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The purpose of this paper is to examine cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions caused by online petition campaigns against cases of perceived corporate malpractice, while also contributing to the ongoing debate over the spill-over effects of online activism to offline contexts. A dual pathway model is advanced based on the individual’s motivation to help the people affected by irresponsible corporate behavior and punish the deviant corporation.

Two studies (USA and UK) are used to gather cross-sectional and longitudinal data, which are analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Online petition campaigns relying on the display of victims affected by irresponsible behavior trigger feelings of compassion and anger. While the former leads to campaign support motivated by a desire to help, the latter causes intentions to punish. Intentions to support the petition resulting from this dual pathway influence the actual signing of the petition online and self-reported offline negative word of mouth against the company.

Both identified pathways should be activated by online petition campaigns to increase online support and spreading offline negative word of mouth. To do so, such campaigns need to increase perceptions of unfairness and victim’s similarity, and likeability.

Scant research has examined the psychological processes that explain the effectiveness of online petition campaigns against businesses and the motivations to sign an online petition and engage in subsequent offline behavior. Implications for businesses are also discussed.

The development of Big Data and online searching engine provides a good opportunity for studying petition in China. This study has constructed a set of indices for predicting petitions in China by using online searching engines and further explored the predicting role of economic, environment and public life risk perception in various petitions.

Based on the study of Xue and Liu (2017), this research first re-classified offline petition by human and cluster analysis in terms of social risk perception and built online searching indices of the two sets of petition by using data from “Google Trend” and “Baidu Index.” Second, it analyzed the predicting effect of social risk perception on online searching indices of petition by using Granger causality analysis. Finally, this study integrated the results and selected significant paths from social risk perception to the two sets of petition.

The study found that the re-classification made by human was more appropriate than the categories made by cluster analysis in terms of social risk perception. For the two sets of petition, the correlations between offline petition and Baidu Index of petition were both more significant than that of Google index. Moreover, economic and finance and resource and environment risk perception had a significant predicting effect on more than one kind of online searching indices of petition.

The results have demonstrated the important role of economic issues in China on predicting petitions of the economic kind, as well as other kinds. They have also reflected the dominant social contradictions and their relationship in modern China.

EPetitioning has been emerging as arguably the most important eParticipation institutional activity. This paper aims to provide some insights into how ePetitions are perceived and supported by social networking sites.

The paper investigated the connection between the UK Government's ePetitioning system and social networking groups linking to governmental petitions. Online data from Facebook were collected and analysed with respect to numbers of supporters compared to official signatures.

The results indicate that although the process of signing an official petition is not more complex than joining a Facebook group, the membership of respective Facebook groups can be much higher. In particular, certain topics experienced very high support on Facebook which did not convert to signatures.

The paper's added value lies in the questions raised about the potential uptake of citizen‐government interactions in policy‐making mechanisms.

This study aims to identify factors behind the intention to sign e-petitions, focusing on three aspects, i.e. information (argument quality), the source of information (source credibility) and personal perspective (personal relevance and altruism).

Data collection is done by using a quantitative approach through an online questionnaire. This study involved 211 respondents who were internet users in Indonesia who had signed an e-petition. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling approach with IBM Amos version 22.0.

The findings revealed that there are three factors shaping internet users’ attitudes toward e-petitions, namely, altruism, AQ and personal relevance, of which altruism was the strongest factor. Those who have a positive attitude toward e-petitions seemed to have higher intention to sign e-petitions. Additionally, we discovered that internet users believe credible e-petition initiators deliver better arguments, which drive them to sign e-petitions.

The finding related to elaboration likelihood model has revealed that not only the dual processing of central routes and peripheral routes but also the possibility of peripheral routes influencing the factors in the central route. Hence, future studies need to include the examination of this relation. Finally, altruism is identified as the major factor that influences people to sign e-petitions. Therefore, people should be aware of this factor while examining the environment that likely has voluntary aspects.

To improve the adoption of the e-petition system, it is important for the e-petition websites to maintain attitude factors to achieve the e-petition goals. It is also important that e-petition websites provide credibility information of the e-petition initiators and make it visible to everyone. The e-petition sites must be able to be personalized so that users can be categorized based on their profiles or interests. Finally, as altruism is the most influencing factor in shaping internet users’ attitude toward e-petitions, e-petition initiators need to write a persuasive and arousing information and images for their e-petition. Some templates, tips or even online training to persuasive public petitions also need to be provided.

This study attempts to fill the research gap by examining factors from three domains, i.e. information source (the e-petitioners), information/AQ and personal perspective (personal motivation) of the e-petition signers. The authors enrich the research model with altruism factors that influence attitude in signing petitions. This study illustrates the characteristic of Indonesian internet user’s and provides important implications for how the e-petitions site should improve the functionality of the sites.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the ways in which large‐scale e‐participation projects can be evaluated. It argues that existing evaluation approaches can be improved upon by taking a closer look at the characteristics of the users of such systems, by estimating their self‐efficacy.

Literature review is followed by the development of relevant research questions, and an assessment of points at which relevant and useful data can be collected in a petitioning process.

It is found that data relating to self‐efficacy, while not simple to collect, can add much to the evaluation process, and have the potential to result in more effective projects and systems.

The findings are specific to one project, EuroPetition, which will allow the co‐ordination and submission of cross‐border pan‐European petitions.

