Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
Hyperlinks as Institutionalized Connective Public Goods for Collective Action Online Jiawei Sophia Fu Media, Technology, and Society, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208
Michelle Shumate Communication Studies, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208
Nongovernmental organization (NGO) hyperlink networks are institutionalized connective public goods. They influence which actors and what aspects of social issues are made visible to the public in search engine results. To understand how contextual forces and institutional pressures influence who hyperlinks to whom online, this research examines a hyperlink network of 410 NGOs with various social missions operating across China. It suggests that institutional factors external to the network impact the structure of NGO hyperlink networks. In particular, institutional convener and legal registration status induce homophily hyperlinking effects among organizations, controlling for network interdependencies and other organizational attributes. Implications for hyperlink networks, institutional homophily, NGO collective action, and the development of civil society in China are drawn from the results. Keywords: Social Network Analysis (SNA), Institutional Homophily, Hyperlink, Collective Action, Nongovernmental Organization (NGO), Civil Society, China. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12161
Hyperlinks are a type of connective public goods, or an information structure that affords connectivity between members and nonmembers (Monge et al., 1998). Although research on interorganizational hyperlink networks has proliferated in recent years (e.g., Ackland & O’Neil, 2011), research has yet to focus on the influence of the macrolevel institutional pressures on hyperlink networks (for notable exceptions, see e.g., Park, Barnett, & Chung, 2011). Previous research has examined hyperlink networks across a variety of social issues and contexts, including security fence in Israel (Rogers & Ben-David, 2008), renewable energy in Germany and Japan (Hartwig, Kobashi, Okura, & Tkach-Kawasaki, 2015), and environmental protection in China (Yang, 2013). However, the majority of this scholarship makes the tacit assumption that actors in different political and institutional contexts use the same heuristics when choosing to hyperlink to other actors. To fill this gap, this research will examine how sociopolitical Editorial Record: First manuscript received on October 9, 2015. Revisions received on February 4, 2016 and April 25, 2016. Accepted by S. Shyam Sundar on May 1, 2016. Final manuscript received on May 25, 2016. First published online on June 21, 2016. 298
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and socioinstitutional forces shape the pattern of hyperlinks among organizations. To do so, we examine a hyperlink network of nongovernmental organizations1 (NGOs) in China. Following Khagram and colleagues (2002), NGOs are defined as “private nonprofit groups whose primary aim is to influence publicly some form of social change” (p. 6). NGOs in China are not only constrained by their resources and capacity but also by the macrolevel institutional context. For instance, NGOs in China face coercive pressures from the government and legitimacy and trust problems from the public (He, 2008). NGOs in China are organized by different types of institutions (e.g., governments or individuals) and have different registration status. Thus, the complex NGO ecology in China presents an ideal case to examine the influence of institutional environments on hyperlinks. In this study, we examine how institutional convener and legal registration status influence NGO hyperlink networks. This research makes three contributions to the study of hyperlink networks. First, it emphasizes the importance of institutional environments in configuring interorganizational hyperlink networks for collective action online, above and beyond previously studied mesolevel, organizational attributes (e.g., social issues). Second, we explicitly link institutional homophily (Atouba & Shumate, 2015), or the general tendency for organizations that face the same institutional forces to have connections, to NGO hyperlinking choices. Finally, we empirically examine an NGO hyperlink network in an institutional environment distinct from those examined in a majority of previous scholarship (i.e., Western liberal democracies). In doing so, this paper presents some preliminary evidence for the theoretical perspective introduced. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. First, we review the literature on hyperlink networks and collective action, especially among NGOs, and highlight the institutional influence on hyperlink networks and collective action. Second, drawing on institutional homophily, we present a set of hypotheses to assess how institutional forces shape the pattern of NGO hyperlink networks in China. Third, we describe the methods employed and present our findings. And finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for hyperlink networks, homophily theory, NGO collective action, and the development of civil society in China.
