ABSTRACT According to UNHRC, approximately 5 million refugees fled Ukraine between the 24th of February and the 17th of April 2022. Governments and civil societies all over Europe face a major task of mobilizing resources to address the refugees' welfare needs. This effort is partly dependent upon the mobilization of informal civil society. In this research note, we present preliminary findings on the online mobilization of informal civic action pertaining to informal groups' temporal, geographical, and practical dimensions. Furthermore, we outline simple procedures for obtaining data on online-organized volunteering, aiming to enhance other civil society researchers' access to studying the phenomenon.

ABSTRACT This paper unfolds how informal civil society quickly mobilised citizen-to-citizen support when government and non-government organisations locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper focuses on two elements of the mobilisation: the role of social networks and social media groups. It reveals that the vast majority of this support was distributed through existing social networks and, therefore, not available to those lacking social connections. However, we also find that social media groups played an important role in the mobilisation, that support organised on social media does not diverge significantly in commitment or kind from support organised in other settings. The paper concludes by discussing the potential of social media to mitigate the impact of social networks on the distribution of support, pointing to some of the potential barriers to social media groups’ successful facilitation of support to those without a social network.