The present paper considers the possibility that democratic decision-making may be a concomitant to the interaction between Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) and their support base on Web 2.0 platforms. A democratic transformation of an SMO’s organizational form may reflect the purported democratic and collaborative values of the Web 2.0 generation of websites (Chadwick, 2008:14). The question from which this research starts is to what extent may the use of Web 2.0 platforms be contributing to an organizational transformation of SMOs by making their decision-making more democratic? The research question is discussed against evidence from two case studies from Romania and the U.K. Both cases were of SMOs active within what has been loosely defined as the environmental movement (Castells, 1997). The decision to analyze organizations involved in the environmental movement was grounded on previous suggestions that the latter was, historically, highly adept at employing new media to further its goals (1997:128). Interaction on Web 2.0 platforms might be conducive to democratic decision-making if both SMOs and their Web 2.0 constituents actively engage in some form of collaboration (Bruns, 2008); and SMOs are reflexive about their organizational forms (Flanagin et al., 2006). The present analysis suggests that interaction on the Web 2.0 platforms set up by the researched SMOs did not open up decision-making. That may have been due to a lack of trust on the part of the SMOs and an absence of interest in the decision-making process, on the part of their Web 2.0 constituents.