Literature Review Hyperlink Networks and NGO Collective Action A hyperlink is “a technological capability that enables one specific website to link directly to another” (Park, Barnett, & Nam, 2002, p. 157). For example, in our study, China Youth Development Foundation (CYDF) had a link to China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation to direct interested publics; CYDF and Baobeihuijia (Baby Back Home) Volunteer Association hyperlinked to One Foundation. Hyperlinks have been described as strategic vehicles for the expression of collective identity, affiliation, credibility, reputation, and endorsement (Ackland & O’Neil, 2011; De Maeyer, 2013; Park et al., 2002; Shumate & Dewitt, 2008). Collective action theory (Bimber, Flanagin, & Stohl, 2005; Olson, 1965) posits that “individuals and organizations rationally contribute to public goods which they could not create alone and which are accessible to publics” (Shumate & Dewitt, 2008, p. 408). NGO hyperlink networks have been conceptualized as a type of information public good resulting from online collective action. This is because a hyperlink network meets the two criteria that define public goods: jointness of supply and the impossibility of exclusion (see Olson, 1965; Shumate & Dewitt, 2008). In addition, Shumate and Dewitt (2008) and Shumate and Lipp (2008) describe hyperlink networks as a connective public good, denoting that the created information structure affords connectivity between members and nonmembers (Fulk, Flanagin, Kalman, Monge, & Ryan, 1996; Monge et al., 1998; Shumate & Lipp, 2008). This is distinct from a Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 21 (2016) 298–311 © 2016 International Communication Association
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communal public good, like an information repository, where all benefits are equally shared by members because they can each commonly access the pool of information created by their contributions. The conceptualization of hyperlink networks as a connective public good recognizes some of the significant critiques of hyperlink analysis, namely that the barriers to entry are very low and hyperlinks may not represent significant ties (De Maeyer, 2012; Weber & Monge, 2011). Hyperlinks do not represent collaborative ties among organizations, although research suggests that they may be related to offline ties (see Pilny & Shumate, 2012). Instead, NGO hyperlinks are examples of representational communication, or messages about affiliations among a set of actors communicated to the publics (Shumate & Contractor, 2013; Wu & Ackland, 2014). Through hyperlinks, organizations endorse each other, direct the publics to recognize other members, self-organize their networks to put leaders in the network center, and enhance the collective visibility of the network’s goals (Ackland & O’Neil, 2011; Shumate & Dewitt, 2008). Previous scholarship has explored interorganizational hyperlink networks from two perspectives: organizational attribute and structural embeddedness. From the organizational attribute perspective, various organizational characteristics, such as organizational type and mission, shape hyperlinking behaviors (Pilny & Shumate, 2012; Yang, 2013). For example, media visibility is considered to be an organizational resource that attracts hyperlinks (Gonzalez-Bailon, 2009). This perspective uniquely focuses on organizational characteristics that distinguish organizations at the individual organization level, irrespective of the macrolevel context. The second perspective emphasizes the structural embeddedness of online organizational behavior in a network. The choice to hyperlink to a particular actor is influenced by the existing set of organizational hyperlinks (Lusher & Ackland, 2011). Network structures, such as degree popularity, reciprocity, and transitivity,3 describe the unique patterns of connections prevalent in the network (Monge & Contractor, 2003). Despite their explanatory power, these theoretical perspectives have paid insufficient attention to constraints, embedded in macrolevel institutional contexts, on strategic hyperlinking choices. Socioinstitutional and sociopolitical context are important but understudied influences on hyperlink networks (De Maeyer, 2013) and online organizational behavior. This study seeks to fill this gap by focusing on the institutional context of interorganizational hyperlink networks.
The Influence of Institutional Pressures on Hyperlink Networks Previous research implicitly suggests that contextual forces have the potential to structure hyperlink networks. For instance, economic and cultural factors are important forces for social network structures at the international level (Barnett & Sung, 2006). In a more local context, Rogers and Ben-David (2008) found that national origins of organizations played a significant role in shaping the virtual Palestinian-Israeli hyperlink and issue networks. Although the NGOs examined have similar stances toward the “security fence,” their sociopolitical and socioinstitutional context affected their hyperlinking behaviors, issue-framing tactics, and their network positions. Thus, the macrolevel institutional environments shape hyperlink networks. NGOs in China are embedded in a distinct institutional environment from their counterparts in Western democracies. Although a full description of the institutional barriers faced by Chinese NGOs is beyond the scope of this paper (for a fuller treatment, we refer the interested reader to He, 2008; Marquis, Zhou, & Yang, 2016), what follows is a brief primer. Chinese NGOs face various explicit and implicit institutional pressures, such as the stringent registration policy to screen out smaller, activist NGOs, the government restriction on NGO growth by restricting membership and establishing branch offices (Schwartz, 2004), and limited knowledge and trust from the government and the public (Hasmath & Hsu, 2014). As a result, NGOs in China are mostly active in nonsensitive and depoliticized social issues (e.g., environment and volunteerism as opposed to civil rights) and they usually take educational and awareness building approaches as opposed to activism (Ho, 2008; Yang & Taylor, 2010). 300
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We propose that institutional context shapes the NGO landscape and online behaviors, inducing some NGOs to create and maintain hyperlinks with certain others. Drawing on the concept of institutional homophily, the next section introduces how the institutional context makes some NGOs more similar than others and induces hyperlinks. From this argument, we deduce hypotheses about the influence of the institutional environment on NGO hyperlinking in China and conceptualize NGO hyperlink networks as institutionalized connective public goods.
