{"title":"When Protests go Virtual: How Organizing Social Protest in Virtual Worlds Changes the Nature of Organizing","authors":"B. Blodgett, Andrea H. Tapia","doi":"10.13016/M2384V","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we introduce a case study of social protest that has occurred in the virtual world Second Life. This case is a labor strike that occurred against IBM by Italian employees and a large European labor union. We begin with identifying the four key elements in the protest organizing process: Identifying Supporters, Organizing and Establishing Hierarchy, Getting the Word Out, and Building Solidarity/Establishing Social Networks. Next, we briefly examine how non-virtual technologies have changed the protest organizing process. Finally, we present our case data and illustrate how moving a protest to a fully virtual environment changes the organizing process. We conclude by asserting that three aspects fundamentally change protest organizing: entertainment, costs, and culture.","PeriodicalId":93486,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the ... Americas Conference on Information Systems. Americas Conference on Information Systems","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"12","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Proceedings of the ... Americas Conference on Information Systems. Americas Conference on Information Systems","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.13016/M2384V","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 12
Abstract
In this paper, we introduce a case study of social protest that has occurred in the virtual world Second Life. This case is a labor strike that occurred against IBM by Italian employees and a large European labor union. We begin with identifying the four key elements in the protest organizing process: Identifying Supporters, Organizing and Establishing Hierarchy, Getting the Word Out, and Building Solidarity/Establishing Social Networks. Next, we briefly examine how non-virtual technologies have changed the protest organizing process. Finally, we present our case data and illustrate how moving a protest to a fully virtual environment changes the organizing process. We conclude by asserting that three aspects fundamentally change protest organizing: entertainment, costs, and culture.