bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Explaining Social Movement Outcomes: Multiorganizational Fields and Hate Crime Reporting
Authors: McVeigh Rory , Neblett Carl , Shafiq Sarah
Published: April 2020

Social movement organizations and nonprofit organizations can affect local communities in numerous ways, some of which are intended and some of which are unintended. Assessing the influence of these organizations is complicated because the effect that an organization has on a community depends in part on the attributes of the community in which it is embedded. This article draws attention to the importance of multiorganizational fields in determining social movement consequences through an analysis of hate crime enforcement and reporting in U.S. counties. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), in combination with more traditional statistical techniques, identifies fifteen configurations of variable attributes that almost always result in reported hate crimes. The analysis shows how measures of civil rights activism, political opportunities, grievances, and multiorganizational fields combine in local settings to produce hate crime reporting with near certainty. Results indicate that the resourcefulness, heterogeneity, and funding sources of the nonprofit sector play a key role in determining whether hate crimes are reported.
Claiming Credit: Stories of Movement Influence as Outcomes
Authors: Meyer David
Published: April 2020

Taking credit for achieving some desirable outcome is an essential element of politics, and the stakes of doing so are particularly high for social protest movements. Popular narratives of social change assign some movements a critical role for promoting change, but ignore the influence of others. Winning acceptance of a preferred narrative of influence is a neglected, but important, social movement outcome. I use disparate stories of movement success in claiming credit to underscore the analytical problem of why some challengers end up deriving credit, both in the short and long term, for their efforts, while others don't. Movement activists and their competitors offer narratives of past influence as a kind of claims-making activity to serve current political goals. In this way, the process of claiming credit is analogous to that of establishing a reputation. I examine contextual factors likely to affect why some social movements, and some social movement actors, may be better positioned, or more interested, in promoting a narrative of their own influence than others. I argue that movement factions that place identifiable individuals in prominent positions in institutional politics are more likely to be able to promote their story of influence, but paradoxically this comes with a narrative that emphasizes the importance of mainstream politics. I conclude with a call for more research on the process and the outcomes of contests for credit.
Notorious Support: The America First Committee and The Personalization of Policy
Authors: Fine Gary
Published: April 2020

In a political world characterized by social movement rivalry, advocates routinely use reputation work to discredit the motivations and character of their adversaries. Reputational entrepreneurs undercut organizational legitimacy by depicting members with disreputable or radical affiliations as representative of their opponents. These attacks on character must be countered, costing resources and limiting organizational reach. Through reputation work, advocates assert that groups they oppose have a large proportion of stigmatized supporters, are affiliated with prominent disreputable figures, and espouse policies favored by such figures. Such claims direct attention from the substance of the debate, directing attention to the moral stature of claimants. Those attacked must rely on counter strategies to defend themselves. They deny that disreputables are representative, demonstrating their bona fides by exclusive practices, claim that opposing groups have the same problem, and suggest that stigmatized supporters are agents of their opponents. To study these reputational strategies, I examine struggles over the character of members of the America First Committee in the period immediately prior to World War II.
Useless Protest? A Time-Series Analysis of the Policy Outcomes of Ecology, Antinuclear, and Peace Movements in the United States, 1977-1995
Authors: Giugni Marco
Published: April 2020

I confront three models of the policy impact of social movements with data on the mobilization of ecology, antinuclear, and peace movements in the United States between 1975 and 1995 by means of time-series analysis: the direct-effect model, the indirect-effect model, and the joint-effect model. My analysis suggests that social movements have little, if any, impact on public policy and that, if they are to have an impact, it depends on the combination of overt protest activities, the type of issues they raise, and external resources such as public opinion and political alliances with institutional actors. Thus, it appears that, if they are to have a policy impact, movements need the joint occurence of mobilization, support from political allies, and public opinion favorable to the cause.
Ideology, Framing Processes, and Islamic Terrorist Movements
Authors: Snow David , Byrd Scott
Published: April 2020

We argue that the monolithic use and application of the concept of ideology to Islamic terrorist movements is of questionable analytic utility because it tends not only to ignore ideological variation and flexibility among these movements, but also glosses over the kind of discursive work required to articulate and elaborate the array of possible links between ideas, events, and action. Drawing on the framing perspective in the study of social movements, we examine the development and articulation of mobilizing ideas associated with Islamic militancy and terrorist movements, ranging from the Iranian revolution of the late 1970s to more recent movements, such as al Qaeda, originating within the Middle East and Central Asia. By focusing on framing processes as key discursive mechanisms, we attempt to advance our understanding of the diverse ideological work required to facilitate the mobilization of jihadi militants as well as provide the motivation to commit sensational acts of violence such as suicide bombings.
"The Struggle Made Me a Nonracialist": Why There was so Little Terrorism in the Antiapartheid Struggle
Authors: Goodwin Jeff
Published: April 2020

