derive from these narratives. We then develop the WARP (Weaponize, Activate, Radicalize, Persuade) framework for understanding the strategic deployment and presentation of narratives in relation to group identity building and individual responses. The approach and framework provide powerful tools for investigating the way narratives may be used both to speak to a core audience of believers while also introducing and engaging new and even initially unreceptive audience segments to potent cultural messages, potentially inducting them into a process of radicalization and mobilization.

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Psychosocial pathways of collective action participation in NIMBY conflict: A regulated double mediation model

International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education ◽

10.1177/0020720920931426 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 002072092093142

Author(s):

Bin Guo ◽

KunJi Li

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

Relative Deprivation ◽

Group Identity ◽

Group Effectiveness ◽

Mediation Model ◽

Explanatory Variables ◽

Positive Effects ◽

Deprivation Group ◽

Key Factor ◽

Group Emotions

Frequent NIMBY conflicts have seriously affected social stability and urban development. This paper aims to explore the psychosocial path of people participating in the collective action of NIMBY conflict, and to provide theoretical basis for effective governance of NIMBY conflict. By integrating the psychosocial explanatory variables related to collective action, we construct a regulated double mediation Model, which is empirically tested with 566 questionnaires from the NIMBY conflict in gaoling, China. The results show that: group relative deprivation, group emotions and group effectiveness have positive effects on people's NIMBY conflict participation tendency; group effectiveness and group emotions are important mediating variables of group relative deprivation affecting people's NIMBY conflict participation tendency; group identity has a positive adjustment effect on people's group emotions, group effectiveness, and the participation tendency of NIMBY conflict. The research indicates that group relative deprivation is the key precursor of NIMBY conflict, group emotion is the key factor driving the deterioration of NIMBY conflict, and group identity is the key factor catalyzing the occurrence of NIMBY conflict. This study helps to explain the psychological mechanism of people's participation in NIMBY conflict, and has certain implications for the prevention and governance of NIMBY conflict.

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