From Ephemerality to Organisationality: The Role of Hashtags in the Constitution of the #wirsindmehr Protests in Germany
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.19245/25.05.pij.8.1.4Keywords:
organizationality, non-human actors, neo-tribalism, Twitter, communicative constitution of organizations (CCO)Abstract
Bound by a need for belonging and togetherness, open and fluid hashtag collectives like neo-tribes challenge the notion of political participation and activism in the digital. Although these new forms of activist collectives scale up quickly via social media, it is unclear how these loose neo-tribal collectives can transform from weak bonds to more organised collectives, with interconnected decision-making, organisational actorhood and collective identity. Building on the concept of organisationality, this study investigates how hashtags as non-human actors afford and restrict the communicative constitution of organisationality in digital neo-tribal collectives. Situating organisation in communicative interaction between human and non-human actors, the study shows how non-human actors such as hashtags constitute organisationality and, therefore, enable neo-tribes to act collectively. This paper uncovers this transformation by exploring the hashtag #wirsindmehr and the related protests on Twitter with a mixed-method approach combining social network analysis and critical technocultural discourse analysis. This paper advances understanding the constitutive dimension of communication in neo-tribes and their transformation into more organised collectives. In addition, it complements the research on organisationality by understanding neo-tribal hashtag activism as a new form of organising on social media platforms.
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