Collective Action within Socio - Technical Systems . Preliminary Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

This paper aims at contributing to the outline and to the practical addressing of the challenges posed to the study of collective action dynamics by the unprecedented level of embeddedness of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in all domains of human action and, in particular, by the multiplication and the widespread use of social media. It does so in three steps. First, it addresses from a general perspective the nexus between collective action and new ICTs thus arguing that we should approach investigations in this field from a middle-ground and challenging position which includes systematically both social and tehcnological elements. Second, it proposes the adoption of the general concept of socio-technical systems as the overarching framework for analysing collective action instances. Third, it provides a first operationalization of this conceptual framework offering some preliminary examples taken from an ongoing research project on the nexus between social media and collective action (REACtION, http://www.reactionproject.info).