Article

From grassroots to
digital ties: A case
study of a political
consumerism movement

Journal of Consumer Culture

2014, Vol. 14(2) 236253
! The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1469540514526280
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Paolo Parigi and Rachel Gong

Stanford University, USA

Abstract
New grassroots organizations that target ethical consumer choices and behavior represent
a departure from traditional social movement organizations. In this article, we study the
activists of one of these organizations and show that social network ties formed mainly
online greatly reinforce commitment toward the goals of the movement. We suggest that
online ties, that is, digital ties, are important for political consumerism movements because
they create audiences for private actions. It is because of the presence of these audiences
that the individual participants can reinterpret their actions into public ones. We used an
online survey to collect data on the users of the Transition US social website on Ning.com.
Over half of the respondents have experiences with political activism. However, their
responses indicate that they are dissatisfied with traditional means of political participation
(e.g. rallies) and prefer non-contentious collective actions (e.g. local gardening).
Respondents perceive community organizing to be the most effective way to bring about
social change, deprioritizing connections to local government. Furthermore, respondents
who formed digital ties with other activists were significantly more likely than respondents
who had no ties with other activists to adopt consumer changes consistent with the goals
of the movement. We interpreted this finding as an indicator that digital ties share some of
the characteristics of strong ties, and we explored this similarity in this article.
Keywords
Social networks, Internet, political consumerism
Political consumerism, that is, the expression of political beliefs and ethical values
via the purchasing of goods, is not a new phenomenon, dating back at least to the
early 19th century (Micheletti, 2003; Micheletti and McFarland, 2010). However, it
is only in recent years that it has begun to attract the attention of social movement
scholars (Forno and Ceccarini, 2006; Schurman and Munro, 2009). Indeed, the
Corresponding author:
Paolo Parigi, Department of Sociology, 450 Serra Mall, Bldg 120, Room 132, Stanford CA 94305-2047, USA.
Email: pparigi@stanford.edu

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237

dominant theoretical paradigm among scholars of collective actions with its

focuses on the political sphere (McAdam et al., 2001) and on the use of contentious
tactics (Tarrow, 1996) allows little room for forms of mobilization that consider
the market as their main locus for action (Bennett, 2012). By contrast, political
consumerism involves hybrid privatepublic forms of (mostly) noncontentious
actions (Burns et al., 2001) such as writing e-mails to the public oce of corporations whose labor practices are contested or planting a garden in order to reduce
the carbon footprint of ones life. As Michele Micheletti (2003) argues, it is because
of these unusual characteristics that political consumerism has received less theoretical attention among scholars of social movements.
This is now starting to change as social movement scholars on both sides of the
Atlantic appear to be giving greater attention to forms of mobilization centered on
the market (Bray et al., 2011; Cook, 2008; Weber et al., 2008). At the same time,
audiences in many industrialized countries have increasingly resorted to political
consumerism in order to promote desired changes not only within national boundaries but also globally (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). In this article, we intend to extend
the theoretical frame of contemporary political consumerism by incorporating into
it the role of online networks (Scammell, 2000). We think that the Internet, and the
tools of social media networks in particular, play a crucial rule in transforming
private actions, such as the ones described above, into collective public actions.
That is, we see social media networks as capable of creating shared identities and
relationships among activists digital ties that reinforce individual commitment
toward pursuing change via market-based actions.
Our evidence comes from a volunteer-based online survey conducted on an organization named Transition US, a community of activists scattered throughout the
country and mainly concerned with issues of environmental protection and minimizing energy dependence on oil (Mooallem, 2009). Because of the nonrandom nature
of our data and the limited generalization that comes from a case study, our conclusions about the role of the Internet in creating networks capable of transforming
private actions into public ones are necessarily tentative. Nevertheless, we think that
what we have found is of sucient interest to call the attention of other scholars of
political consumerism to the possibilities oered by merging the literature on the role
of networks in social movements with the growing empirical evidence on the role that
the Internet plays in contemporary forms of mobilization.
This article is organized in the following way: we rst survey the main literature
linking the Internet to collective action. As we will show, scholars tend to be divided
into two camps those who think that the Internet is nothing more than a coordinating mechanism not useful in promoting deep changes, and those convinced of the
opposite. We then consider the role of social networks in mobilization and stress the
important distinction between strong ties (thought to promote participation) and weak
ties, more likely to promote diusion of rumors than develop a shared sense of identity
(Centola and Macy, 2007). We argue that online interactions have made possible the
emergence of a new type of tie, which we aptly call digital ties. Digital ties are for us a
hybrid type, promoting engagement but only within the domain of the given online

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platform (see Small, 2009, for a similar argument on how institutions promote hybrid
ties). We use these two sections to build our argument about political consumerism
and online social networks. This section concludes the more theoretical part of the
article. A description of the case study and of the analysis follows. We use the conclusion to summarize our results and to expand on our theoretical contribution.

