Please register for the CV & Online Identity Workshop below.

The social network literature generally understands individuals' choices to either be primarily the product of their own agency or of their place in the network, but the complex interplay of agency and network structure is not often considered in its own right. For example, we can understand the existence of a structural hole in a network as an opportunity for a savvy individual to take advantage, or as a convenient lack of dense, redundant ties that allows for new information to spread through the network. Both perspectives make sense, but both oversimplify. When it comes to civic mobilization, networks influence individuals to act, but key individuals can also affect network structure and information spread. The interplay of individual decision-making with the existing structure of a network is complex in its own right. Indeed, considering structure and agency as a duality, rather than as two separate components, is necessary to fully grasp the complex phenomena that lead to mobilization. Using civic mobilization as the broader context, I illustrate how individual agency and network structure interact at various precursor stages of mobilization. I also argue for analyzing structure and agency as a duality and demonstrate the complex interactions between these two deeply intertwined forces.I begin by discussing how network structure and individual agency interact to facilitate networked social movement participation at distinct stages of mobilization. I emphasize the duality of structure and agency --- they are not trivially separable factors, but must be considered together --- as I discuss their implications for movement mobilization. I then introduce a project that focuses on the structural-connection function of Twitter networks. We study the temporal structure of influential users' political mobilization following a politically salient event and problematize how we think about political speech in seemingly apolitical spaces. Networks, in the form of audience pressures and viral content, may play a role in influential users' choice to speak, but their choice to speak is ultimately their own. Here, structure informs agentic choice. The next project examines the decision-shaping function of Twitter networks. I introduce the concept of attention brokers, users whose amplification increases their followers' propensity to follow the amplified account, and explain how attention brokers' amplification of particular ideologies shapes their followers' attention patterns over time. In this case, structure and individual agency are mutually constitutive: individual attention brokers' choices add up to influence global network structure, which creates a cascading effect that itself reinforces the attention brokerage process. Finally, I propose a project studying the socialization that occurs in online communities, specifically for transfeminine TikTok creators. In this project, I will study how participants' ego-networks shape their experiences of intra-community conflict and their understanding of what it means to be a member of their community. I am particularly interested in learning more about how the pressures and supports provided by ego-network connections influence how individuals make sense of their own agency relative to their identity, especially in situations involving conflict.