The paper represents the first attempt to integrate perspectives derived from social cognitive theory to the evaluation of a large e‐participation project. Self‐efficacy is discussed in terms of both computer self‐efficacy and political self‐efficacy.

The purpose of the study is to outline the unique role of compassion in reactions to cases of irresponsible corporate behavior that present information about victims of these events. In this study, four antecedents of compassion for the victims of irresponsibility are presented, and a model that explains the consequences of this emotion is tested empirically.

Two studies test the research hypotheses using a mix of experimental and survey research. The effects are tested both in laboratory conditions, where consumers assess a fictitious case of corporate irresponsibility, and through a test of reactions to real online campaigns.

Compassion is one of the drivers of consumers’ anger at the culprit, playing an indirect role in decisions to retaliate against perpetrators. Four key drivers of compassion are identified in the research: the perceived suffering of the victims, the perceived similarity of the victims to the observer, victims’ derogation and the vividness of the description of the victims.

The study offers insights both for campaigners wishing to instigate boycotts and organizations managing complex stakeholder relationships following a crisis. Insights on the role of compassion and its antecedents lead to more effective communications able to heighten or dampen this emotion.

Existing research offers contrasting views on the potential role of compassion in reactions to injustices. This study presents a novel account that clarifies previous findings and extends our knowledge of causes and consequences of compassion.

This chapter examines the peculiarities of the Belarusian socio-political model and its internal contradictions, which are becoming increasingly significant enhanced in the context of the new information and communication reality. The authors describe the information environment and the current political situation in Belarus. This chapter examines the factors behind the intensification of socio-political communications. The authors note the increased role of authorities in the online information domain. Particular focus is placed on the new role of social media, opinion leaders, activists, and bloggers. This chapter includes case studies detailing how exactly information technologies and online communication contribute to the formation of a new socio-political agenda in the country. Key examples relate to situations where, owing to extensive public engagement and support for online appeals, it became possible to use mechanisms of legitimate influence on government decision-making and bring to account officials responsible for concealing information. The authors emphasize the importance of information and communication technologies when it comes to external political challenges.

Purpose – Scholars of social movements have tended to focus on the social movement organization (SMO) as the primary unit of analysis, documenting a trend toward its professionalization. This trend, typified in the abortion rights movement, has facilitated the survival of movements, but is associated with a reduction in tactical and strategic innovation. Innovation is associated with movement entrepreneurs, like the body of lone activists that characterizes the antiabortion movement. However, work on online activism offers evidence that SMOs are not the dominant organizing structures in online mobilization, leading to general questions about innovation and the role of SMOs online.

Methodology – I analyze quantitatively content-coded data for the role of organizations and for innovative uses of the web for protest in the online abortion rights and antiabortion movements.

Findings – The two movements have different online footprints, with organizations dominating the former but not the latter, and an overall larger volume of antiabortion claims-making. Unlike in offline activism, organizationally affiliated sites are not less likely than those without an organizational affiliation to leverage innovative uses of the web for claims-making. Organizational composition may matter in other ways, though: the greater representation of antiabortion claims online, especially by individual activists, may be a lingering effect of the abortion rights movement's offline professionalization.

Research implications – These findings point to the importance of attending to variation across movements when they migrate online in investigations of new media for protest and for rethinking the role of SMOs in social movements.

Over the last several decades, the social movement sector in the United States has been professionalizing, creating a large number of highly professionalized, formal social movement organizations. And yet, over the last decade, digital technologies have been used to undermine long-settled distinctions between producers and consumers in a number of areas of social and economic life as relative amateurs engage in production (e.g., citizen journalism). Drawing an analogy between protest organizers and producers on the one hand, and protest participants and consumers on the other hand, it would seem possible that digital technologies could be used to up-end brightline distinctions between organizers and participants in the protest sector as well. I outline two different ways these prosumptive forces could shape protest and then use a five year panel dataset on websites across 20 different social movement areas to understand the net effect of prosumptive versus professionalizing trends. Findings suggest that while there has been some adoption of disruptive digital technologies by protest-related websites, the majority of sites still limit and circumscribe participant participation to pre-choreographed actions. Findings shed important light on the continuing social organization of protest in the dawning of the digital age.

The purpose of this study is to identify the structural processes that lead citizens to escape their common social circles when talking about politics and public affairs (e.g. “filter bubbles”). To do so, this study tests to what extent political attitudes, political behavior, news media consumption and discussion frequency affect discussion network heterogeneity among US citizens.

Supported by the polling group Nielsen, this study uses a two-wave panel online survey to study the antecedents and mechanisms of discussion network heterogeneity among US citizens. To test the hypotheses and answer the research questions, ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions (cross-sectional, lagged and autoregressive) and mediation analyses were conducted.

The findings imply that political discussion frequency functions as the key element in explaining the mechanism that leads politically interested and participatory citizens (online) as well as news consumers of traditional and online media to seek a more heterogeneous discussion network, disrupting the so-called “filter bubbles.” However, mediation analyses also showed that discussion frequency can lead to more homogenous discussion networks if people score high on political knowledge, possibly reflecting the formation of a close network of political-savvy individuals.

The survey data give important insights into the 2016 pre-election situation, trying to explain why US citizens were more likely to remain in homogenous discussion networks when talking about politics and public affairs. By using two-wave panel data, the analyses allow to draw tentative conclusions about the influential and inhibiting factors and mechanisms that lead individuals to seek/avoid a more heterogeneous discussion network.