

This paper seeks to expand the scope of conceptualizing social resilience in the digital era. It examines emerging trends in how groups or communities, formally or informally associated, use the digital space in the recovery stages of disruptive events. While disruptive events or collective traumas can include environmental disasters, health epidemics, security or economic crises, the focus here is placed on collective social responses to hybrid threats. Hybrid threats combine online with offline destabilizing tactics that attack targets’ virtual or (physical) infrastructure, exploit psychological manipulation, political subversion and social polarization in order to expose targets’ vulnerabilities. The paper argues that the amorphous online character of hybrid threats solicits new responses and enhanced digital social resilience. Yet a conclusive concept of what digital social resilience means and how it manifests in practice is still lacking. Following a rigorous review of literature and case studies, findings in the paper identify three behavioral tendencies in how communities already use digital spaces and tools to respond to contemporary hybrid threats: i) collective mobilization, crowdsourcing and toolmaking, ii) emotive solidarity, and iii) restoration of morality quests. The paper then postulates that these observed forms of collective online behavior characterize and define emerging signs of social resilience in the contemporary online environment.