Background: “APES TOGETHER STRONG“ was one of the slogans, that participants of the influential GameStop movement (who ironically called themselves “apes“) utilized to show their unity (“together strong“) and relentlessness in their seemingly irrational actions. Erupting in January 2021, retail investors that had formed a community via Reddit, collectively achieved to multiply the stock price of American gaming retail chain GameStop, causing huge losses for hedge funds, resulting in political discussions and social outrage. This community was quickly labelled as a social movement.

Research Problem: Despite the widespread understanding that social media had and has major impacts on social movements and their constitution, research on various aspects concerning movements in the context of social media remain underdeveloped. On a broader level, the formation of digital social movements within online communities presents a suitable area of research. On a finer level, newcomers and their socialization were identified as research gaps.

Research Purpose: The purpose of this study is to close these research gaps by identifying key factors of socialization within digital movements. Additionally, it aims at showcasing the implications of these factors on the broader community and movement development.

Research Question: How are newcomers socialized and integrated in digital movements?

Research Method: This study is a qualitative, inductive research. It follows the relativistic ontology and the social constructionism epistemology. The methodology is an explorative, single case study and data is purposively collected through interviews and from Reddit. The data is analyzed utilizing the Gioia method.

Conclusion: Our findings concentrate on four dualities concerning socialization and community development. Community growth, purpose, jargon and activity are found to be inherently divergent themes and mechanisms within the movement. From this we abstract a framework towards a spectrum of socialization approaches ranging from regulated to unregulated socialization. As such, we showcase the implications of both ofthese ends and how communities must be flexible in their socialization approach.