Most theories of terrorism would lead one to have expected high levels of antiwhite terrorism in apartheid South Africa. Yet the African National Congress, the country's most important and influential antiapartheid political organization, never sanctioned terrorism against the dominant white minority. I argue that the ANC eschewed terrorism because of its commitment to "nonracial internationalism." From the ANC's perspective, to have carried out a campaign of indiscriminate or "categorical" terrorism against whites would have alienated actual and potential white allies both inside and outside the country. The ANC's ideological commitment to nonracialism had a specific social basis: It grew out of a long history of collaboration between the ANC and white leftists inside and outside the country, especially those in the South African Communist Party.
"I'm Not Too Sure what I Told you the Last Time": Methological Notes on Accounts from High-Risk Activists in the Irish Republican Movement
Authors: White Robert
Published: April 2020

Social movement research often draws on intensive interviews with activists to provide rich, detailed information on recruitment processes. Intensive interview data, however, are subject to misunderstandings between researchers and respondents, poor memories, the possibility that respondents will intentionally mislead in their presentation of self, and other threats. Veterans or members of the Provisional IRA and Provisional Sinn Féin were interviewed twice, approximately a decade apart in time. The interviews suggest that accounts from activists are relatively consistent over time, but that this consistency varies with differences in the recruitment process. Activists recruited into Irish Republicanism through their family background have the most consistent accounts. Those recruited in response to a key event and who were recruited by one key individual also have consistent accounts. Those who follow a more generic path of recruitment that occurs over time offer the least consistent accounts. This variation has important implications for understanding involvement in social movements.
The Continuity of Transnational Solidarities in the World March of Women, 2000 and 2005: A Collective Identity-Building Approach
Authors: Dufour Pascale , Giraud Isabelle
Published: April 2020

While the emergence of transnational social movements has been intensively studied, the continuity of sustained transnational mobilizations has received much less attention. Building on recent research in the field of transnational activism, we examine the case of the World March of Women (WMW), a mobilization of 6,000 associations, unions, and political parties in 163 countries that organized global mobilizations in 2000 and 2005. We argue that the process leading to the 2005 actions constitutes a "collective identity moment" for the WMW. Using semistructured qualitative interviews with leaders of the WMW and detailed case analyses, we demonstrate that this moment was manifested by three dimensions: a change of the activists' main global interlocutor; the use of the transnationalization process as an end in itsel—and not simply as a tool or a mobilization strategy;and the redirection of activists' energy into establishing collective unity as opposed to making direct external gains. This identity moment is the result of a dual process involving the articulation of past mobilizations with new perspectives and the continuing articulation of multiple activist identities.
Borrowing from the Women's Movement "for Reasons of Public Security": A Study of Social Movement Outcomes and Judicial Activism in the European Union
Authors: Holzer Elizabeth
Published: April 2020

Can an elite-sponsored outcome be a social movement outcome? In Kreil v. Germany, the European Court of Justice issued a judgment hailed as a feminist victory, censuring Germany's exclusion of women from the military. But the women's movement did not sponsor the case; it was an organizational achievement for the nascent court that extended its jurisdiction to public security while preserving its legitimacy among potentially non-cooperative member states. With this case, I reassess movement-elite relations in the context of past protests that forged discursive resources. The women's movement did play an important role in this case: the court relied on discursive resources from past feminist activism to legitimize its decision and frame it as a matter of women's rights, drawing attention away from its uncertain jurisdiction. I present a model of "borrowing" from movements, a relationship distinct from alliances and cooptation, to show how elite-sponsored outcomes can still be movement outcomes.
Validity and Media-Derived Protest Event Data: Examining Relative Coverage Tendencies in Mexican News Media *
Authors: Strawn Kelley
Published: April 2020

This essay engages the debate over the validity of media-derived protest data through an assessment of event coverage for three Mexico news sources. With a focus on "relative"—as opposed to "absolute"—coverage tendencies, it is argued that certain coverage tendencies in news sources can be identified and, in turn, incorporated as controls into more substantive analyses of protest phenomena. Specifically, this analysis finds that that, for the Mexico media, claims that coverage is representative of all protest events is dubious with respect to the overall population of specific events and to the geographic distribution of events. At the same time, it is shown that tendencies driven by regional biases, chronology, event size, event targets, and event issues can be exposed and identified through a simple comparison of the principal media source to one or more others.
The Individual and Contextual Determinants of Protest Among Latinos
Authors: Martinez Lisa
Published: April 2020

