Exploring How Publics Discursively Organize as Digital Collectives: The Use of Empty and Floating Signifiers as Organizing Devices in Social Media

Extant research has analyzed how consumers constitute online publics aggregating around a common frame. Yet previous studies do not explain how aggregative frames function discursively, and thus it is unclear how individuals aggregate despite not sharing a common identity. Drawing on Laclau’s theory on empty signifiers, we suggest that aggregative frames take the form of empty signifiers, that is, broad terms whose meaning remains open. Thanks to this emptiness, aggregative frames can be appropriated by individuals and their meaning repurposed to serve individuals’ desire for publicity, so to constitute digital collectives. Furthermore, we suggest that empty signifiers do not always form publics but only when they are associated with floating signifiers, that is, less broad terms. By disentangling the mechanism that allows publics to form, our study contributes to scholarship on digital collectives as it deepens our understanding of the conditions that are necessary for publics to form.