PhD Research Proposal Presentation: Usman Tayyab
Usman Tayyab, a doctoral student at 51吃瓜网 in the area of Information Systems will be presenting his research proposal entitled:
Three Essays on Corporate Activism and Advocacy in the Age of Social Media: A Computationally Intensive Theory Construction Approach
Wednesday, June 4, 2025, from 2:00pm to 3:30pm
(The presentation will be conducted on Zoom)
Student Committee Chair: Professor Emmanuelle Vaast
Please note that the presentation will be conducted on Zoom.
ABSTRACT
This dissertation investigates the emergent phenomenon of corporate participation in digital activism and digital organizing. Against the backdrop of increasing corporate participation in online contentious public policy discourse, the study aims to develop a phenomenon-based theoretical understanding of corporate digital activism grounded in digital trace data. Employing a Computationally Intensive Theory Construction (CITC) research framework, the dissertation combines algorithmic pattern discovery with human-driven abductive theorizing. This dissertation integrates large-scale digital trace data鈥擳witter posts, Google Trends, and Wikipedia pageviews鈥攚ith computational methods such as topic modeling, social network analysis, and explainable machine learning to surface empirical patterns and construct theory.
The dissertation comprises three interconnected studies. The first paper introduces the concept of 鈥渟elective participation鈥� as corporations try to navigate public expectation and potential backlash. The second paper explores the temporal dynamics of corporate-public interaction in the digital sphere by identifying public attention as the trigger for corporate digital activism. The third paper shifts the temporal focus of this corporate-public communicative interaction by exploring how corporate activism and corporate social advocacy, in turn, enables digital organizing and counter-organizing around contentious public policy issues. Together, these studies contribute to digital activism, digital organizing, and social media scholarship.