The role of the Internet in collective action: A divided view

When we talk about the Internet, our focus lies in the large-scale communication and
interaction made possible by social media, rather than the information distribution
capabilities of the whole electronic network. Scholarly work on the Internet has
shown that the new media technologies have ambivalent results on collective
action. On the one hand, they appear to produce only marginal eects. For example,
Evgeny Morozov (2011) argues that, in general, the majority of Internet users do not
use the Internet for political or civic activism, but to satisfy their own individual
curiosities. Therefore, instead of facilitating the kind of solidarity that inspires meaningful collective action, the Internet serves as a divisive tool, pushing users into
increasingly isolated networks concerned with trivialities, not matters of civic importance. On the other hand, scholars have suggested that the Internet has had a large
impact on how social movements share information and recruit new members (e.g.
Howard, 2010), how they attract publicity (e.g. Perlmutter, 2008), how they organize
oine action and events (e.g. Shirky, 2008), and how they take direct online action
(e.g. Earl and Kimport, 2011). Indeed, there is evidence that the Internet appears to
have dramatically altered how social movements operate (Joyce, 2010).
A main exception to the Manichean vision of the role of the Internet among social
movement scholars comes from the case of collective action in repressive regimes. Even
before the events of the Arab Spring, Philip Howard (2010) argued that digital
technologies played a crucial role in promoting and developing democracy in several
Muslim countries. In such countries where an authoritarian state represses formal
political opposition, the Internet functions as a setting for open civic discourse that
leads to political activism. Additionally, other scholars writing about the uprising in
Egypt have also recognized the role of the Internet, particularly social media, in connecting people and promoting community, and the eect that has on widespread mobilization (e.g. Zorn et al., 2011). We agree with Diani (2011) that the Internet makes a
substantial contribution to what appear largely as communitarian forms of collective
action: it facilitate[s] the creation of boundaries between people that shared a similar
condition, the emergence of common grievances, and the coordination of protest activity (p. 473). We believe that this role extends beyond political revolutions in repressive
regimes into the kind of individual collective action that we examine in this article.

The strength of offline and online ties

When considering this sort of political collective action, scholars have long recognized the importance of strong ties1 in motivating actors to accept the high costs and

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239

high risks of contentious action. McAdam (1988, see also McAdam and Paulsen,
1993) explains how close relationships with other activists and like-minded individuals can both encourage and pressure someone into engaging in contentious political
action. Strong ties of this sort act as a mechanism for social reward and social
punishment while weak ties, such as relationships with acquaintances or a friend
of a friend, are more useful for disseminating information (Granovetter, 1973).
Weak ties have been well established as a means for widespread information
distribution, since weak ties connect a larger network than strong ties. The weakness of such ties also means that they hold less persuasive power over an individual.
Thus, while they may be useful for learning about new job opportunities, they are
less helpful in terms of mobilizing collective action, where the risks associated with
participation are often quite high (Centola and Macy, 2007).
The distinction between the role of strong and weak ties in facilitating mobilization predates the invention of the Internet and of social networking technology.
The contemporary social world is dense with opportunities for connecting with
others, and the Internet has become a new vehicle for the formation of relationships. Castells (1996) and Bimber et al. (2012) argue that the proliferation of
Internet connectivity promotes networked ties in place of membership in hierarchical, bureaucratic organizations. These networked ties decentralize the locus of
organization in collective action and facilitate grassroots community building.
Websites and forums that began as sources of information become communities
where members engage in conversations about everyday life and support one
another. Websites and forums become places where people interact and form relationships. Scholars studying nonpolitical online communities, for example,
observed that topical discussions often evolve into more general interactions (e.g.
Baumle, 2009; Gatson and Zweerink, 2000). From a social movement perspective,
a key question is whether relationships formed online are strong, in the sense that
they encourage and support participation, or weak, in the sense that they mainly
facilitate the diusion of information.
In order to make further progress on the behavior of online relationships with
respect to mobilization, we rst dene digital ties as the relationships formed between
activists who are interacting regularly online. These interactions may supplement oline interactions or they may replace oine interactions (especially for people who are
geographically distant). As individuals interact online, as, for example, members of
Transition US do on the movements social networking website, a sense of community
and shared identity and purpose can develop among users. In this way, what started
out as weak ties knowing which products to boycott, for instance, or the right way to
install solar panels can develop into closer ties that, while perhaps not as persuasive
as strong ties, can reinforce individuals commitment toward change.
We are not suggesting that all online ties have the qualities that create and reinforce
commitment. Most of the time online ties operate purely as coordination mechanisms.
Nevertheless, when online ties create a shared identity around which activists can
frame their private behavior, they become digital in the sense that they sustain commitment to a movement. In this way, these digital ties play a role similar to that of

