Action

Here the community, already mobilized around an event, issue or set of circumstances, takes action in public sphere. The action itself can vary greatly in scope and scale. It may take place online or in a geographical location. It may involve direct confrontation or creative expression. It may span over a period of time or be instantaneous. It may seek to affect change or draw attention to particular topics and situation. Whatever form the action takes, it emerges out of the community's shared practices, relationships to the content worlds, shared affinities, and connections. As the community takes action, members may also activate existing ties and seek out newly relevant collaborations with other, more traditionally established, organizations. For example, as the Living Room Gods took action around the removal of videos from Youtube, they reached out for legal support from the EFF. With such strategic partnerships, the group used performance and distribution tools for civic action. They educated themselves to teach other members of the group on copyright policy. Driscoll elaborates: "Shortly after the campaign was announced, the web forum became the primary site for organizing the LRRGs. In several lengthy threads, the LRRGs compared notes and assembled a list of labels, artists, and songs to avoid (PookLowEnd, 2009a). As the LRRGs confronted the bureaucracy of the DMCA, they traded information about US copyright law (Zodiak, 2009) and consolidation in the music industry (Mymassivehead, 2009), they critiqued the YouTube Terms of Service (ActionHobo, 2009), suggested technical means for circumventing the automated identification system (PookLowEnd, 2009b), and built a "Fair Use" argument to defend their instructional video practices. PookLowEnd and Zodiak contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation for legal advice and urged other LRRGs to seek similar assistance (Zodiak, 2009). This distributed cognition, peer education, scaffolding, and support enabled users who would have otherwise given up to assert their right to challenge claims of alleged copyright infringement."Kevin Driscoll

The Harry Potter Alliance generally collaborates with organizations that provide their campaigns concrete logistical structures like phone banks, and additional publicity and reach. For example, HPA worked with the Delta Center for Culture and Learning on a book drive in Mississippi. Most recently, they worked with Partners In Health (PIH) to name three Haiti-bound earth quake relief cargo planes, each filled thousands of pounds of relief supplies, the Harry Potter works. This year, HPA raised $123,754.41 for PIH’s Haiti relief effort through its Helping Haiti Heal campaign. The alliance between Aang Ain't White and MANAA becomes a productive meeting place for two communities that mobilize and work in very different ways. Aang Ain't White emerged quickly, in response to a particular problem and is now on the cusp of more sustained political action. More established and broader in scope, MANAA also plays a watchdog role, although it relies more on actions based in protest, rather than creative production.