“Use Your Skills to Solve This Challenge!”: The Platform Affordances and Politics of Digital Microvolunteering

Abstract

How does the rise of managed online platforms for civic engagement change the relationships between activists and organizations? While much has been written about Twitter- and Facebook-enabled mobilization, the emergence of platforms that organize “microaction” in contained ways is a phenomenon understudied by social movement and media scholars. This study draws on both literatures to analyze the hybrid case of Sparked, a microvolunteering platform created by web designers, not activists, that efficiently organizes volunteering through a microaction design. The case exhibits characteristics that social movement scholars understand as resource mobilization through leveraging of affordances by activists, but it also features the structural characteristics of platforms that media scholars identify as both enabling and constraining. To conceptualize the “digitally enabled activism” that takes place within the confines of a managed platform, this study investigates its microaction affordances and their implications. My analysis finds that high leveraging of online affordances can coincide with a shifted logic of engagement in the case of microaction platforms: Sparked’s microaction system affords high performance, but targets only a specialized niche of volunteering. I describe this model as “specialized supersizing” that addresses nonprofits’ needs for increasing organizational overhead services in the context of a professionalizing third sector. Sparked’s microvolunteering design has helped define a platform-centric constitution for microaction that is geared toward rationalization, professionalization, and productivity. Its platform “politics” promote depoliticization, where tactics, not causes, determine exchanges. This emergence of a market for mobilization tactics may have important implications for nonprofits, volunteers, and social movements.

Beyond platform-centrism and digital universalism: the relational affordances of mobile social media publics

“…Media and communication scholars have examined the affordances of mobile phones (Schrock, 2015;Mascheroni and Vincent, 2016), social network sites (boyd, 2010;Ellison and Vitak, 2015) and social media platforms (Nagy and Neff, 2015;Ilten, 2015;Bucher and Helmond, 2017). '[P]ortability, availability, locatability, and multimediality' have been identified as key features of mobile phones (Schrock, 2015) while those highlighting the affordances of social media platforms have emphasised their interactive, participatory or networked nature (Varnelis 2008;Zayani 2015;Rambukkana 2015); their incorporation of visual communication like photos, video clips or memes (Miller and Sinanan 2017); or their emphasis on affect and emotion as expressed through emoticons and 'likes' (Papacharissi 2015).…”

Chiming In: A Computer-Assisted Analysis of Popular Musicians’ Political Engagement on Twitter

“…Political talk included any discussion or commentary on elections (e.g., get out the vote efforts, support or opposition for a candidate in any election, live-tweeting debates), politicians (or political parties), and advocacy or opposition toward a social or political issue (e.g., climate change, gun control/rights). Online civic engagement activities with aims of mobilizing resources such as philanthropy, donation, or coordination of "microaction" such as volunteering and nonprofits (Ilten, 2015) could be motivated by political interests. Thus, philanthropic efforts were considered political specifically if the artist wanted the audience to engage in some politically relevant action.…”

Цифровые Волонтерские Платформы: Готовность Россиян И Потенциал Применения

“…2) развитие специализированных цифровых платформ, служащих посредника ми между некоммерческими проектами и организациями, которые желают полу чить помощь волонтеров, и самими волонтерами [Ilten, 2015]; среди них можно выделить VolunteerMatch (США), vostel.de (Германия), GoVolunteer (Австралия), DOBRO.ru (Россия) и другие;…”