The Perceived Efficacy of Connective Action on Facebook

The next speaker in this ECREA 2014 panel is Cédric Courtois, whose interest is in individual action and collective efficacy on Facebook. Within Facebook, there are plenty of constraints, but we are nonetheless navigating these constraints to engage in connective action. What motivates people to do so, and what is their perception of the efficacy of such activities?

Possible explanations for engagement through liking, commenting, and content creation could be genuine involvement in an issue, and a perception that such involvement will effect change. Self-presentation as someone interested in specific issues may also play a role.

Additionally, there is also the question of collective efficacy, but compared to personal efficacy this has been underresearched. Self-efficacy could explain collective efficacy; individual action could explain it, collective action and social action could also do so.

The project used an online questionnaire as well as the Netvizz tool to generate insights on such questions, for a range of pages in Dutch. This involved some 70 Facebook pages addressing a range of topics.

Age and specific administrative roles positively influence personal engagement. Involvement and self-efficacy are mediated by social connection and self-presentation. For collective efficacy, age again played a role, individual efficacy and social connection also played a key role, as did the existence of a specific group goal me of collective actions. The size of a page and group does not matter, but its collective activity does. Age matters too, but not as expected.