Connective Action in European Mass Protest

The political use of online social networks is becoming a prominent research subject as their use in mobilization to action seems to defy central theoretical tenets. Bennet and Segerberg (2012) develop the concept of connective action to describe this phenomenon as opposed to the classic collective action paradigm. In this paper we use data from protest surveys for 57 demonstrations that occurred across 7 European countries in order to empirically assess the usefulness of this concept on two grounds. First, we see the extent to which the main defining characteristics of connective action (loose organizational coordination, high social media use and personalized action frames) come empirically together distinguishing specific protest events. Second, we asses to what extent connective action events bring different people to protests than traditional collective action events, and particularly, whether they mobilize people with lower levels of previous political engagement.