SOCIAL IDENTITY LEADERSHIP IN A DIGITAL WORLD

This paper conceptualises identity leadership in digital contexts by bringing the social identity approach into dialogue with emerging work on digital identity. It argues that digital platforms are social environments in which identities are made salient and mobilised by identity leaders for collective action. Building on social identity theory, self–categorisation theory, and recent work on social digital identity theory, the paper proposes that identity leadership helps transform dispersed online interaction into a shared sense of ‘us’ that can sustain collective action across digital and offline settings. In doing so, it highlights how digitally mediated leadership may shape emergent collective identities and enable collective action through engaged followership. The paper further argues that these processes are politically open–ended. The same identity leadership dynamics may animate solidaristic and progressive action or exclusionary and regressive mobilisation, depending on the content of the identity being advanced and the digital conditions through which it is enacted.