Self-Organized Social Solidarity (SoSS) Initiatives in Greece: Exploring Their Scope and Their Relationship to Online Media

Since the beginning of the economic crisis in Greece, the first impacts were felt on standards of everyday living. Citizens, frustrated by the state's handling of the crisis, felt the urge to self-organize and take action based on their own strengths and volunteerism as the only practical solution to fill in the gaps left by the state's absence of intervention. Rooted in the country's economic crisis, Greek citizens' self-organized social solidarity (SoSS) initiatives have been focused on acting and innovating rather than protesting and are now rapidly growing. Examples of such initiatives are social grocery stores, alternative currencies, time banks, neighborhood groups for sanitation and general caretaking, assistance to students in primary/secondary education to name a few. This article has two main objectives. The first is to present self-organized social solidarity initiatives in Greece and further attempt to characterize them based on certain features, such as their scope and mode of operation. The second objective is to investigate how these initiatives use the internet and online media, with an emphasis on social media for communicating, coordinating and further developing such activities.