IN FOR A PENNY, IN FOR A POUND: HOW REDDITORS ORGANISED FOR COLLECTIVE FINANCIAL ACTION

Abstract

How did an online social movement on Reddit organise to punish their opponents financially on the stock market? Despite the increasing prevalence of research on online social movements, existing literature pays little attention to the emergence of collective action in such movements. Leveraging publicly available data from Reddit and Yahoo! Finance, this paper shows that the scale of the movement was positively associated with the unity of the movement and, in turn, that the unity of the movement was positively associated with the intensity of collective financial action. Despite links between online social movement participants commonly perceived to be weak and sparse, the study of the movement on Reddit revealed increasing coalescence within the movement as it grew in size. Also, on the back of criticism that online social movements often fail to crystallise external political impacts, this paper found that collective financial action on the stock market intensified as the movement coalesced. This research draws lessons on when we should expect to see online social movements tightening in unity, as well as motivators for the collective action in such movements.