This study builds upon and extends prior literature on political participation by exami-ning individual-level and city-level determinants of Latinos' protest participation in the U. S. Multilevel models were used on a sample of 2,810 Latinos of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban descent. Individual factors such as age, education, income, religiosity, and organizational involvement are found to impact participation in expected directions. Results also point to a significant role for contextual factors in shaping the probability of participation. On the one hand, protest participation is more likely in cities with a greater presence of Latino organizations, which points to the importance of mobilizing agents. On the other hand, protest participation is less likely in cities with relatively large Latino populations and where more Latinos hold elected office, suggesting protest is deemed less desirable or necessary when more formal channels of political participation are viable. Together these results are useful for understanding the factors that motivate Latino protest at the individual and con-textual levels, which present opportunities for further understanding their participation in unconventional politics.
Spaces of Intentionality: Race, Class, and Horizontality at the United States Social Forum
Authors: Juris Jeffrey
Published: April 2020

The World Social Forum process has sought to provide an "open space" for diverse movements to exchange ideas, interact, and coordinate as they build another world. Despite this inclusive impulse, many of the forums have been disproportionately white and middle class. Through an ethnographic account of the 2007 United States Social Forum (USSF) in Atlanta, I examine one high-profile attempt to overcome this lack of diversity by establishing what I refer to as an "intentional" space. I argue that the intentional strategy pursued by USSF organizers achieved a high level of diversity in racial and class terms, but de-emphasized the role of the forum as a "contact zone" for translation, sharing, and exchange among diverse movement sectors. However, given the strong desire to overcome past exclusions among participants, the privileging of intentionality over openness and horizontality was widely viewed as legitimate, which has important implications for democratic practice.
Beyond Frame Resonance: The Argumentative Structure and Persuasive Capacity of Twentieth-Century U.S. Women's Jury-Rights Frames
Authors: McCammon Holly
Published: April 2020

Research on movement political success has grown measurably, yet few studies consider the role of framing in bringing about challenger victories. Existing investigations taking collective action framing into account typically consider only whether movement frames with broad cultural resonance are more convincing to policymakers. This study examines other qualities of movement frames to uncover argumentative forms that allow activists to persuade lawmakers to alter policy. I examine efforts by organized U.S. women in the early twentieth century to persuade state legislators to broaden jury laws to seat women jurors. Quantitative analyses reveal that jury frames that (a) define the problem of excluding women as serious and broad in scope, (b) provide a clear rationale for supporting activist demands, and (c) offer concrete evidence to support the frame's claim are likelier to convince lawmakers. The status of the frame's articulators and the quantity of movement framing are not predictors of movement success.
Density Matters: The Union Density Bias and its Implications for Labor Movement Revitalization
Authors: Sullivan Richard
Published: April 2020

After more than a decade of analyzing efforts to revitalize the U.S. labor movement, many have concluded that organized labor must become a movement again. Nevertheless, most analyses remain based on the traditional view that labor power is derived solely from the portion of the labor market that is unionized. This fact is illustrated by the continued use of union density as the primary means of assessing labor movement strength. This article examines this "density bias" and ways that it constrains analyses of labor revitalization-obscuring alternative sources of movement power, excluding community based labor organizations, and oversimplifying assessments of organizing processes. The article highlights the need for a critical assessment of conventional wisdom in labor studies and argues that treating labor as a social movement may generate new research questions and move theorizing in promising new directions.
The Politics of Borders and the Borders of Politics: Sovereignty and Autonomy Around Israel's Human Rights Abuses in the Separation Barrier Project
Authors: Ben-Eliezer Uri , Feinstein Yuval
Published: April 2020

This article takes issue with the "weak state" and "hollowing out of the state" theses, which appear in recent literatures dealing with globalization. In order to analyze the nation state's contention with various actors concerning human rights and other issues, a conceptual distinction is suggested between state autonomy and capacity-defined as the state's ability to rationally posit objectives and to realize them-and state sovereignty, defined as the symbolic and discursive basis of the state's legitimate rule. Based on the constructivist perspective, which emphasizes the intersubjective character of the social world, and the role of knowledge and interpretation in any social conflict, we present three cases of objections to Israel's construction of a separation barrier on occupied Palestinian territories. These three cases exemplify the importance of the conceptual distinction between autonomy-capacity and sovereignty as two dimensions of domination and reveal a situation in which political struggles that effectively reduce state autonomy may actually increase its sovereignty.
A Battle for Authenticity: An Examination of the Constraints on Anti-Iraq War and Pro-Invasion Tactics
Authors: Oselin Sharon , Corrigall-Brown Catherine
Published: April 2020