Institutional Homophily in Chinese NGO Hyperlink Networks Institutional homophily describes the general tendency for organizations that face the same institutional forces to form relationships to reduce risks, create legitimacy, and buffer against sanctions (Atouba & Shumate, 2015). The concept bridges institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) and homophily theory (Byrne, 1971) to explain how institutional factors induce connections among organizations. According to institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), institutional environments (e.g., laws and norms) induce or coerce organizations to develop similar behaviors to reduce uncertainty and enhance legitimacy. The outcome of the same institutional pressure is the similarity in organizational structures and logics of action. In short, institutional theory explains why organizations are similar. However, institutional theory alone does not seek to explain connections among organizations in a communication network. However, homophily theory posits that similar actors are more likely to create connections (Byrne, 1971; Monge & Contractor, 2003). Atouba and Shumate (2015) posit that there are at least three types of homophily at work in interorganizational networks: attribute-based, geography-based, and institutional. Attribute-based homophily is based on “general characteristics across which organizations can be similar” (p. 589). For example, previous research has demonstrated that NGOs with common social aims are more likely to have hyperlinks (Ackland & O’Neil, 2011). Geography-based homophily is based on “embeddedness in a common meaning space or social and cultural environment” (p. 590), which is larger than a space where proximity mechanisms traditionally operate. For example, Shumate and Dewitt (2008) found that NGOs on the same continent are more likely to hyperlink with each other. In contrast, institutional homophily is “based on information about actors’ relations” that resulted from common institutional pressures (Atouba & Shumate, 2015, p. 589). For example, NGOs with the common funding sources are more likely to develop collaborative relationships (Atouba & Shumate, 2015). Thus, institutional homophily suggests that NGO hyperlinks are shaped by common institutional connections. Drawing upon institutional homophily, we examine institutional convener and registration status as two institutional factors that influence NGO hyperlinks, above and beyond the effects of structural signatures and organizational attributes. Institutional Convener “Institutional convener” describes the organization that created the NGO. Organizations convened in a similar fashion are more similar to one another (Aldrich & Kenworthy, 1999). As such, commonality in institutional convener constitutes a significant source of institutional homophily. Similarity in institutional convener homogenizes organizations’ online behavior and makes NGOs more likely to hyperlink with each other to reduce uncertainty, maintain legitimacy, and promote collective identity. Based upon institutional convener, we classify domestic Chinese NGOs into top-down governmentorganized NGOs (GONGOs) and bottom-up grassroots NGOs, organized by civilians and communities (Yang, 2013; Yang & Taylor, 2010). The government, as the institutional convener, grants some NGOs legitimacy status over others in China. GONGOs, often organized as foundations and research centers, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 21 (2016) 298–311 © 2016 International Communication Association
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are concentrated in the capital city (Beijing), have an abundance of resources, and are officially recognized by the government (He, 2008; Schwartz, 2004). As such, GONGOs enjoy advantages in policy support, funding, social connections, and legal status over other types of NGOs, but have compromised autonomy (Ho, 2001; Schwartz, 2004). Based on institutional homophily, we hypothesize that: H1a: GONGOs are more likely to hyperlink to each other than to NGOs with other types of conveners (i.e., grassroots NGOs, international NGOs). In contrast, grassroots NGOs convened by communities and individuals depend on the recognition of the state and seek legitimacy through developing connections with government officials (Ho, 2008; Schwartz, 2004). Grassroots NGOs have difficulty in obtaining funding, social support, and legitimacy from the government (Schwartz, 2004; Spires, 2011). Legally registered grassroots NGOs only comprise a small portion of NGOs in China and the number of unregistered grassroots NGOs remains significant (Spires, 2011). Although the development of new media empowers these NGOs, the resource divide between GONGOs and grassroots NGOs extends to the online sphere (Yang & Taylor, 2010). Based on institutional homophily, we hypothesize that: H1b: Grassroots NGOs are more likely to hyperlink to each other than to NGOs with other types of conveners (i.e., GONGOs, international NGOs). A third NGO group operating in China consists of international NGOs. Compared to GONGOs and grassroots NGOs born in China, INGOs have a variety of conveners, such as intergovernmental organizations, civilians, and corporations. Recently, more restrictive legislation was introduced by the Chinese government to curtail INGOs’ activities in China, such as the requirement of police approval of all INGOs’ activities and restrictions on accepting donations inside China (Jacobs, 2015). In response to various institutional barriers, INGOs must actively cooperate with the Chinese government and local Chinese NGO partners to manage programs and create legitimacy (Zheng & Fewsmith, 2008). These institutional barriers also affect INGOs’ online behaviors such that INGOs must hyperlink to local Chinese NGOs to gain media visibility and legitimacy (Yang, 2013). In summary, INGOs are not constrained by the institutional pressure of a common convener. Thus, INGOs are less likely to constrain their hyperlinking to other INGOs in the Chinese context. Therefore, we hypothesize that: H1c: INGOs are less likely to hyperlink to other INGOs than to domestic Chinese NGOs.
