WeDo: Exploring Participatory, End-To-End Collective Action
This addresses the need for tools that enable communities to engage in complete collective action cycles, though it is incremental as it builds on existing systems for specific aspects.
The researchers tackled the problem of supporting participatory, end-to-end collective action by developing WeDo, a system that automates transitions through phases like identifying opportunities and taking action, with pilot deployments showing it can facilitate such processes but faces challenges like leadership elicitation.
Many celebrate the Internet's ability to connect individuals and facilitate collective action toward a common goal. While numerous systems have been designed to support particular aspects of collective action, few systems support participatory, end-to-end collective action in which a crowd or community identifies opportunities, formulates goals, brainstorms ideas, develops plans, mobilizes, and takes action. To explore the possibilities and barriers in supporting such interactions, we have developed WeDo, a system aimed at promoting simple forms of participatory, end-to-end collective action. Pilot deployments of WeDo illustrate that sociotechnical systems can support automated transitions through different phases of end-to-end collective action, but that challenges, such as the elicitation of leadership and the accommodation of existing group norms, remain.