Are people more connective than political actions? Towards an empirical approach for action participants

Abstract

Abstract The recent wave of Internet-based social movements in the Arab Spring countries and elsewhere has considerably changed the organizational structure of contentious action. One of the current and most significant theories that has handled this change is the logic of connective action, which distinguishes between two major types of contentious action: collective and connective. In the context of this theory, this article puts forward a new conception of political action participants and attempts to classify them along the categories of collective or connective. This conception, which consists of participants’ orientations and behaviours, is empirically examined through a survey conducted in Egypt on a representative sample of 527 respondents aged 18 to 35. The results show that the Egyptian political actions that occurred after the 2011 revolution were mostly connective actions, and the majority of the actions participants were connective individuals. In addition, a strong significant relationship was found between both actions and participants as collective or connective. This suggests that identifying the nature of action participants provides a mean to better understand the nature of actions themselves.