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Journal of Consumer Culture 14(2)

group memberships, except that they are far more uid. Rainie and Wellman (2012)
explain that networked individuals have partial membership in multiple networks
and rely less on permanent memberships in settled groups (p. 12). They attribute the
eectiveness of such networks to the way in which people use technology.
In light of all of this, we hypothesize that digital ties are strong within the boundaries of the website that generated them, but weak outside of it. What dierentiates
digital ties from strong ties formed in primarily face-to-face interactions is that
digital ties remain constrained within the context and the content of the website
that originated them, while the inuence of strong ties extends beyond the context
of the social movement that brought the two activists together. That is, digital ties
are strong but in a specialized sense. Before testing this hypothesis, we explore why
the mixed quality of digital ties is particularly signicant for political consumerism.

From grassroots to digital ties

Making political statements using purchasing power questions the traditional view
that sees politics as separated from the market. Hilton (2007) and Alexander and
Ussher (2012) show how consumerist movements can have political and social
consequences. Cohen (2004) argues that a gradual but increasing emphasis on
consumer authority now extends from products to politics, allowing consumerism
to have political value. Politics has escaped the state and has entered the market to
the extent that the studying of this form of mobilization requires concepts like
globalization, governance, corporations and ethics, and a multidisciplinary
approach (Peters and Savoie, 1995).
From this perspective, the state appears to be in a deep crisis, challenged externally by global problems and by a sort of paralysis of its institutions, increasingly
incapable of mediating the conicting interests of its citizens. Such a paralysis has
led activists in many countries to engage with actors outside of the traditional
political sphere and, since the mid-1980s, to conceptualize corporations as sovereign entities (Vogel, 1975, 1996). Against this background, political consumerism
developed by emphasizing the role of consumer choices in creating change. The
focus on the political consequences of individuals choices is the key dierence
between political consumerism and other forms of mobilization directed against
the state or corporations.2
The adoption and diusion of political consumerism among vast segments of
the population in industrialized countries is directly connected with the emergence
of the Internet. While traditional political protest and identity movements continue
to exist, the proliferation of the Internet and amorphous online networks allow for
more personalized politics (Bennett, 2012). In tandem with consumer culture,
online interactions shape how people understand and express their political
values as individual consumers and citizens. As group aliations give way to
value- and cause-driven networks (Rainie and Wellman, 2012), a diverse constituency can be mobilized for collective action against a variety of targets, from business corporations to the state.

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241

At the center of political consumerism is the assumption that consumers are not
just passive recipients of corporation messages but rather that they have agency.
This agency is best expressed through individuals decisions to buy things. Yet,
most scholars of political consumerism see these decisions as occurring in a
vacuum; they become public because (in theory) the single individual has an internalized audience in the privacy of his mind for which the consequences of his action
matter. This internalized audience constitutes a sort of imagined community. The
self-referential nature of this perspective (Luhman, 1993) is not completely satisfactory because it imagines individuals as atoms, each expressing his purchasing
decisions independently of the other.
A more satisfactory approach, and one closer to the empirical observations of
how contemporary consumers make political choices in the market, starts by considering the role of networks (Scammell, 2000). As for the case of more traditional
forms of collective action, being an activist means enmeshing oneself into networks
of other activists (Lim, 2008; Ray et al., 2003). In contrast to traditional forms of
activism, political consumerism is based on actions that are prevalently private (and
often noncontentious). The Internet has given visibility to these type of actions in the
form of blogs, pictures, music, and so on. Furthermore, these websites have become
the basis for the formation of online relationships, that is, digital ties whose function
is a public reinterpretation of a myriad of private consumer actions into a single
collective action aimed at producing societal change. Our argument is that digital ties
make possible the generation of a shared identity and culture (Melucci, 1985). This
generative process in turn facilitates the creation of new frames into which private
actions can be reinterpreted as public and collective (Rheingold, 1993).
Our broad hypothesis about digital ties suggests that social media technologies are
of key importance for market-based movements because they create public shared
spaces and audiences for activists who use mobilization tactics that are not immediately visible. As the next section documents in further detail, Transition US, like
many other political consumer movements, challenges individuals to begin social
change by changing their own behaviors rather than by campaigning for policy
changes. Its intention is that enough individual changes in knowledge, values, and
behavior will lead to the formation of local collectives with organized action plans,
which will then lead to structural changes further up the chain, nally resulting in a
complete reorganization of governance and policy.

