The Ebbs and Flows of Digital Leadership

About This Event

Join us for an engaging conversation with  

Albana Dwonch, PhD, University of Washington

SUMMARY
Across the globe, contemporary protest movements from Occupy Wall Street in the US, to the Robin Hood Tax Campaign in the UK, and the Arab Spring in the Middle East, have propelled “invisible” leaders of small groups as originators of protests of high visibility and managers of large social media accounts that explode or shrink in unexpected and often unpredictable ad-hoc mobilizations. Can concepts of leadership, as we know it today, help us understand the organizational dynamics of social political and economic movements in a digital era?

Set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and building on her recent research on social media and activism after the Arab Spring, Albana Dwonch will discuss various aspects and contradictions of leadership in the social media age.  Through her detailed analysis on the formational dynamics, composition and complex processes of internal organizations among and within small social media youth groups, she will explore such notions as “leaderless movements”;  “invisible organizational structures” “Horizontal group management”; “core actors” and peripheral networks. She will examine the challenges and opportunities of leaders without organizational resources, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their internal functioning within social media netowrks.