Social movements are arenas where individuals can voice concerns about politics, culture, and social change. Movements work to create frames and collective identities that resonate with the public and bind participants together. However, movement participants are not always completely free to cultivate and adopt frames and identities. The emergence of countermovements, in particular, can fundamentally affect these tactics. However, we find that frame and identity resonance can also be influenced by other factors and conditions. We explore these issues based on participant observation and interviews with activists at two ongoing anti-Iraq war protests and one ongoing pro-invasion protest, both of which occurred over a three-month period in early 2003. We find that local context, movementcountermovement dynamics, the ability to assuage oppositional challenges, and intramovement unity and cooperation shape overall movement trajectories and success.
Repressing Protest: Threat and Weakness in the European Context, 1975-1989
Authors: Ayoub Phillip
Published: April 2020

Research on state repression of protest focuses on two key factors: threat and weakness. States repress protest events when they threaten state authorities and social norms (threat), when they lack organizational strength and political voice (weakness), or when they do both. I test these competing explanations in the context of Western European protests from 1975 to 1989. This analysis goes beyond previous research by exploring the effect of threat and weakness in multiple domestic contexts. The findings suggest that threat is the most powerful explanation of repression, whereas weakness only occasionally predicts repression and depends on country-specific contexts. The importance of the findings lie in their ability to emphasize (1) the universality of situational threat to police "on-the-ground" over theories that view a calculating state "up-above," and (2) the seemingly unified perception (in advanced democracies) of protest as an increasingly legitimate form of political participation that does not beget repression.
Co-Opting Social Ties: How the Taiwanese Petrochemical Industry Neutralized Environmental Opposition
Authors: Ho Ming-sho
Published: April 2020

This article seeks to understand how social ties can be manipulated by industrial producers in such a way that local opposition to pollution is neutralized. Social movement researchers argue that mobilization cannot proceed without pre-existing social ties, and further reflection suggests the nature of social ties is tremendously consequential. Clientelist ties are characterized by mass dependence and cooperation as beneficiaries expect favors from above. Thus, when clientelist leaders are politically excluded, a strong community-based protest is likely to take place under their leadership. However, if clientelist leaders are incorporated to share the benefits of industrial development, the result is likely to be community acquiescence even though popular grievances are endemic. This paper analyzes Taiwan's environmental politics since the late-1980s by focusing on how material compensations incorporated the previously excluded politicians. Elites thus played the role of redistributors and brokers, rather than protest leaders, and consequently, popular discontent over pollution was contained.
Critical Mechanisms for Critical Masses: Exploring Variation in Opposition to Low-Level Radioactive Waste Site Proposals
Authors: Sherman Daniel
Published: April 2020

Between 1986 and 1993, local activists in the U.S. organized more than 900 collective acts of public opposition to low-level radioactive waste site proposals across twenty-one counties. Yet, the number of such acts varied significantly across the counties. Both waste-siting professionals and social movement scholars have sought to identify factors of mobilization to explain such variation. An analysis of these cases reveals that a focus limited to pre-existing factors of mobilization—whether the demographic and economic factors favored by siting professionals, or the mobilization and political opportunity structures of the "classic social movement agenda"—badly misjudges mobilization. A paired comparison of two counties that differed dramatically in the number of acts of collective opposition mustered over the course of the siting process demonstrates the importance of social mechanisms that shape just how a community interacts with its political resources. The key differences between the two counties lie in the setting, sequence, and in the combination of the following social mechanisms: social appropriation, identify shift, and the attribution of threat and opportunity. To understand the assertion of local political power in an implementation process such as siting efforts, we need to understand not only the political resources available in a community context, but also the way in which human relationships shape the perception and application of that context.
The Partisan Dynamics of Contention: Demobilization of the Antiwar Movement in the United States, 2007-2009
Authors: Heaney Michael , Rojas Fabio
Published: April 2020

