Doctoral Dissertation Research: Global Social Movements and Community-Building in the Digital Age

How people build community around common causes in contexts of socio-economic, ethnic, and national diversity is important to understanding many global dynamics. This doctoral dissertation research examines the decision-making, motivations, and variations in how people come together around common causes to build global solidarity and community. It investigates the impacts of new social media, mobile technologies, and virtual contacts on the building of global communities. The research advances broad knowledge about the relationships between international solidarity and new digital technologies. The dissertation research project trains a graduate student in methods of scientific data collection and analysis. Findings will be disseminated in various public venues to help the public understand how global solidarity is realized. To analyze why and how people organize around common causes, the investigators conduct systematic ethnographic and biographical social science research amongst those who join global social movements, their family and friends, and international organizations. The researchers ask how ordinary people build political communities, how common causes can develop into larger movements, and what drives the variations in the strategies of different groups. Findings from this study contribute to the scholarship in political anthropology, digital anthropology, and the anthropology of global social movements. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.