ROUTING AROUND ORGANIZATIONS: SELF-DIRECTED POLITICAL CONSUMPTION*
Recent research on activism in the context of digital media has argued that organizing can happen outside of organizations and even without SMOs. This work has been focused primarily on the “supply side” of participation. In this article, we expand this line of work by focusing on the “demand side.” We examine the distinction between self-directed and organizationally directed activism from the perspective of the individual, finding that shifts toward movement societies, the rise of lifestyle politics, and, to a lesser extent, changing citizenship norms explain citizen preferences for self-directed versus organizationally directed political consumption. We also analyze the relationship between political interest, different kinds of digital media use, and preferences for self-directed activism. We use original data from a survey in the U.S. on political consumption.
Contributor Notes
* This material is based, in part, on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement Nos. 0531184 and 0938099. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We wish to thank the Earl Lab Writing Group as well as commenters from Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University and the UCLA Organizations and Social Movements Group for their feedback on draft versions of this manuscript.
† Jennifer Earl is a professor in the School of Sociology at University of Arizona. Lauren Copeland is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Baldwin Wallace University. Bruce Bimber is a professor in the Department of Political Science at University of California, Santa Barbara.