Changes in threats perceived by activists, partisan identification, and coalition brokerage are three mechanisms that help to explain the demobilization of the antiwar movement in the United States from 2007 to 2009. Drawing upon 5,398 surveys of demonstrators at antiwar protests, interviews with movement leaders, and ethnographic observation, this article argues that the antiwar movement demobilized as Democrats, who had been motivated to participate by anti-Republican sentiments, withdrew from antiwar protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success, if not policy success in ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The withdrawal of Democratic activists changed the character of the antiwar movement by undermining broad coalitions in the movement and encouraging the formation of smaller, more radical coalitions. While the election of Barack Obama had been heralded as a victory for the antiwar movement, Obama's election, in fact, thwarted the ability of the movement to achieve critical mass.
Gaining Political Capital Through Social Capital: Policy-Making Inclusion and Network Embeddedness of Migrants' Associations in Spain
Authors: Morales Laura , Ramiro Luis
Published: April 2020

This article analyzes the relevance of network embeddedness and social capital in allowing migrants' associations to gain political capital and access to policy making in the cities of Barcelona and Madrid. With data from a survey of migrants' associations in both locations, we examine the degree to which embeddedness in networks of links with other migrants' associations and with autochthonous Spanish civil society organizations are consequential for the inclusion of migrants' organizations in policy-making processes. The results show that migrants' organizational social capital is critical in facilitating their intermediation function vis à vis political institutions and decision makers, above and beyond their access to financial and human capital.
Selection and Response Bias in Protest Surveys
Authors: Walgrave Stefaan , Verhulst Joris
Published: April 2020

Popular opinion suggests protest has become ubiquitous in advanced postindustrial democracies. In order to assess this perspective scholars have increasingly relied on so-called protest surveys to gauge protesters' attitudes and characteristics while in the act of protesting. This growing body of literature has neglected the design of protest surveys and has yet to systematically test the reliability of the evidence they produce. This study attempts to make a contribution on both fronts. After reviewing the available studies relying on protest surveys, it proposes a standardized method to sample respondents in moving crowds. The sampling procedure is tested in 22 demonstrations across a variety of issues and countries. Based on a series of field experiments, the paper puts forward a specific protest survey fieldwork method by which selection bias and response bias can be reduced to a considerable degree.
Repertoires of Contention: White Separatist Views on the Use of Violence and Leaderless Resistance
Authors: Dobratz Betty , Waldner Lisa
Published: April 2020

Particularly since the early 1990s, some white power movement leaders have advocated abandoning leader-led organizations in favor of leaderless resistance. We examine the events leading up to this call that illustrate how threat is intertwined with the adoption of leaderless resistance. Using a combination of interview and questionnaire data collected primarily from white power movement followers, we examine views on leaderless resistance as well as the use of violence to advance movement goals. Our findings suggest that while there is support for leaderless resistance, most respondents believe that this strategy should be used in conjunction with leader-led organizations. While most of our respondents supported the use of violence, holding this view does not explain a strategy preference (leader-led organizations or leaderless resistance). Respondents who feared infiltration were more likely to support leaderless resistance. Although not significant, those favoring an electoral-politics strategy were more likely to prefer leader-led organizations over leaderless resistance.
The Remains of the Movement: The Role of Legal Support Networks in Leaving Violence While Sustaining Movement Identity
Authors: Zwerman Gilda , Steinhoff Patricia
Published: April 2020

This article examines disengagement from political violence and the persistence of a movement identity as concurrent and interrelated processes. Our inquiry is based on long-term qualitative data on 90 individuals associated with twelve underground organizations in the United States and Japan during the 1970s and 1980s. We find that as armed activists face the challenges of arrest and detention, trial, and imprisonment, the network of trial support groups and defense committees that was central to their capacity to engage in violence at the peak of the protest cycle also facilitates the process of disengaging from violence as the cycle declines. The distinctive characteristics of this network (herein referred to as the legal support network or LSN) permit insurgents to retain a movement identity while disengaging from violent activity. The study contributes to a small but expanding literature on post-recruitment dynamics in marginalized, high-risk social movements as well as to research on disengagement from political violence.
Explaining Political Violence Against Civilians in Northern Ireland: A Contention-Oriented Approach
Authors: Maney Gregory , McCarthy Michael , Yukich Grace
Published: April 2020

In contrast to prevalent theories of terrorism, this study develops a contention-oriented approach where levels and forms of political violence against civilians depend upon: (1) the strategies of combatants; (2) the means of contention; (3) the locations of allies and opponents; (4) the collective identities of combatants; and (5) the dynamics of contention, including whether or not representatives of paramilitary organizations are included in formal peace processes. Quantitative analyses of a multi-source database of civilian deaths taking place in Northern Ireland between 1966 and 2006 offer preliminary support for this approach. The study underscores the insights provided by theories and methods used in the fields of social movements research and peace and conflict studies.
The Limits of Networks in Social Movement Retention: On Canvassers and their Careers
Authors: Fisher Dana , McInerney Paul-Brian
Published: April 2020

