Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Examining Political Mobilization Of Online Communities Through E-Petitioning Behavior In We The People, Catherine L. Dumas, Daniel Lamanna, Teresa M. Harrison, S. S. Ravi, Christopher Kotfila, Norman Gervais, Loni Hagen, Feng Chen

School of Information Faculty Publications

This study aims to reveal patterns of e-petition co-signing behavior that are indicative of the political mobilization of online “communities”. We discuss the case of We the People, a US national experiment in the use of social media technology to enable users to propose and solicit support for policy suggestions to the White House. We apply Baumgartner and Jones's work on agenda setting and punctuated equilibrium, which suggests that policy issues may lie dormant for periods of time until some event triggers attention from the media, interest groups, and elected representatives. In the case study presented, we focus on …