Methods
Case selection
Transition US is the American arm of an environmental movement that began in the
United Kingdom in the mid-2000s. Founded by Rob Hopkins, an ecological design
scholar, the movement addresses three issues: climate change, the unraveling of the
global economy, and peak oil, the last of these being the theory that the worlds
production of oil has or will soon have peaked, leaving a very oil-dependent

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Journal of Consumer Culture 14(2)

world in disarray as alternative technologies cannot meet demand (Mooallem, 2009).

Hopkins solution is a 12-step Energy Descent Action Plan designed to build resiliency
and self-suciency by employing a post-consumerist ethos of voluntary simplicity
(Alexander and Ussher, 2012: 70). Local activists draw up and implement lower energy
programs to suit their community, including the planting and tending of local gardens,
the teaching of skills such as sewing, and the use of alternative transportation
ranging from cycling to skiing. The movement in the United States represents an excellent case study for our research interests in individualized collective action and the
role of the Internet and digital ties in organizing and community building.

Data collection
We used an online survey to collect data on users of the following website: transitionus.ning.com (now transitioninaction.com). This website is a social networking
website whose members have joined voluntarily and expressed interest in the
Transition US movement, regardless of their actual level of involvement in
Transition US activities.
A large banner announcement about the survey was prominently posted on the
website, containing information about the study and a link to the study website,
which contained the link to the survey. Members of the social networking website
also received an e-mail inviting them to participate and directing them to the study
website. Hosted on a secure and reliable server, the survey contained 54 questions,
comprising a mix of multiple-choice questions and free-response questions.
Respondents were allowed to save their responses, stop, and return to complete
the survey at any time from October 2009 to March 2010. Overall, 387 respondents
began the survey, and 243 completed it (Table 1). At the time, the website had
approximately 2500 members, so the nal sample, although nonrandom, represents
approximately 10% of total membership.
Survey questions were divided into four categories. The rst and largest category
of questions pertained to respondents activities within the Transition US movement. This included what role they occupied within their local group (organizer or
joiner), and what activities they participated in both as individuals (e.g. grow their
own food or use their car less) and as members of the group (e.g. raised funds for
group activities or organized a group event). These activities included how they
used the Internet, for example, to stay informed about group activities, for personal
communication, or for social networking. The second category of questions was
related to respondents political attitudes and previous experiences. Respondents
were asked what other political or voluntary activities they had participated in
prior to joining the Transition US movement and were asked to explain their
interest in or motivation for joining the Transition US movement. The third category of questions described respondents social networks. Respondents were
asked to name ve close friends3 and describe their means and frequency of interaction with those friends. Finally, the fourth category of questions consisted of
demographic controls, such as gender, age, education, and income. Although data

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243

Table 1. Respondents political profile.

Yes
Variables

Registered to vote
Ever attended a political/civic event
Ever participated politically
Ever donated money to a political/civic organization
Ever belonged to an environmental group
Ever belonged to a service group
Ever belonged to a political club

235
200
196
185
198
112
90

97
82
81
76
81
46
37

Source: Transition US Ning Survey, 2010 (N 243).

on race were also collected, the homogeneity of the sample with respect to race
limited the usefulness of this variable.

Descriptive statistics
Survey data show respondents to be homogenous with respect to race (91% are
White), education (87% have at least a bachelors degree), and political preferences
(74% describe themselves as politically liberal), with women making up 58% of the
sample. As a whole, respondents are web-savvy, using the Internet for e-mail,
work, reading the news, social networking, online discussions, and blogging.
All but eight people (97%) are registered voters, and more than half have ever
belonged to an environmental group or political/civic organization, with over 80%
having attended a political/civic event. However, their responses to survey questions
also indicate that they are dissatised with traditional means of political participation, such as street rallies and letter writing. Instead, they perceive community organizing as the most eective way to bring about social change, deprioritizing
connections to local government. They generally distrust business corporations
and political parties, and explain their withdrawal from political/civic organizations
as the result of the failure of institutional organizations and means.

