ABSTRACT

Digital platforms support forms of collective action with varying degrees of organizationality – that is, with organization-like attributes such as identity, actorhood, and decision-making. These forms include seemingly non-organized online groups, which can be easily dismissed as informal chatter. Building on communicative theories of organizing and Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems, we explore the communicative organizationality of a Facebook group related to urban planning. By analyzing private chat logs of the group administrators, we explore the group’s organizationality and the ways in which organizational and interactional communication become intertwined to produce and curate digital political discussions. Our findings illustrate how technological affordances built for moderation also support the strategic organization of discussions to orchestrate political talk. We conceptualize such operations as discursive conditioning of organizational interaction and suggest that political action online can be propelled not only by connecting people, but also by the powerful yet concealed tactic of conditioning public online discussions.

摘要

数字平台支持具有不同组织性的集体行动形式——即具有类似组织的属性，例如身份、行为和决策。这些形式包括看似无组织的在线群组，很容易被视为非正式的闲聊。基于组织的交际理论和卢曼的社会系统理论，我们探讨了与城市规划相关的 Facebook 群组的交际组织性。通过分析群组管理员的私人聊天记录，我们探索了群组的组织性以及组织和互动交流交织在一起以产生和策划数字政治讨论的方式。我们的研究结果说明了为适度而建立的技术可供性如何支持战略性的讨论组织以协调政治谈话。我们将这样的操作概念化为组织互动的话语条件，并表明在线政治行动不仅可以通过联系人们来推动，还可以通过调节公共在线讨论的强大而隐蔽的策略来推动。