Purposive action is communicative (gestures) but is also undertaken in order to achieve objectives that transcend communication (outcomes). Modern communications technologies, and the Internet in particular, have helped such actions grow and scale beyond what was possible with earlier means. Peer production and collective action are two categories of purposive action that share many features and have received significant media and scholarly attention of late. In peer production the objective is to collaboratively produce resources that can be utilized by many. In collective action, the objective is to collaboratively achieve outcomes that are desired by many. In this sense peer production is conceptually a subset of collective action, although the focus on production comes with its own set of issues regarding the division of labor and the regulation of ownership, while the term collective action has come to be associated more with political action aimed at social change. A central concern in both instances is the extent and conditions under which the Internet and the various platforms and social formations that it engenders can be effective catalysts of such collaborative action. Which organizational forms, strategies, policies, or tactics are conducive to online collaboration? How significant is the role of the Internet at large or of particular organizations that utilize the Internet heavily in facilitating massively scalable purposive action? In this talk I will report on a number of ongoing projects at the National University of Singapore that aim to tackle some of these issues. I will focus on an investigation of the role and impact of Creative Commons using a combination of discourse and time series analysis and I will also present a methodology for assessing the benefits of various organizational forms for collective action using network analysis. In the context of this work I will also touch upon the promise and challenge of 'big data' research for the social sciences.
Giorgos Cheliotis is an Assistant Professor of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore and the Public Lead of Creative Commons Singapore. Previously, Giorgos was a visiting researcher with Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a visiting assistant professor at the School of Information Systems of Singapore Management University, a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in Switzerland, and a post-doctoral researcher with IBM Research at the Zurich Research Laboratory, where he also worked as a doctoral student, earning a PhD in Telecommunications and Information Systems from his home institution, the National Technical University of Athens. His research and teaching focuses on the analysis of socioeconomic and policy issues brought forth by communications technologies and the growth of online social networks. He is the founder of the Free Culture Research Conference, the Chief Editor of the International Journal of Communications Law and Policy, a fellow of the Center for Asia Pacific Technology Law and Policy at Nanyang Technological University, and a member of the Community of IT Experts instituted by the Singapore Internet Research Center. Giorgos has consulted for many global and regional business leaders, governments, technology startups and NGOs, and is a frequent speaker on new media trends, while his work has been featured in numerous academic publications and in the media.
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