Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Facebook as a “free space”
• Connecting Identity to Rational Choice?
• Identity Cascades
• Free Spaces and Screening
• Institutions and Challenges
• Conclusions

Introduction

Finishing up what I said I’d finish a couple of months ago, this is a shorter version of a paper on “Identity, Institutions, and Uprisings” with less mathematics, no references (see the link above) and more opinionating. Also, a longer version of what I’m going to say at Theorizing the Web 2013 in a few days.

There is a theoretical side to the “Facebook Revolution” debate about the role of digital technologies in the 2011 “Arab Spring” uprisings, and it boils down to two ways of looking at things: the micro and the macro. On the one hand, we have the rational choice, agent-based approach and on the other we have more traditional sociological approaches based on larger-scale social structures.

If you look at some of the key characteristics of the uprisings, it looks like a win for the micro side.

Theories, and North African uprisings. Event Micro Macro Sudden uprising (cascade) Y N Lack of strong opposition movement Y N Network technologies Y N Score 3 0

The single most … Continue reading