Pauzi, Syibratul Fauzana Mohd
(2020)
Opinion Leadership Emergence In A Leadership Networked Movement Via Twitter: A Case Study Of #UNDIROSAK.
PhD thesis, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Abstract
In recent years, a glaring trend that emerges out of 21st century networked
movements — where digital technologies such as social media have a key role in
choreographing them — is the rise of leaderless movements. This is where these
politically-motivated social movements could run within the absence of any institutional
leadership, which raises concerns on the extent of their effectiveness. However, it is
found that leaders can still naturally emerge out of these networked movements without
any formal appointment or any attempt at a power grab. When trust in representative
leadership is decreasing and leaders can emerge naturally out of these leaderless
networked movements, it is interesting to understand how they mobilise and sustain.
Based on this premise, the researcher attempted to investigate the emergence of
leadership within #UndiRosak, a leaderless networked movement where Malaysian voters
were weighing the options to spoil their votes in Malaysia’s 14th General Election as a
way of expressing dissatisfaction by their limited options of eligible candidates in the
election. Guided by three research questions, the study was conducted through a
combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, namely thematic analysis and social
network analysis, using Twitter data as an archival source. The findings of these research
questions suggested that in the absence of traditional institutional leadership in
#UndiRosak, a form of opinion leadership — where leaders are identified by their amount
of influence within the Twitter network — still emerged.
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