Mutating Multitudes, Collective Behavior, and Reinventing a Sociological Specialty

Abstract

As a sociological specialty for investigating group phenomena, collective behavior set the benchmark at mid-twentieth century for the study of crowds and masses in social change. It had the status of a subfield that treated macro-level changes in terms of micro-level group interaction but later became eclipsed by theories of global transformation focused on culture and economy. Beset by the methodological conundrum of the individual in crowds, it was also challenged in postmodern debates on the problem of the self in decentered social environments. However, new research on networks has created space for the reinvention of collective behavior as a partner in inquiries on the meaning of digitized collectivity. It has also spurred new thinking on the significance of multitudes, swarms, and publics in networked collective behavior, as well as their implications for data gathering and control in systems of mass surveillance. Rather than becoming otiose, collective behavior looks set to take on new theoretical explorations in tandem with media researches on digitized masses.