@article{Burke_G-2022_82742,
title = {Making space for garbage cans: How emergent groups organize social media spaces to orchestrate widescale helping in a crisis},
author = {Burke, G. and Omidvar-Tehrani, O. and Spanellis, A. and Pyrko, I.},
month = {apr},
year = {2022},
abstract = {During the Covid-19 pandemic, citizens self-organized at an unprecedented scale to support vulnerable people in neighbourhoods, towns, and cities. Drawing on an in-depth study of an online volunteering group that emerged at the beginning of the pandemic and helped thousands of people in a UK city, we unpack how citizens co-construct social media spaces to orchestrate helping activity during a crisis. Conceptualizing a novel synthesis of classical garbage can theory and virtual space, we reveal how emergent groups use 'spatial partitioning' and 'spatial mapping' to create a multi-layered spatial architecture that distributes decision-making and invites impromptu choice occasions: spontaneous matchmaking, proximal chance connects, and speculative attraction. Our insights extend the study of emergent organizing and decision-making in crises. Furthermore, we advance a new line of theorizing which exploits garbage can theory, beyond its existing application in classical decision sciences, to posit a spatial view of organizing that paves the way for its novel applications in organization studies.},
journal = {Organization Studies},
publisher = {SAGE Publications},
url = {https://publichealthscotland.scot/id/82742},
}
