 Dear students, in this module we are going to talk about the dispersed collective behavior. So dispersed collective behavior refers to the collective actions and behaviors that occur to spread out over the space and time rather than concentrated in a specific location or in a particular moment. This type of behavior often relies heavily on media, social network, and communication technologies that connect the particular participants and coordinated actions. So when people are dispersed, it becomes very difficult to engage them in a collective behavior. So the rapid growth of internet and social media platforms has significantly facilitated the dispersed collective behavior, enabling real-time communication, coordination, and mobilization for individuals from the diverse and vast geographic territories. The dispersed collective behavior includes the phenomena such as social media campaigns, online petitions, digital activism, and virtual protests with using by using the social media like the hashtag movements that we can observe. It often complements the traditional localized form of collective behavior broadening their reach and impact. So this is possible due to the advent of modern technology, particularly the communication technology. An example of this globalized dispersed collective behavior can be the Black Lives Matter movement which was hashtagged and which organized the US but quickly spread the worldwide through social media. And participants globally engaged in online advocacy and shared information and they expressed their solidarity with that US movement. The Arab Spring, for example, which started in Tunisia in late 2010 and then it spread across many Arab countries was largely facilitated by the digital technologies. These collective behaviors played a vital role to this movement with the help of social media usage for disseminating information, mobilizing the protests and coordinated for the concerted, concerted actions. In Pakistan, for example, the justice force Zanab was hashtagged and it was a very successful campaign following the murder of a minor girl Zanab Ansari in 2018 demonstrated the dispersed collective behavior. The campaign spread rapidly on the social media with the people joining from the nationwide and also abroad demanding the justice leading to a significant public response and swift action from the authorities. The dispersed collective behavior also faces different kinds of challenges such as the risk of selectivism or we can say collectivism. The terms that refer to the minimal effort, non-committal actions like liking a post or signing on online petition that may not translate into substantive change. So as you can see that although social media is helping to accelerate these social movements but at the same time it is also producing a kind of behavior which is called the collectivism. Instead of using any aspect of social media as a hashtag to post-share or sign a petition online or sign in somewhere, we cannot be a part of that public action. Until there is any practical mobilization, there is a negative aspect that many people cannot be a part of that movement in the virtual world but in the real world they cannot be a part of that meaningful action. So overall the dispersed collective behavior represents an increasingly important dimension of collective action in the digital age reshaping how these social movements are operating and how this social change occurs when people are living in diverse geographic regions.