Although scholars have examined the different pathways to participation in social movements, far less research has looked at the endurance of activists once they mobilize. This article specifically explores the relationship between the pathways to mobilization and retention. Our data show that both social ties and individual motivations play a role in mobilizing participants of social movements. Contrary to what one might expect, we find that those activists who were mobilized with personal connections were less likely to be working for the organization a year later versus those who came to the organization as strangers. We find instead that self-starters—those canvassers who entered the canvass through their own volition—stayed on longer. Although those canvassers who came to the job through network ties were less likely to be working for the organization a year later, they were more likely to be engaged in other civic and political groups and they were more likely to be leaders of these groups.
Transnational Collective Identification: May Day and Climate Change Protesters' Identification with Similar Protest Events in Other Countries
Authors: Walgrave Stefaan , Wouters Ruud , Van Laer Jeroen , Verhulst Joris , Ketelaars Pauline
Published: April 2020

Why do some people participating in transnational protest events identify with their foreign counterparts while others participating in the same events do not? We find that participants in a series of May Day and climate change events are aware that the events are part of a broader struggle, and many in fact identify with their overseas counterparts. However, there are differences between demonstrations. Some are populated with people who identify transnationally, while others are comprised of participants who more closely identify with their national companions. Focusing on differences in transnational identification at the participant level, our findings can be summarized in two statements: (1) protest participation is a stronger producer of transnational identification than associational activism; (2) expressive protesters identify more transnationally than instrumentally motivated protesters.
Collective Action and Mobilization in Dar'a: An Anatomy of the Onset of Syria's Popular Uprising
Authors: Leenders Reinoud
Published: April 2020

This article addresses how and why the popular mobilization in Syria took off in the "peripheral" Dar'a region. Accordingly, it focuses on the province's dense social networks involving clans, labor migration, cross-border movements, and crime. It argues that Dar'a's social networks were important early in Syrian protest for several reasons: (1) They served as sites where nonconforming views on Ba'ath subordination could develop and be shared. (2) They contributed to the transfer, circulation, and interpretation of information whereby the shifting opportunities emanating from events in the region were recognized and the regime's threats were framed in ways that compelled people to act. (3) They provided an important sense of solidarity and presented the background against which recruitment for mobilization took place. (4) Finally, they provided key skills and resources for mobilization to be effective. Thanks to their miscibility, Dar'a's dense social networks substituted for the role attributed to brokers in social movement theory. They effectively connected individuals of different origins and strata in an otherwise prohibitive authoritarian context.
From the Street to the Screen: Characteristics of Protest Events as Determinants of Television News Coverage
Authors: Wouters Ruud
Published: April 2020

Media attention is a crucial resource for demonstrators seeking to influence policy. This article assesses the determinants of television coverage for protest events. Police archive data for the city of Brussels is compared to newscast data of the biggest public and commercial station in Belgium (2003-2010). Results show that few demonstrations pass the television gates (11%). Above all, protest size accounts for newsworthiness. Disruptive and symbolic actions also attract the media spotlight, confirming drama and visuals as critical television news values. Whereas symbolism matters for media presence, it does not hold for headline (prominence) or length of coverage (volume). New social movements are especially likely to stage symbolic actions. As a consequence, their presence on the screen is less a function of their numeric weight in the street. Distinctive selection mechanisms are at work on the commercial and public broadcaster, suggesting that media ownership matters for news selection.
Rocks, Bottles, and Weak Autocracies: The Role of Political Regime Settings on Contention-Repression Interactions
Authors: Ortiz David
Published: April 2020

Scholars have recently begun to explore more nuanced ways of looking at the links between protest and repression, including consideration of the regime and other structural impacts on this dynamic relationship. This work contributes to this growing literature by employing Cox proportional hazards models to analyze daily data from 98 countries to study the exchanges between violent and nonviolent contention and repression under different regime settings. Results highlight the importance of considering the political setting when examining the dynamic contention-repression interaction, the need to account for both contentious actions' effects on state repression and state repression's effects on contention, and the fact that regime type categories should be further disaggregated in order to fully capture the particularities of this complex relationship.
Studying Online Activism: The Effects of Sampling Design on Findings
Authors: Earl Jennifer
Published: April 2020

