Peer Production and Collective Action

Abstract

Over the last decade, a number of progressive social movements around the world have embraced peer production principles such as collaboration, co-production, and self-organization. This chapter investigates the consequences of peer production for social protest, looking at how peer production reshuffles and “remediates” social change activism today. First, it traces the historical trajectory of peer production as it has come to permeate the progressive social movements of the last three decades, linking distinct approaches to organizing to technological innovation. Second, it reflects on the so-called social affordances (and constraints) of digital infrastructure and their role in fostering specific modes of creativity and convergence apt to support protest actors. Third, it explores three types of consequences of peer production for social movements, namely cultural production and norm change, collective identity, and the commons. The chapter then examines three tensions that might emerge in the process of embedding peer production mechanisms and values in instances of collective action, namely: individual vs. collective engagements, peer networks vs. social movement organizations, and self-organized vs. commercial infrastructure.