Constructing an Article Analysis

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Article 1 (Quantitative - Experimental Design)

Title: "Leadership without Leaders? Starters and Followers in Online Collective Action"
Authors: Helen Z. Margetts, Peter John, Scott A. Hale, Stéphane Reissfelder
Particulars: Published by the Social Science Network, February 27, 2013
URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2224187

This particular study is an undertaking that saw the collaboration of specialists from Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford and the University College London. They undertook a quantitative study to determine the impact of online collective action whereby a good number of advocacies, campaigns and critical activities have been spearheaded by a variety of organizations and individuals in the hope of engaging discourse for the purpose of social change. Margetts, John, Hale and Reissfelder (2013) utilized experimental data and designed an experimental analysis of the numeric data sourced. Their main goal was this - with the power of the social media and the dynamism of new collective action, are online social networks replacing organizations in analysis of collective action where a "general shift of agency from leaders and elites to members or individuals," is observed? The authors have elected to investigate this by determining if indeed the 'new leaders ' are the starters of these collective online action and to do so, they investigate personality of likely starters, joiners and stipulate on the relevance of what the statistics say in terms of measurable and likely social impact.

The authors reveal their main research question as such - "What characterizes starters, the people who are willing to join in the absence of other participants?" Utilizing the theoretical work of Schelling (2005) in his 1978 book Micromotives and Macrobehaviour, the authors proposed that people are mobilized to join not for political context but in determination of the possibilities of likely joining such collective activities in relation to numbers. They write - "there will be an S-shaped joining curve for any mobilization. With the number of people that will join plotted against the number that are expected to join...in a tipping point where the number of people expected to participate meets the threshold of most people, and the mobilization will ...