Logit model variables

We used maximum likelihood estimates of logistic regression models to predict the
likelihood that a respondent undertook some sort of consumerist action, which
included any one or more of the following: growing ones own food, using ones car
less, belonging to a local food group, and installing solar panels in ones house. The
dependent variable took a binary value, where taking action 1 and not taking
action 0. The basic model, Model 1, considered the predictive value of the spread
of a respondents social network, namely, the average distance from his or her ve

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Journal of Consumer Culture 14(2)

closest friends. This distance variable was constructed from an original variable
measuring how far away a respondent lived from each of his or her ve closest
friends. This variable took four categorical values that were then assigned point
values with 1 being the closest and 4 the furthest and averaged over the ve friends
to yield a continuous distance variable that was used in the model.
Model 2 further considers the eects of variation in Internet use. An index measuring
Internet use was constructed as the sum of use of the Internet for e-mail, work, news,
discussion forums, and social networking; thus, its value ranged from 1 to 5. The nal
model, Model 3, tests for the eects of digital ties in conjunction with ties to Transition
US. To do this, we used the count of online friends (i.e. the number of friends with
whom the respondent interacted with mainly online, as opposed to in person or via
telephone) and the count of close friends involved in Transition US to construct a
categorical variable that indicates the extent of a respondents online ties to
Transition US. Both count variables ranged from 0 to 5. There are three categories
of network ties: a group of respondents who have no close friends, online or oine, in
Transition US (N 54); a group of people who have only oine ties to Transition US
(N 66); and a group of people who have mainly online ties to Transition US (N 65).
All the models controlled for the inuence of demographic variables of age,
gender, and a college degree.4 We also included as a control a binary variable
measuring whether or not a respondent was an organizer of a local Transition
US group (yes 1) to take into account the eects of leadership on the likelihood
of taking consumer action.

Individual level change

A key characteristic of Transition US and of many political consumerism movements
is a focus on individual change. Activists in this type of movement see societal change
as a consequence of changes at the individual level rather than the other way around.
This bottom-up perspective makes targeting the government, or more broadly the
state, a secondary goal of the movement. The next two tables present the three most
common lifestyle changes that activists in Transition US have adopted since becoming
involved with the organization (Table 2) and the top three changes they inuenced
other people to make (Table 3). Respondents were asked to rank a battery of choices,
and the answers presented in the tables are the three highest ranked. Thus, 51% of
respondents reported growing their own food as the rst change that they have
adopted since becoming involved with Transition US, while 47% respondents
reported this action as the number one way they were able to inuence others.
Respondents appeared very consistent in the ranking of their choices both
growing their own food and driving less were among the most popular changes that
activists adopted and promoted. Furthermore, 42% of the respondents also listed
introducing themselves to unknown neighbors as a relevant change that membership in Transition US catalyzed. Externally, none of these actions has a political
dimension per se. Yet, this type of action, intensely focused on the individual, was
the bread and butter of Transition US mobilization. For these activists, at least,

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245

Table 2. Top three Transition US activists lifestyle changes.

Count
Lifestyle changes

Grows own food

Uses car less
Introduced self to previously unknown neighbors

124
118
101

51
49
42

Source: Transition US Ning Survey, 2010 (N 243).

Table 3. Top three Transition US activists influence on others.

Count
Influenced others to

Grow their own food

Join a local food group
Use their car less

114
82
69

47
34
28

Source: Transition US Ning Survey, 2010 (N 243).

humble activities such as gardening shifted from being a quintessentially private

action to the pinnacle of political activism.
Respondents were also aware that their type of activism was dierent from that
of other movements. Members of Transition US attributed little importance to the
more traditional ways of pursuing change. When asked to list the priorities of their
local Transition US chapter and their current activities, respondents reported that
engaging with other organizations and with the government were among the least
of their relevant priorities.
Instead, Tables 4 and 5 demonstrate that the top two goals of the movement
were building self-reliance and increasing the well-being of the community.
Moreover, the majority of respondents reported that their current activities were
mostly geared toward raising community awareness.
The irrelevance given to more typically contentious activism was not due to
political apathy: 97% of the respondents in our sample reported being registered
to vote; 82% said that they have participated in a political or civic event and, even
more telling, 76% reported having donated money to a political or civic organization. A politically disenfranchised sample, this was not!
Consistent with some of the themes previously highlighted about motivations for
engaging in political consumerism, Transition US members chose to engage in certain
actions because they shared a deep sense of frustration with traditional activism. This
is what a 57-year-old male said: Ive left organizations that attempted to make the
government change, or were more about protesting what they didnt want. I prefer to

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Table 4. Priorities of local transition groups.