Social movement scholars are increasingly interested in Internet activism but have struggled to find robust methods for identifying cases, particularly representative samples of online protest content, given that no population list exists. This article reviews early approaches to this problem, focusing on three recent case sampling designs that attempt to address this problem. The first approach purposively samples from an organizationally based sampling frame. The second approach randomly samples from a SMO-based sampling frame. The third approach mimics user routines to identify populations of "reachable" websites on a given topic, which are then randomly sampled. For each approach, I examine the sampling frame and sampling method to understand how cases were selected, outline the assumptions built into the overall sampling design, and discuss an exemplary research project employing each design. Comparisons of findings from these exemplar studies indicate that sampling designs are extremely consequential. I close by recommending best practices.
The Radicalization of Contention in Northern Ireland, 1968-1972: A Relational Perspective
Authors: De Fazio Gianluca
Published: April 2020

This article investigates the radicalization of contention in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1972 using a relational perspective and methodological approach. Two arenas of contention, movement-countermovement interactions and the structure of political opportunities and threats, are examined to understand the outbreak of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland. The evolution of radical contention is explored through Quantitative Narrative Analysis (QNA), an innovative method that systematically records social actors and their interactions within an event. Relying on computer-assisted story grammars [the Subject (S) - Action (A) - Object (O) sequence and their modifiers] to parse narrative data, 6,035 semantic triplets were stored in a relational database. Sequential network models are used to analyze the database and reconstruct the nature and evolution of the interactions among the main political actors involved in the Troubles. Four distinct phases of the conflict are unveiled through network models of violence, indicating how and when the conflict radicalized, and how actors shifted their strategies of contention. Archival data are used to specify how mechanisms of radicalization, such as hostile counter-mobilization, repression, object shift and boundary activation, engendered the conflict.
Contextualizing Consequences: A Socio-Legal Approach to Social Movement Outcomes in Professional Fields
Authors: Chiarello Elizabeth
Published: April 2020

Social movement consequences have become an increasingly important area of study, but the current literature overlooks implementation and treats law, organizations, and culture as separate areas of inquiry. This study offers a new perspective on consequences by taking a socio-legal approach that considers how law is constructed and enacted in professional fields and how legal and professional logics intersect to influence professional decision making. Drawing on ethnographic interviews, surveys, and content analysis about the Emergency Contraceptive Pill (ECP) conflict in pharmacy, I find that professional logics largely supersede legal ones to influence decision making and that organizational positioning and perceived policy affect collective goods distribution. These forces diminish the power of pro-choice and anti-abortion laws as professionals interpret, construct, and ignore the law in daily practice. The concluding discussion emphasizes the importance of considering professionals as targets of social movement action, reconceptualizing collective goods and implementation, and using field theory as methodology.
How Repertoires Evolve: The Diffusion of Suicide Protest in the Twentieth Century
Authors: Biggs Michael
Published: April 2020

Although "repertoire of contention" is a ubiquitous term in the literature, the concept remains undertheorized and untested. The crucial implication, I argue, is that instances of a tactic belong to one or a few lineages, each radiating from a single invention and comprising a series of adoptions and repetitions. This implication is tested by examining suicide protest: killing oneself, without harming others, for a collective cause. The decline in cruel public punishment and the growth of news media increased the potential utility of this tactic. There were multiple inventions of suicide protest, but only in Japan was there a recognizable lineage in the early twentieth century. The sacrifice of a Vietnamese monk in 1963 created a model, which was adopted in many different countries for varied collective causes. Almost all subsequent acts can be traced—directly or indirectly—back to this origin.
Allies Forging Collective Identity: Embodiment and Emotions on the Migrant Trail
Authors: Russo Chandra
Published: April 2020

This article examines how embodied experience and the accompanying emotions help social movement allies to forge collective identity. The analysis is based on the Migrant Trail, an annual protest event in which allies of the border-justice movement spend a week walking seventy-five miles through the U.S.-Mexico borderlands to protest migrant deaths. Original data include four years of participant observation, interviews conducted during the 2011 Migrant Trail, and surveys conducted a year and a half after the event. Findings suggest that embodied and emotional experiences help allies overcome challenges such as social distance from beneficiaries, a lack of credibility in the movement, and no lineage of resistance. This study contributes to an understanding of collective identity formation among allies and offers an illustrative case for the important role embodiment plays in the emotions of collective action.
The Mobilizing Power of Grievances: Applying Loss Aversion and Omission Bias to Social Movements
Authors: Bergstrand Kelly
Published: April 2020

