IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v11y2021i1p21582440211001354.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Becoming E-Petition: An Assemblage-Based Framework for Analysis and Research

Author

Listed:
  • Helen Briassoulis

Abstract

Ε-petitions, the digital version of printed petitions, are increasingly being used as complimentary means of nonconfrontational, online citizen mobilization/protest. They attract considerable research interest because they provide (big) data to study e-petitioning and the political and other aspects of socio-spatial issues. E-petition studies lack discussion of ontology, of “what is an e-petition,†implicitly treating e-petitions as “systems-as-a-whole†or, seldom, as relational formations. Acknowledging the foundational role of ontology, Assemblage Thinking (AT) is argued to beget a more judicious approach when e-petitions are employed as research instruments to study the “who-what-when-where-and-how†of a socio-spatial issue and, concurrently, their situated contribution to issue-related decision-making. After presenting the reductionist/essentialist and the nonreductionist/relational approaches to the study of e-petitions and introducing ΑΤ, an assemblage-based framework is proposed that conceptualizes e-petitions as multiplicities comprising assemblages, dynamic compositions emerging from processes of heterogeneous components coming together to serve a purpose. A concomitant methodology is outlined and an illustrative example is offered. The advantages of assemblage-based over reductionist/essentialist approaches for the situated co-analysis of socio-spatial issues and e-petitions are discussed, indicating how they address prominent concerns of the literature, and future research directions are suggested.

Suggested Citation

  • Helen Briassoulis, 2021. "Becoming E-Petition: An Assemblage-Based Framework for Analysis and Research," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(1), pages 21582440211, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:11:y:2021:i:1:p:21582440211001354
    DOI: 10.1177/21582440211001354
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440211001354
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/21582440211001354?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carpenter, Daniel & Moore, Colin D., 2014. "When Canvassers Became Activists: Antislavery Petitioning and the Political Mobilization of American Women," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 108(3), pages 479-498, August.
    2. Lucas Böttcher & Olivia Woolley-Meza & Dirk Brockmann, 2017. "Temporal dynamics of online petitions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(5), pages 1-12, May.
    3. Helen Z. Margetts & Peter John & Scott A. Hale & Stéphane Reissfelder, 2015. "Leadership without Leaders? Starters and Followers in Online Collective Action," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 63(2), pages 277-277, June.
    4. Helen Briassoulis, 2019. "Governance as multiplicity: the Assemblage Thinking perspective," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 52(3), pages 419-450, September.
    5. Jodi L. McNeill & Thomas F. Thornton, 2017. "Pipelines, Petitions, and Protests in the Internet Age: Exploring the Human Geographies of Online Petitions Challenging Proposed Transcontinental Alberta Oil Sands Pipelines," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(6), pages 1279-1298, November.
    6. Helen Z. Margetts & Peter John & Scott A. Hale & Stéphane Reissfelder, 2015. "Leadership without Leaders? Starters and Followers in Online Collective Action," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 63(2), pages 278-299, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lu, Peng, 2016. "Predicting peak of participants in collective action," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 274(C), pages 318-330.
    2. Lu, Peng & Nie, Shizhao, 2019. "The strength distribution and combined duration prediction of online collective actions: Big data analysis and BP neural networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 535(C).
    3. Brigitte Huber & Manuel Goyanes & Homero Gil de Zúñiga, 2021. "Linking Extraversion to Collective and Individual Forms of Political Participation: The Mediating Role of Political Discussion," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1289-1310, July.
    4. Lu, Peng & Yao, Qi & Lu, Pengfei, 2019. "Two-stage predictions of evolutionary dynamics during the rumor dissemination," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 517(C), pages 349-369.
    5. Vincent Pasquier & Alex J Wood, 2018. "The power of social media as a labour campaigning tool: lessons from OUR Walmart and the Fight for 15," Post-Print hal-01903758, HAL.
    6. Philippe Le Billon & Berit Kristoffersen, 2020. "Just cuts for fossil fuels? Supply-side carbon constraints and energy transition," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(6), pages 1072-1092, September.
    7. Jeffery A. Jenkins & Charles Stewart, 2020. "Causal inference and American political development: the case of the gag rule," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(3), pages 429-457, December.
    8. Hoferer, Moritz & Böttcher, Lucas & Herrmann, Hans J. & Gersbach, Hans, 2020. "The impact of technologies in political campaigns," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 538(C).
    9. Lucas Böttcher & Hans J Herrmann & Hans Gersbach, 2018. "Clout, activists and budget: The road to presidency," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(3), pages 1-11, March.
    10. Young Bae & Byung-Deuk Woo & Sungwon Jung & Eunchae Lee & Jiin Lee & Mingu Lee & Haegyun Park, 2023. "The Relationship Between Government Response Speed and Sentiments of Public Complaints: Empirical Evidence From Big Data on Public Complaints in South Korea," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(2), pages 21582440231, April.
    11. Bertie Vidgen & Taha Yasseri, 2020. "What, when and where of petitions submitted to the UK government during a time of chaos," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 53(3), pages 535-557, September.
    12. Frolov, Daniil, 2021. "Transplantation of economic institutions: a post-institutional theory (expanded version)," MPRA Paper 108707, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:11:y:2021:i:1:p:21582440211001354. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.