Considered most important
Priorities

Local interests (self-reliance, community building,

207
local economy, public health, and well-being)
Environmental concerns (peak oil and climate change) 24
Building links to other organizations and government
8

87
10
3

Source: Transition US Ning Survey, 2010 (N 239).

Table 5. Activities of local transition groups.

Count
Activities

Awareness-raising and community engagement

Food and gardening activities
Building links with other organizations
Energy saving activities
Business and economic activities
Building connections with local government officials

106
76
16
7
3
3

44
31
7
3
1
1

Source: Transition US Ning Survey, 2010 (N 211).

co-create what we DO want (emphasis in the original). A middle-aged female

respondent said, I have to focus my resources and energy on things that are eective
and local. Most political eorts are a waste of time at this point. Because of their
dislike of traditional activism, members of Transition US chose the type of tactics
that they thought were more eective for promoting change.
Tilly (1978) showed the importance of the connection between the goals of the
movement and the type of tactics activists use to pursue these goals. However, he
focused exclusively on contentious tactics. The two quotes above emphasize how
turning the focus away from government and toward the market made Transition
US activists adopt noncontentious tactics to promote change. As a 26-year-old male
respondent reported, Adversarial activism is out, social process activism is in . . .
Noncontentious tactics represent a signicant way in which redemptive movements
dier from other types of movements. Indeed, 64% of our respondents reported that
the most eective tactic to promote change was community organizing. More
traditional forms of activism, such as street railing, campaigning for politicians,
and writing letters to Congressmen, were selected between 1% and 4% of the time.
Although their actions were noncontentious, Tables 4 and 5 show clearly that
members of Transition US saw themselves as activists whose goal was to promote
societal change by changing the lifestyle of one individual at a time. Their lifestyle

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247

changes are not directly political in nature; rather, they take on economic and
cultural signicance, for example, growing ones own food or using ones car
less. These individual actions are given meaning within the movement because
they occur as part of a collective eort within a local community. Now we turn
our attention toward the role that the Internet played in shaping and mediating
commitment to the goals of the movement.

Digital ties as a vehicle for commitment

Previous research has shown that social movement organizers formed strong ties
with other activists within the movement and that these ties function to reinforce
the sense of commitment that organizers feel toward the goals of the movement
(McAdam and Paulsen, 1993). Our argument suggests that digital ties operate in a
similar fashion to strong ties in the context of political consumerism, everything
else equal. Au contraire, if the coordination of individual activities is all that is
needed for political consumerism, social media tools can generate coordination
without the pressures and incentives associated with strong ties and without necessarily impacting the level of commitment that organizers feel toward the goals of
the movement.
We began testing the role of network ties by focusing on the segment of respondents who had high levels of commitment. We identied as organizers those respondents who reported having started a local chapter of Transition US and as joiners
those respondents who reported having joined later. Table 6 shows that while the
majority of people with whom joiners reported interacting most often was not
involved in Transition US, for organizers, that proportion was split half and half.
Organizers also had on average more friends in the movement (1.93) than joiners
(1.15). More importantly, organizers diered from joiners in how they used the
Internet out of 127 respondents who initiated a chapter, 60% reported staying
informed about Transition US mainly through local meetings while a similar majority of joiners stayed informed about the movement using the Internet.
Table 6. Cross tabulations comparing local transition group organizers and joiners.
Variables
Stays informed about Transition US most frequently via
Local meetings
Internet
Print material
Spends more free time with
Other Transition US activists
People not involved in Transition US
Average number of close friends involved in Transition US
Source: Transition US Ning Survey, 2010 (N 225).

