The advent of social media has led to new forms of organizing and collective engagement. This research questions how social media use affords connective action, i.e., a recent form of collective engagement in which actors co-produce and circulate content based upon an issue of mutual interest. Mixed methods analyses of three episodes of connective action unfolding with microblogging use during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill help detail the interdependence type among actors’ emerging roles characterized by distinct patterns of feature use. The findings allow us to elaborate upon the concept of connective affordances as collective level affordances actualized by actors in team interdependent roles. Connective affordances extend research on affordances as a relational concept by considering not only the relationships between technology and users but also the interdependence type among users and the effects of this interdependence onto what users can do with the technology. This study contributes to research on social media use by paying close attention to how distinct patterns of feature use enact emerging roles. Adding to scholarship on the collective use of technology, it considers how the patterns of feature use for emerging groups of actors are intricately and mutually related to each other. 

Dr. Emmanuelle Vaast (PhD in Management Sciences,Ecole Polytechnique, Paris) is an Associate Professor and area coordinator of Information Systems at the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University. She teaches the core Information Systems course as well as Managing Information Technology (BCom and PMBA) and research methods (PhD. Program). Her research examines how social practices emerge and change with the implementation and use of new technologies and how these new practices are associated with organizational and change dynamics. She has in particular investigated the learning and knowledge dynamics taking place at different levels (communities and networks of practice, for instance) and the boundary spanning involved in these dynamics when new Information Systems get implemented and used. Professor Vaast has been fascinated by the new practices and social and societal changes associated with social media such as blogs and microblogs. Some of the themes she has especially been interested in deal with the emergence of new organizational forms and with new dynamics associated with organizational and occupational identification, cognition, as well as institutional dynamics and mindfulness.