Understanding Collective Identity in Virtual Spaces

A Study of the Youth Climate Movement

Bibliographic Data

ID3756028
AuthorsSohana Nasrin (0000-0003-0688-6116, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA, corresponding author), Dana R Fisher (0000-0002-4273-4294, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA)
Year2022
Volume66
Issue9
Pages1286-1308
Publication date2022-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Behavioral Scientist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7642 • E-ISSN: 1552-3381
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00027642211056257
OpenAlexW3211876581
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited59

How does collective identity form in virtual spaces and what role do hashtags play? This paper takes advantage of a unique dataset that includes surveys from activists who organized the nationally coordinated climate strikes in the US that began in spring 2019 to answer these questions. Building on the research about collective identity formation online and the role that hashtags play, we employ social network analysis to assess how collective identity forms online over three waves of protests. In particular, we analyze how activists involved in the youth climate movement used hashtags to project their collective identities and create collective narratives. Our findings show how hashtags use varied over the period of our study, in some cases indicating the formation of a thin collective identity. They also show that there are patterns in the ways hashtags are employed by activists in the movement that suggest the formation of subaltern narratives among those affiliated with youth-led groups. Our paper concludes by considering how this finding helps us understand collective identity in virtual spaces and the role that hashtags play more specifically within social movements

Aesthetics · Collective identity · Collective intelligence · Collective memory · Identity (music) · Identity formation · Media studies · Movement (music) · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Self-concept · Social group · Social identity theory · Social media · Social movement · Social science · Sociology · Subaltern · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Law · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology

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