Joiners

Organizers

29
60
9

77
42
8

24
74
1.15

64
63
1.93

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Journal of Consumer Culture 14(2)

This suggests that despite the low risk involved in starting a new chapter of
Transition US, organizers of this movement operated in a fashion very similar to
organizers in more traditional movements. For example, face-to-face interactions
played a role in how future organizers were recruited for the movement. In fact,
while 36% of the respondents who joined an existing chapter of Transition US reported
having rst heard of it via the Internet, the same proportion for organizers was 21%.
To test more comprehensively the role of the Internet in generating commitment
among activists, we used a logit model to predict the likelihood of undertaking
consumer action on the basis of the respondents use of the Internet and controlling
for a host of other factors. If respondents integrated their online interactions with
their oine connections to Transition US, they would be more likely to take action
compared to those who did not have any online interactions.
In Model 1, most of the predictors are not signicant with the exception of being
an organizer. Compared to regular members, organizers of a local Transition US
group are more than twice as likely (i.e. e0.85) to take some sort of consumer action,
which is unsurprising, given that we would expect someone in a position of leadership to demonstrate commitment to the movement (Table 7).
Model 2 tests directly activists familiarity with the Internet. We employed an additive index to capture the salience of the Internet for respondents, ranging between 1, a
respondent who used the Internet only for one task, such as e-mail, and 5, somebody
who used the Internet for e-mail, work, news, discussion forums, and social networking.
The eects of this variable turn out to be nonsignicant, which tells us that respondents,
despite being recruited online from a social networking website directly aliated with
the movement, are not motivated to action simply by their Internet use. In other words,
it is not the quantity of Internet usage that predicts consumer action. We would suggest
instead that it is the quality of Internet usage, namely, digital ties that are formed and
reinforced, that aect the likelihood of consumer action.
When we include digital ties in Model 3, we see that having digital ties with friends
in Transition US has a signicant positive eect on the likelihood of consumer
action, compared to not interacting with any friends in Transition US, whether
digital or not. We can compare this eect with the eect of having close friends in
Transition US with whom there is no online interaction, that is, the standard eect
of strong ties on recruitment (McAdam and Paulsen, 1993). As expected, an increase
in the number of close friends in Transition US with whom one typically interacts
oine makes the odds of consumer action three times (e1.12) as likely than if one had
no close ties to Transition US. When we take into account the eect of having friends
in Transition US with whom one interacts mainly online, we nd that the odds of
consumer action are 2.5 times larger than if one had no close ties to Transition US.
Here, we see that digital ties operate similarly to the strong ties explanation in that
they reinforce commitment toward the goals of the movement. Nevertheless, their
impact is somewhat weaker than the impact of strong ties.
There are several potential reasons for the lower eect of digital ties compared
to strong face-to-face ties. On the one hand, it could be the byproduct of the small
number of cases on which the analysis rests. On the other, Model 3 could be

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Table 7. Coefficients (log odds ratios) from models predicting effects of network and web
variables on consumer action.
Model
Age
Female
At least college degree
Organizer
Mean distance from 5 closest friends
Net use index (sum of 15)
Digital ties
Reference category: no ties to Transition US
Offline ties to Transition US
Digital ties to Transition US
Intercept
Likelihood 2 (vs null model)
Degrees of freedom
AIC

Model 1
0.00
0.29
0.55
0.85*
0.30

1.29
108.02
6
228.04

Model 2
0.00
0.34
0.63
0.80*
0.29
0.16

0.56
107.50
7
228.99

Model 3
0.00
0.35
0.56
0.67
0.19
0.14

1.12**
0.92*
0.23
103.60
9
225.19

Source: Transition US Ning Survey, 2010 (N 185).

AIC: Akaike Information Criterion; DV: dependent variable.
Consumer Action (DV) indicates that the respondent did at least one of the following: grow food, use car less,
belong to local food group, and install solar panels in house.
Net use index is a sum of use of the web for e-mail, work, news, discussion forums, and social networking.
*p < .05 (two-tailed test); **p < .01 (two-tailed test); p < .1 (two-tailed test).

capturing a peculiarity of digital ties, that is, what we previously highlighted as

their specialization. Digital ties promote commitment in a fashion similar to strong
ties within the content and context of the social networking website that created
them. Considering that the website from which we collected information allows the
formation of many separate blogs, discussion boards, and communities within the
larger umbrella of the Transition US platform, it could be the case that the weaker
eect is the byproduct of measuring digital ties across these communities.
Notwithstanding all of this, digital ties appear to greatly reinforce commitment
toward the movement after controlling for respondents use of the Internet. This
latter variable captures how organizers used the Internet mainly as a coordination
mechanism rather than as a platform for activism. Our analysis suggests that the
Internet can become a platform for consumer activism and that digital ties are key
for transforming private actions into public ones.