This study investigates how the nature of grievances can provide advantages or disadvantages to social movements. I use an experimental design to test the effects of loss aversion and omission bias on people's reactions toward grievances and the campaigns that seek to address them. The results indicate that grievances involving a loss are perceived as more immoral, unjust, and important than grievances involving a gain. Loss-based grievances also generate stronger emotions, increase willingness to engage in activism, and produce perceptions of greater public support. Similarly, grievances resulting from a commission (action), as compared to an omission (inaction), are seen as more immoral, unjust, and important. Commission-based grievances direct attribution of blame toward perpetrators, evoke higher levels of emotions, and increase willingness to participate in campaigns. These findings provide support for the idea that not all grievances are created equal in their ability to appeal to and potentially mobilize the public.
Evangelicals and Emergent Moral Protest
Authors: Gahr Joshua , Young Michael
Published: April 2020

This article provides a comparative analysis of two religiously inspired protests that fed broader social movements: the "rebellion" of immediate abolitionists at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati in 1834 and the new-left "breakthrough" at the Christian Faith-and-Life Community in Austin in 1960. The two cases are examples of moral protests breaking out of Protestant institutions and shaping social movements. From the comparison, we draw general lessons about the meso- and micro-level processes of activist conversions. We show how processes of "rationalization" and "subjectivation" combined in the emergence of new contentious moral orders. We apply these lessons to help explain the creative interactions of evangelical Protestants in the history of American moral protest. Our approach accords with pragmatist and new social movement theories of emergent moral orders.
From the Streets to the Mountains: The Dynamics of Transition from a Protest Wave to an Insurgency in Kashmir
Authors: Demirel-Pegg Tijen
Published: April 2020

This study investigates the dynamics of transition from a peaceful protest wave to a violent insurgency. It examines the causal path leading to a major shift in the intensity of a protest wave and argues that the transition is the product of the interactions between the dissidents, the state, and external actors. By studying the protest wave in Kashmir (1979-88), it identifies state repression and external support as the key factors driving the transition process. Time series analysis is used to analyze the original empirical evidence collected through content analysis. By providing a comprehensive understanding of the origins of the insurgency in Kashmir, this study shows that protest waves and civil wars are intimately linked.
Differential Participation in Professional Activism: The Case of the Guantánamo Habeas Lawyers
Authors: Suh Chan
Published: April 2020

Scholars of social movements tend to regard professionals as a homogeneous group whose activism plays a secondary role in mobilization processes. In this article, I focus on activism driven by professionals themselves and therein examine how heterogeneous professionals participate in their activism. Drawing on the case of the Guantánamo habeas lawyers, I utilize a two-step methodology to investigate the factors that contribute to the differential participation of legal professionals. The first stage of analysis shows that while lawyers with higher status played a critical role in initiating professional activism under a hostile environment, the Rasul v. Bush ruling opened up a legal opportunity for lawyers with lower status to participate in activism. In the second stage, social network analyses of the lawyers' collaborative structure reveal that movement-affiliated lawyers played a bridging role that coordinated initiators and latecomers. The results have important implications for understanding professionals' participation in contentious politics.
The Duality of Claims and Events: The Greek Campaign Against the Troika's Memoranda and Austerity, 2010-2012
Authors: Diani Mario , Kousis Maria
Published: April 2020

Protest campaigns consist of connected public events to which participants assign shared meanings. Data from thirty-one large protest events that occurred in Greece between January 2010 and December 2012—protests challenging neoliberal austerity policies and the "Troika's" bailout package—enable us to illustrate a network-analytic approach to identify those connections. We treat claims as the linkages that assign a common meaning to different episodes of collective action, weaving them into a coherent national campaign. We also examine the ways that events provide a connection between different claims, merging them in distinctive political agendas. Agendas evolve over time, and while some thematic continuity is essential to the existence of a campaign, this does not imply total stability in protestors' agendas. Data from Greek and transnational newspapers, electronic websites, and other media sources reveal both the continuity and shifts over the three main phases of the antiausterity campaign.
Embedding Digital Communications Within Collective Action Networks: A Multidimensional Network Approach
Authors: Pavan Elena
Published: April 2020

In this article, we conceive of digital media as embedded within social networks, and use this perspective to examine the role of online communications in collective action. We claim that the adoption of this perspective requires two shifts: first, rethinking the ontological separation between media and social networks of action that has, so far, characterized research in this domain; second, the adoption of flexible tools that enable us to account, simultaneously, for the multiplicity of relations underpinning collective efforts and the hybrid interplay between direct and technology-mediated interactions. After discussing the necessity and the implications of considering communication technologies as endogenous to social networks of collective action, we introduce multidimensional networks (MDNs) as a suitable perspective to advance the application of a relational approach to the study of collective action, thus meeting the challenges posed by the diffusion of interactive and networking digital media.