Registration Status NGOs in China face legal registration status difference (Hidelbrandt, 2011). The Chinese government is an institutional power that grants legitimacy status to legally registered NGOs. NGOs in China must undergo several steps to register under the Ministry of Civil Affairs, including a full examination by a government bureau with a connection to the NGO’s area of interest. The stringent registration processes present formidable challenges for smaller, grassroots NGOs (Hildebrandt, 2011; Schwartz, 2004). Further, the government stipulates that “no NGO may be established in an issue area in which an NGO already exists, nor can an NGO establish branch offices” (Schwartz, 2004, p. 38). In this way, the government limits NGO collective action that might challenge the government’s authority. As such, registration status reflects an organization’s level of resources, longevity, proximity to political center, social connections, and the political rightness of its social mission (Hildebrandt, 2011; Schwartz, 2004; Spires, 2011). 302
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Legally registered NGOs are perceived as more legitimate and credible. In contrast, nonregistered NGOs encounter difficulties in obtaining funding, human resources, and legal protection (Schwartz, 2004). Thus, registration status also constitutes a significant source of institutional homophily such that registered NGOs are more similar to one another and, based on this similarity, are more likely to hyperlink to one another; nonregistered NGOs are more likely to affiliate with one another to enhance collective identity. Therefore, we hypothesize that: H2: (a) Legally registered NGOs are more likely to hyperlink to each other than to nonregistered NGOs and (b) Nonregistered NGOs are more likely to hyperlink to each other than to legally registered NGOs.
Method Sample and Procedure The sample for this study was obtained from the Beijing Civil Society Development Research Center (CDB) (http://www.cdb.org.cn), an important information and capacity building platform for China’s NGO sector. CDB cooperates with nine regional NGO partners to identify influential NGOs in various social issues both at the local and the national level in China. Subsequently, CDB contacts these NGOs for background information about their organizations. This information is included in their directory. After removing duplicates, the directory contained 814 organizations. These NGOs cover a variety of social issues (e.g., education, environment, social services, and health) and serve each of China’s national regions. Among these, 556 organizations (68.3%) had valid websites. After removing duplicate websites (n = 14) and 132 inactive NGOs, the 410 NGOs comprised the final sample. We used Issuecrawler (http://www.issuecrawler.net) (Rogers, 2009) to crawl the websites of the 410 domains in January 2014. As this crawling period was during China’s biggest national holiday, no modification from NGOs’ websites was expected, allowing us to download the websites with no issues. Before crawling, the NGO’s website homepage, “About Us” page, and “Partner” page were manually archived. Issuecrawler crawls each NGO website and records all of the hyperlinks. We used the inter-actor analysis within Issuecrawler to crawl the entered domains’ outlinks with a page depth of three and over three iterations. The hyperlink network in this study was a 410 by 410 matrix of website domains, where 1 indicated the presence of a hyperlink and 0 indicated its absence. Information from the CDB NGO database was gathered to identify NGOs’ social-issue diversity, founding age, city, national region, and registration status. To ascertain an NGO’s institutional convener, we examined three additional sources: the “About Us” page on how the organization was founded (from the NGO’s official website), the introduction section of the NGO’s Sina Weibo (microblog), and Baidu search (China’s Google equivalent). Measures Institutional convener Using the CDB list of 814 organizations, two undergraduate research assistants and one graduate student commonly coded 55 organizations for institutional convener for training purposes. From the remaining 759 organizations, we randomly selected 152 organizations (20%) and independently coded them for intercoder reliability testing. Reliability was good (Krippendorf ’s alpha = 0.84). From the sample of 410 NGOs who were active and had a valid website, 34 were top-down GONGOs (8.29%), 294 were grassroots NGOs (71.71%), and 82 were INGOs (20%). This variable was used to test hypothesis 1a-1c. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 21 (2016) 298–311 © 2016 International Communication Association
