We know little about how technology-mediated mutual aid communities navigate tensions between their solidarity-driven ethos and the commercial logics of the technologies that host them.
This study addresses that gap by examining how solidarity is enacted, contested, and framed through the interactions among users and the platform. It asks: How do the multifaceted interactions within an online mutual aid community – among givers, requesters, moderators, and the digital platform – affect its ability to sustain the ethos of solidarity it was founded upon? To investigate this question, we conducted a netnographic study of ‘Caremunity’, a Facebook-based mutual aid community that emerged in response to the Covid-19 pandemic with over 15,000 members. Data collection involved immersion in Caremunity, the observation and analysis of posts and comments shared by members. This was supplemented with the distribution of a qualitative survey and follow-up interviews with participants.
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