Warning: file_put_contents(/opt/frankenphp/design.onmedianet.com/storage/proxy/cache/c7b64817bc10f40d7d52be0d08b01f8b.html): Failed to open stream: No space left on device in /opt/frankenphp/design.onmedianet.com/app/src/Arsae/CacheManager.php on line 36

Warning: http_response_code(): Cannot set response code - headers already sent (output started at /opt/frankenphp/design.onmedianet.com/app/src/Arsae/CacheManager.php:36) in /opt/frankenphp/design.onmedianet.com/app/src/Models/Response.php on line 17

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /opt/frankenphp/design.onmedianet.com/app/src/Arsae/CacheManager.php:36) in /opt/frankenphp/design.onmedianet.com/app/src/Models/Response.php on line 20
How Activists Are Both Born and Made | Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

research-article

How Activists Are Both Born and Made: An Analysis of Users on Change.org

Authors:

Shih-Wen Huang,

Minhyang (Mia) Suh,

Benjamin Mako Hill,

Gary HsiehAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 211 - 220

https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702559

Published: 18 April 2015 Publication History

Abstract

E-petitioning has become one of the most important and popular forms of online activism. Although e-petition success is driven by user behavior, users have received relatively little study by HCI and social computing researchers. Drawing from theoretical and empirical work in analogous social computing systems, we identify two potentially competing theories about the trajectories of users in e-petition platforms: (1) "power" users in social computing systems are born, not made; and (2) users mature into "power" users. In a quantitative analysis of data from Change.org, one of the largest online e-petition platforms, we test and find support for both theories. A follow-up qualitative analysis shows that not only do users learn from their experience, systems also "learn" from users to make better recommendations. In this sense, we find that although power users are "born," they are also "made" through both processes of personal growth and improved support from the system.

References

[1]

Ahn, J., Butler, B. S., Weng, C., & Webster, S. Learn-ing to be a better q'er in social Q&A sites: Social norms and information artifacts. In Proc. the American Society for Information Science and Technology (2013).

Digital Library

[2]

An, J., Quercia, D., & Crowcroft, J. Recommending investors for crowdfunding projects. In Proc. WWW (2014).

Digital Library

[3]

Charmaz, K., & Belgrave, L. Qualitative interviewing and grounded theory analysis. The SAGE handbook of interview research: The complexity of the craft (2002).

[4]

Cosley, D., Frankowski, D., Terveen, L., & Riedl, J. Suggest Bot: using intelligent task routing to help peo-ple find work in Wikipedia. In Proc. IUI (2007).

Digital Library

[5]

Cosley, D., Frankowski, D., Terveen, L., & Riedl, J. Using intelligent task routing and contribution review to help communities build artifacts of lasting value. In Proc. CHI (2006).

Digital Library

[6]

Cruickshank, P., Edelmann, N., & Smith, C. F. Signing an e-petition as a transition from lurking to participation (2010).

[7]

Hale, S. A., Margetts, H., & Yasseri, T. Petition growth and success rates on the United Kingdom No. 10 Downing Street Website. In Proc. WebSci (2013).

Digital Library

[8]

Jungherr, A. and Jürgens, P. The Political click: Political participation through e-petitions in Germany. Poli-cy & Internet (2010).

[9]

Kittur, A., Chi, E., Pendleton, B. A., Suh, B., & Mytkowicz, T. Power of the few vs. wisdom of the crowd: Wikipedia and the rise of the bourgeoisie. World Wide Web (2007).

[10]

Kraut, R. E., & Resnick, P. Building Successful Online Communities Evidence-Based Social Design (2012).

Digital Library

[11]

1Lave, Jean. & Wenger, E. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. (1991).

[12]

Margetts, H. Z., John, P., Hale, S. A., & Reissfelder, S. Leadership without Leaders' Starters and Followers in Online Collective Action. Political Studies (2013).

[13]

Muller, M. Lurking as personal trait or situational disposition: lurking and contributing in enterprise social media. In Proc. CSCW (2012).

Digital Library

[14]

Panagiotopoulos, P., & Elliman, T. Online engagement from the grassroots: Reflecting on over a decade of e-petitioning experience in Europe and the United Kingdom. In Empowering Open and Collaborative Governance (2012).

[15]

Pal, A., Farzan, R., Konstan, J. A., & Kraut, R. E. Early detection of potential experts in question answering communities. In User Modeling, Adaption and Personalization, Springer Berlin Heidelberg (2011).

Digital Library

[16]

Panciera, K., Aaron, H., and Loren T. Wikipedians are born, not made: a study of power editors on Wikipedia." In Proc. GROUP (2009).

Digital Library

[17]

Panciera, K., Priedhorsky, R., Erickson, T., & Terveen, L. Lurking? cyclopaths?: a quantitative lifecycle analysis of user behavior in a geowiki. In Proc. CHI (2010).

Digital Library

[18]

Preece, J., & Shneiderman, B. The reader-to-leader framework: Motivating technology-mediated social participation. In AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction (2009).

[19]

Wash, R., & Jacob S. Coordinating donors on crowd-funding websites." In Proc. CSCW (2014)

Digital Library

Cited By

Xiao QZheng YFan XZhang BLu Z(2025)Let's Influence Algorithms Together: How Millions of Fans Build Collective Understanding of Algorithms and Organize Coordinated Algorithmic ActionsProceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3706598.3713279(1-19)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713279
Olejnik M(2024)When is grassroots lobbying effective? The case of the e-petitions at the national level in the UKInterest Groups & Advocacy10.1057/s41309-024-00208-813:2(213-243)Online publication date: 29-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41309-024-00208-8
Warncke-Wang MHo RMiller MJohnson I(2023)Increasing Participation in Peer Production Communities with the Newcomer HomepageProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36100717:CSCW2(1-26)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610071
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

How Activists Are Both Born and Made: An Analysis of Users on Change.org
1. Human-centered computing

Recommendations

Density Dependence Without Resource Partitioning: Population Ecology on Change.org
CSCW '17 Companion: Companion of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

E-petitioning is a prominent form of Internet-based collective action. We apply theories from organizational population ecology to investigate whether similar petitions compete for signatures. We use latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling to ...
Digital Sovereignty and Participation in an Autocratic State: Designing an e-Petition System for Developing Countries
dg.o '21: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research

Establishing a sustainable citizens-government dialogue is a crucial topic on the agenda of many countries. E-petition systems are among the most popular and effective tools for establishing a responsive and effective dialog between governments and ...
People's outcomes for public decision making in Russia
eGose '17: Proceedings of the Internationsl Conference on Electronic Governance and Open Society: Challenges in Eurasia

This paper aims to investigate the outcomes of participatory processes in an e-petition portal. In order to understand the decisions made by governmental bodies based on the proposals for policy changes provided by citizens this research uses a ...

Comments

View Table of Contents