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Registration status Registration status described whether an NGO had legally registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs. This variable was a binary variable where 1 represented “legally registered NGOs” (n = 315) and 0 represented “nonregistered NGOs” (n = 66). However, there were 29 organizations in the sample whose registration status was not available, and thus were coded as having data missing. This variable was used to test hypotheses 2a and 2b. Network structures We controlled for three types of internal network structures in the network analysis to address network interdependence (Lusher, Koskinen, & Robins, 2012). Edge, or choice, was the simple likelihood of hyperlink ties being present in the network (Monge & Contractor, 2003). A mutual hyperlink tie represented the reciprocal ties between two organizations. Cyclical ties measured the presence of a path from A to B to C and back to A. Control variables Founding age described how many years the organization had been in operation. After removing outliers whose age was above three standard deviations (n = 4) of the sample mean, NGOs in the sample have been operating in China for an average of 11.41 years (SD = 8.31). Geography describes the city in which the NGO was headquartered. Among 410 NGOs, a total of 67 cities were identified and NGOs were concentrated in Beijing (n = 179), Shanghai (n = 36), Guangzhou (n = 23), and Chengdu (n = 19). Finally, social issue diversity determined whether an organization was generalist or specialist based upon the diversity of goals and heterogeneity of membership (Shumate & Lipp, 2008). CDB listed 27 social issue areas4 that an NGO might work in. On average, NGOs in the sample work in 2.75 social issues (SD = 1.10). Thus, we set the cutting point of three where NGOs with three or more social issue areas were considered as generalist NGOs (n = 236); otherwise, they were coded as specialists (n = 174). Analysis To test the relationship between the hypothesized institutional variables and hyperlink network data, we used exponential random graph modeling (ERGM) with Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) maximum-likelihood estimation within the R-project package (Morris, Handcock, & Hunter, 2008). ERGMs allowed the researchers to determine whether the hypothesized variables were related to the probability of hyperlinking while simultaneously accounting for network structures and other control variables. If the hypothesized network structures occurred significantly more often than by chance, indicated by a positive significant parameter, then the structure had a positive propensity. Similarly, significant negative parameter estimates were associated with negative propensities. Convergence was achieved when MC p-values were larger than 0.80 and a parameter was considered significant when the estimate was 1.96 times larger than the magnitude of the standard error. In this study, all parameters converged in the models. In order to test the hypotheses, several nested models were created. Results The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of institutional factors on NGO hyperlinks. A total of 1,218 links among 410 NGO websites were examined. The average degree centrality was 2.97 304
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Table 1 Estimation Results Parameter Edges Mutual Cyclical ties Generalist Specialist Age A Geography GONGO (H1a) Grassroots (H1b) INGO (H1c) Registered (H2a) Non-registered (H2b) AIC BIC
Institutional convener
Registration status
Final model
MC p-value
−5.64 (0.07)** 3.06 (0.12)** 0.65 (0.05)** 0.24 (0.06) ∗∗ −0.25 (0.09) ∗∗ −0.00 (0.00) 0.63 (0.05) ∗∗ 0.99 (0.18) ** 0.39 (0.06) ** 0.08 (0.16)
−5.62 (0.07)∗∗ 3.07 (0.12)∗∗ 0.65 (0.05)∗∗ 0.23 (0.06) ∗∗ −0.24 (0.09)∗ −0.01 (0.00)∗∗ 0.60 (0.05) ∗∗
−5.79 (0.08)∗∗ 3.03 (0.12)∗∗ 0.64 (0.05)∗∗ 0.23 (0.06)∗∗ −0.25 (0.09)∗∗ −0.01 (0.00) 0.61 (0.05) ∗∗ 0.90 (0.18) ∗∗ 0.33 (0.06) ∗∗ −0.09 (0.18) 0.27 (0.06) ∗∗ 0.79 (0.17) ∗∗ 13655 13775
0.90 0.98 0.98 1.00 0.96 0.94 1.00 0.90 0.96 1.00 0.92 0.96
13684 13785
0.39 (0.06) ∗∗ 0.66 (0.15) ∗∗ 13691 13782
Note: Estimates are listed followed by standard errors in parentheses. ∗ p < 0.05; ∗∗ p < 0.01. A Founding date homophily was measured as the difference between two organizations’ founding dates, so a negative parameter estimate suggests homophily. and the overall density was 0.007. The number of mutual ties and asymmetric ties was 87 and 1,044 respectively. Table 1 reports the maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs) of the hypothesized and control parameters, with standard errors in parentheses. Hypothesis 1 stated that NGOs with similar institutional conveners were more likely to hyperlink to each other (see Final Model). The results show that GONGOs were more likely to hyperlink to GONGOs (H1a, MLE = 0.90, SE = 0.18) and grassroots NGOs were more likely to hyperlink to grassroots NGOs (H1b, MLE = 0.33, SE = 0.06). However, contrary to our hypothesis, INGOs were not less likely to have hyperlinks with INGOs than by chance alone (H1c, MLE = –0.09, SE = 0.18). Thus, H1a and H1b were supported while H1c was not.5 Hypothesis 2 investigated whether NGOs with the same registration status were more likely to hyperlink to each other. Legally registered NGOs were more likely to hyperlink to each other (H2a, MLE = 0.27; SE = 0.06) and nonregistered NGOs significantly preferred