Conclusion
The analysis of a sample of activists from Transition US found signicant support
for our argument that participants in political consumerism movements do not act

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Journal of Consumer Culture 14(2)

in a vacuum. Instead, they form networks that reinforce their commitment to the
goals of these movements. In particular, we examined the role of the Internet and
digital ties and compared them with the role of strong face-to-face ties. We discovered that at least among respondents in our sample, digital ties operate identically to strong ties in more traditional social movements, that is, they reinforce
participation and commitment toward the movement.
Of great relevance is the fact that the signicant impact of digital ties does not
wash away after controlling for the respondents use of the Internet. We think that
this eect reveals the distinction between using social media tools mainly as coordination mechanisms and using them in order to promote changes in values, commitment, or behavior that eventually lead to social change.
Digital ties reinforce commitment toward change in a market-oriented social
movement like Transition US because they create an audience for private actions.
That is, we think that digital ties transform private actions, such as driving less,
into public actions. This transformation is of key importance for understanding
contemporary political consumerism movements, where activists could be scattered
across dierent geographic areas with small chances of face-to-face contact with each
other.
Our ndings reveal that political consumerism movements are not simply driven
by individual consumers aware of social issues, but that such movements are rooted
in intentional organizational eorts to give actions purpose and meaning.
Furthermore, global access to technologies facilitating digital ties increases such
grassroots organizing and helps spread cultural attitudes among political consumers, including environmental protection, sustainability, and local production.
Ironically, infrastructure and technologies usually associated with globalization are
being used to mobilize political consumers at a local level, which is a paradox
worthy of further attention and research.
Despite these relevant ndings, our analysis suers from the obvious limitations
of a case study. To what extent can we generalize the role of digital ties to other
political consumerism movements? While a full answer to this question needs to be
grounded in further comparison to other movements, we would like to suggest that
our argument about online networks creating an audience for activists is more
satisfactory than imagining activists reinterpreting the meaning of their actions
in the isolation of their minds. We are therefore cautiously optimistic that our
ndings oer the basis for a theoretical integration between social network analysis
and the burgeoning eld of political consumerism.

Acknowledgements
We benetted from presenting earlier versions of this work to the Political Sociology,
Social Movements, and Collective Action workshop at Stanford University. We thank
Susan Olzak and the participants of the Mobilization of Identity workshop for their
comments and suggestions. Les Squires oered his help to make the online survey available
to respondents.

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251

Funding
This research has been supported by a generous grant from the UPS Fund of Stanford
University.

Notes
1. Per Granovetters (1973) definition of the strength of a tie being a (probably linear)
combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the intimacy (mutual confiding), and the reciprocal services which characterize the tie (p. 1361) it follows that
offline, in-person interactions are more likely to result in strong ties than are online,
computer-mediated interactions.
2. Political consumerism focuses on the individual rather than on state policies and follows
closely a classification scheme that Aberle (1966) developed a few decades ago in his study
of Native Americans. According to him, movements can be distinguished on the basis of
the amount of change pursued, that is, whether the movement was seeking to reform part
of society or all of it, and the locus of this change, that is, whether the movement sought
to effect change at the level of the individual or at the level of the broader social structure
(for related typologies of social movements, see also McAdam and Snow, 1997; Snow and
Soule, 2009).
3. This question was worded as follows:
Think of your closest circle of friends it does not matter whether or not they are
part of your local [Transition group]. Now, just consider the rst ve (or fewer)
names that come to your mind. Write their rst names [down].
4. We initially included household income in our models, but ultimately excluded it as a
control variable. We reasoned that education attainment would serve as a proxy for class
as we could not adjust for varying household sizes and the costs of living in different
cities. Furthermore, given our small sample size, adding an unnecessary control variable
to our models limited their predictive ability.

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Author Biographies
Paolo Parigi is an assistant professor at Stanford University. He is interested in the
emergence of cooperation and in the formal and informal rules that make cooperation possible. Because of his broad interests, Parigis research spans the elds of
organizational theory, political sociology and historical sociology. He is the author
of Rationalization of Miracles (Cambridge University Press).
Rachel Gong is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stanford University. Her research
interests include communication and information technologies, collective behavior
and social movements, human rights, and the sociology of culture. She is especially
interested in how digital technologies transform interaction and behavioral norms.
Her dissertation examines the web presence of and strategies used by the antihuman tracking movement.