to hyperlink to each other (H2b, MLE = 0.79, SE = 0.17). Thus, both H2a and H2b were supported. After assessing the significance of the estimated parameters, we further tested the overall goodness of fit (GOF) of the final model. MC p-value for each parameter was greater than 0.80, indicating good GOF for estimated parameters included in the model.6 Thus, the theoretical model provided a good representation of the observed network. In addition, Figure 1 depicts the results of 100 simulations for the Chinese NGO hyperlink network. They indicate that the final model represented a good explanation for the indegree distribution and edge-wise shared partners’ distribution (see Goodreau, 2007; Hunter, Goodreau, & Handcock, 2008). That means the theoretical model based on institutional homophily adequately accounted for the variability in the number of hyperlinks that each NGO in the network received and the propensity of organizations within the network to have homogeneous shared partners (Morris et al., 2008). Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 21 (2016) 298–311 © 2016 International Communication Association
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Note: Simulation results for the final model. Indegree distribution describes the distribution of the number of connections that a node receives. Edgewise shared partner distribution describes the distribution of the number of connected nodes that also have multiple shared common neighbors. In the plot, the verticalaxis is the log-odds of relative frequency. The solid line represents the observed statistics from the samplenetwork; the boxplots include the median and interquartile range; and the light gray lines display the range in which 95% of simulated observations fall (see Hunter et al., 2008).
Figure 1 Goodness of Fit Results for Indegree and Edgewise Shared Partners Parameters3
Discussion The purpose of this research is to understand how institutional forces shape the pattern of NGO hyperlink networks. NGO hyperlink networks, created through representational communication relations (Shumate & Contractor, 2014), are a connective public good (Shumate & Dewitt, 2008; Shumate & Lipp, 2008). As a connective public good, not all NGOs equally benefit. Instead, NGOs that receive more hyperlinks have a more visible online presence, through search engine results, which may have important benefits for their ability to garner other types of support. We examine two such institutional forces in China: institutional convener and legal registration status. The results suggest that both institutional forces influence NGO hyperlinking behaviors in China, controlling for network interdependencies, social issue diversity, geography, and founding age. Each of these results is discussed individually. First, institutional convener influences NGO hyperlinking choices. More specifically, GONGOs hyperlink to GONGOs and grassroots NGOs hyperlink to grassroots NGOs. Institutional convener creates status difference between GONGOs and grassroots NGOs, such that GONGOs with founding ties to government conveners have more resources and legitimacy (Ho, 2001; Schwartz, 2004). In contrast, grassroots NGOs convened from the bottom-up have similar operating structures and face similar institutional barriers, such as difficulties in obtaining funding, social support, and legitimacy from the government (Schwartz, 2004; Spires, 2011). Consequently, organizations experiencing similar institutional pressures have incentives to hyperlink with each other to enhance compatibility and reduce uncertainty (Atouba & Shumate, 2015), resulting in the segregation of GONGOs’ connective public good (i.e., hyperlink network) and grassroots NGOs’ collective public good. However, we fail to find support for H1c, that INGOs are less likely to hyperlink to other INGOs than to domestic NGOs. While Yang (2013) found that INGOs prefer to hyperlink to Chinese NGOs to gain legitimacy, we fail to find support for this preference. Instead, we speculate that INGOs organized by various institutional conveners may make their hyperlinking choices primarily based upon other types of homophily (e.g., attribute-based). Alternatively, INGOs in China may be too heterogeneous in their hyperlinking behavior to determine a pattern. Second, legal registration status constitutes a significant source of institutional homophily. Similar to institutional convener, legal registration status as an institutional force segregates NGO hyperlink networks into two groups: registered NGOs and nonregistered NGOs. Legally registered NGOs are more similar to each other in that they are constrained by similar legal, policy, and other normative institutional pressures from the government, and they have higher credibility and legitimacy 306
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(Hildebrandt, 2011; Schwartz, 2004). This institutional similarity creates incentives for registered NGOs to affiliate with one another. Intriguingly, nonregistered NGOs hyperlink with nonregistered NGOs and this homophily effect is larger than that effect among registered NGOs. Nonregistered NGOs are constrained by similar institutional pressures, such as government interference, a lack of public support, and limited financial resources (Hildebrandt, 2011). Such institutional pressure seems to induce nonregistered NGOs to endorse each other. By doing so, they promote their collective visibility and advance a connective public good without legal sanction. Therefore, legal status makes nonregistered NGOs more similar and creates even stronger incentives to hyperlink. In summary, our research suggests that institutional forces shape the structure of NGO hyperlink networks in important and heretofore unknown ways. Although previous theorizing has examined collective action networks from the mesolevel attribute and structural signature perspective, this research contributes to understanding online collective action as situated in the macrolevel institutional contexts. Organizations’ hyperlinking strategies are neither random (Shumate & Dewitt, 2008) nor only shaped by organizational attributes (e.g., Yang, 2013) and network interdependencies (e.g., Lusher & Ackland, 2011). Instead, hyperlinks are influenced by the institutional environments of organizations, manifested in the institutional conveners and legal registration status of NGOs, over and above organizational attributes and structural signatures. These structural pressures make some organizations more similar than others to induce hyperlinking. Therefore, we conceptualize hyperlinks as institutionalized connective public goods, or sets of interorganizational links among organizations influenced by common institutional forces that enhances the collective visibility of some and reinforces the gap between others. This study suggests that institutional homophily is an important theoretical mechanism connecting macrolevel contextual factors and actors’ communication network choices. Constrained by connections with powerful actors, organizations are motivated to hyperlink with similar others. According to Atouba and Shumate (2015), institutional homophily occurs because actors seek to “create, enhance, or maintain legitimacy; buffer against institutional sanctions; and sustain relations with funder” (p. 589). The resulting pattern of hyperlinks influences what aspects of social issues and what actors are made visible to the public in search engine results (Kleinberg, 1999). As such, the landscape of hyperlinks online has the potential to shape the salience of particular social issues and actors’ positions to the public. Although hyperlinks afford Chinese NGOs to connect with similar others to advance online collective action, hyperlinks induced by institutional homophily produce segregated connective public goods. Organizations with the same institutional convener and the same legal registration status are more likely to hyperlink to one another. Consistent with Shumate and Dewitt (2008), this research finds divides among NGOs’ online networks extend from their offline divides. This suggests the limitations of new information communication technologies (ICTs) in breaking institutional barriers for civil engagement in China. Specifically, unregistered, grassroots NGOs in China face significant obstacles to establishing a visible online presence because institutional forces segregate them from other types of NGOs in the hyperlink network. Practically, this means that such NGOs would need to establish their own connective public good that is so rich as to rival that of officially sanctioned and convened NGOs in China in order to be similarly visible online.
Limitations and Future Research The study contributes to both the theory and practice of interorganizational hyperlink networks. However, four limitations should be addressed in future research. First, the NGO sample used in this study is not representative of all NGOs operating in China, as only influential NGOs in various social issues Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 21 (2016) 298–311 © 2016 International Communication Association
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were included in the CDB directory. Thus, future research should include a broader sample of national, local, and international NGOs with varying levels of social visibility. Second, this research focuses on NGO hyperlink networks and institutional environments in China. Collective action networks in other contexts may be influenced by other institutional variables. Third, this study only examined the influence of the sociopolitical forces on NGO hyperlink networks; other types of institutional factors, such as cultural-cognitive and normative factors, should be investigated to advance institutional homophily. Danowski’s (2010) WORDij computer program, for example, could help to accomplish this. Finally, this study was cross-sectional and did not fully capture the influence of the external environment on the dynamics of NGO hyperlink networks. Future research could employ a longitudinal design to account for the changing media, cultural, and political environment.
Conclusion In conclusion, the purpose of this research is to examine the influence of sociopolitical and socioinstitutional environment on NGO hyperlink networks. This study hypothesized that institutional homophily (Atouba & Shumate, 2015) shapes NGOs’ hyperlinking choices. Our findings suggest that both institutional convener and legal registration status shape the configuration of NGO hyperlink networks. This research makes three contributions to the study of hyperlink networks. First, it emphasizes the importance of overall institutional environments in structuring NGO hyperlink networks. A majority of previous scholarship focuses on offline organizational behaviors and interorganizational networks (e.g., Atouba & Shumate, 2015); however, our study sheds light on how institutional environments shape interorganizational networks online. Although Shumate and Dewitt (2008) and Shumate and Lipp (2008) argue that hyperlink networks are connective public goods, we take a step further and highlight that these connective public goods are marked by the institutional environment that the actors are embedded in. As such, hyperlinks should be understood as institutionalized connective public goods, or sets of interorganizational links among organizations influenced by common institutional pressures that enhance the collective visibility of some and widen the gulf between others. Second, we explicitly connect institutional homophily (Atouba & Shumate, 2015) to the study of hyperlink networks and collective action networks online. We theorize how institutional forces (i.e., institutional convener and legal registration status) induce hyperlinks among organizations. As such, we contribute to theorizing about institutional homophily effects on computer-mediated communication. Finally, we empirically examine this issue in the semiauthoritarian context of China and find that institutional convener and legal registration status influence the configuration of an NGO hyperlink network. As such, this research contributes to the scant empirical work on Chinese NGOs’ online behavior and collective action online more specifically. Despite a burgeoning interest in interorganizational collective action through hyperlinks (e.g., Yang, 2013), little is known about the influence of the macrolevel institutional forces on hyperlinking choices, specifically, and online organizational networks more generally. Significant work remains to be done to understanding how sociopolitical and socioinstitutional factors shape collective action. In particular, institutional homophily has proved to be a useful concept to investigate such processes. Researchers should consider the implicit yet unique institutional effects on connective public good structures and organizational behaviors online. Notes 1 According to Anheier and Salamon (2006), the nonprofit sector in the developing world should be termed “nongovernmental organization” to characterize the variety of entities on which it focuses. 308
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4
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Thus, we use “nongovernmental organizations” to describe the set of organizations engaged in various voluntary, not-for-profit social activities. Because of the conceptualization of hyperlink networks as the results of NGOs’ online collective action, “hyperlink network” and “connective public good” are used interchangeably in this research. Some network concepts: “Indegree” centrality refers to the number of connections the actor receives from other actors; “outdegree” centrality accounts for the number of connections the focal actor sends to other actors; and “degree centrality” describes the sum of indegree and outdegree connections that the actor has in total. Reciprocity occurs when A hyperlinks to B and B also hyperlinks to A; transitivity is when A sends hyperlinks to B and C, B also creates a hyperlink to C, thus resulting in transitive closure. CDB social issue areas include (1) environmental conservation and animal protection, (2) rural development, (3) education, (4) health and hygiene, (5) sexual and reproductive health, (6) migrant population and workers, (7) corporate social responsibility, (8) volunteer activities, (9) capacity building, (10) poverty alleviation and disaster relief, (11) community building, (12) ethnicity minority and religion, (13) arts and culture, (14) people with disabilities, (15) HIV/AIDS, (16) social work, (17) gender equality, (18) woman welfare, (19) LGBT rights, (20) domestic violence, (21) elderly welfare, (22) child welfare, (23) social enterprise and social innovation, (24) climate change, (25) fair trade, (26) civil society and legal governance, and (27) other. Results of ties within and across categories (i.e., block models) are available from the authors upon request. Observed statistics, as well as simulated minimum number, mean number, and maximum number are available from the authors upon request.
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About the Authors Jiawei Sophia Fu (M.A., Northwestern University) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Media, Technology, and Society program of Northwestern University. Her research focuses on social networks, ICTs, and organizational communication. Address: 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL, USA, 60208. E-mail:
[email protected] Michelle Shumate (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is an associate professor in Communication Studies at Northwestern University and the director of the Network for Nonprofit and Social Impact. Her main research interests include the dynamics of interorganizational networks, collective impact, and nonprofit organizing. Address: 2240 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL, USA, 60208. E-mail:
[email protected]
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