Suchergebnisse

I am honored to serve as editor for this special issue of Mobilization on innovative methods in social movements research. I was delighted when Rory McVeigh originally conceived of the idea of compiling manuscripts that employed cutting edge methods of collecting and analyzing data in order to advance contemporary social movement theory. I enjoyed the opportunity to review the wide variety of scholarly works I received for this issue. The six pieces included here represent the best submissions and emerging trends in the field. Adapted from the source document.

"The book offers a new view of U.S. social movement history across the twentieth century by examining how movement organizations were covered in major national newspapers. The book analyzes U.S. social movements--ranging from temperance to women's suffrage to the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street--in a broad comparative fashion. Drawing on the full set of digitized newspapers from the twentieth-century (a task that as little as twenty years ago was considered impossible for researchers), the book offers both an institutional history of news--why the media covered what they covered, and to what effect--and also shows the influence of news coverage on a range of social mocements, from the well-known to the obscure. Media coverage is a crucial component of movement visibility; news can draw the general public into battles over new issues but also shapes how movements are perceived. The authors show how a movement's structure--it's organization, as well as the protest and non-protests activities it undertakes--influence its coverage, and consider too how macro political conditions shape movement coverage. They reveal surprising gaps between contemporaneous coverage and current scholarly focus; for instance, the labor movement received the most journalistic attention of any movement of the twentieth century, but it is greatly understudied in comparison to how much it dominated the public sphere. Taking stock of news coverage across a century of movements thus illuminates movements that were influential in public discourse but have been neglected by scholars. The authors end the manuscript by considering how recent developments--the rise of the internet and social media, the emergence of a powerful right-wing media system, and 24-hour news and the demise of many local newspapers and an overall decline in professional journalism--have aided right-wing movement actors in their bids for attention and for policy change at the expense of those on the left"--

Social movement scholars have considered several political and cultural consequences of social movements, but have paid limited attention to whether and how social movements shape discourse. We develop a theory of discursive eruption, referring to the ability of radical movements to initially ignite media coverage but not control the content once other actors— particularly those that can take advantage of journalistic norms—enter the discourse. We hold that one long-term outcome of radical social movements is the ability to alter discursive fields through mechanisms such as increasing the salience and content of movement-based issues. We examine the way movements shape discourse by focusing on newspaper articles about inequality before, during, and after the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. We analyze changes in the salience and content of coverage as well as shifts in actor standing and influence. Using 7,024 articles from eight newspapers, we find that the OWS movement increased media attention to inequality, shifting the focus of the discourse toward movement-based issue areas (e.g., the middle class and minimum wage). Further, we find that compared to the pre-OWS period, the influence of social movement organizations and think tanks rose in discourse on inequality. In addition, the discourse on inequality became more highly politicized as a result of the Occupy movement. These findings highlight the importance of social movements in shaping discourse and indicate that social movement scholars should further consider discursive changes as a consequence of social movements.

AbstractWhat determines the quality of coverage received by social movement organizations when they appear extensively in the news? Research on the news coverage of social movement organizations is dominated by case studies supporting the "protest paradigm," which argues that journalists portray movement activists trivially and negatively when covering protest. However, movement organizations often make long‐running news for many different reasons, mainly not protest. We argue that some of this extensive news will lead to worse coverage—in terms of substance and sentiment—notably when the main action covered involves violence. Extensive coverage centered on other actions, however, notably politically assertive action, will tend to produce "good news" in these dimensions. We analyze the news of the twentieth century's 100 most‐covered U.S. movement organizations in their biggest news year in four national newspapers. Topic models indicate that these organizations were mainly covered for actions other than nonviolent protest, including politically assertive action, strikes, civic action, investigations, trials, and violence. Natural language processing analyses and hand‐coding show that their news also varied widely in sentiment and substance. Employing qualitative comparative analyses, we find that the main action behind news strongly influences its quality, and there may be several news paradigms for movement organizations.

Abstract
What drives the news coverage of social movements in the professional news media? We address this question by elaborating an institutional mediation model arguing that the news values, routines, and characteristics of the news media induce them to pay attention to movements depending on their characteristics and the political contexts in which they engage. The news-making characteristics of movements include their disruptive capacities and organizational strength, and the political contexts include a partisan regime in power, benefitting from national policies, and congressional investigations. To appraise these arguments, we analyze approximately 1 million news articles mentioning 29 social movements over the twentieth century, published in four national newspapers. We use negative binomial regression analyses and separate time-series analyses of the labor movement to assess the model's robustness across different movements, time periods, and news sources. In each analysis, the results support the hypotheses based on the institutional mediation model. More generally, we argue that the influence of social movements on institutions depends on the structure and operating procedures of those institutions. This insight has implications for future studies of the influence of movements on major social institutions.

In this article we review theory and comparative and historical research on US social policy. We discuss first the conceptual frameworks used to think about social policy, the changing images of American social policy implied by these different frameworks, and the questions they raise. From there we examine the arguments offered to answer questions about US social policy as well as the research strategies and evidence used to appraise the arguments. We address work that situates US social policy in comparative perspective as well as work that examines the development of American social policy historically or across states. Although many lines of argumentation have some empirical support, we find that some lines of political and institutional analyses provide the best supported answers to the questions and the greatest potential for wide usage in comparative and historical studies. We conclude that scholars would do well not to treat American social policy as so exceptional as to require separate images, explanations, and approaches. We suggest promising new lines of empirical inquiry prompted by new conceptualizations of social policy and other developments in this literature.

Media are central to the dynamics of protest and social movements. Contemporary social movements face a shifting environment composed of new media technologies and platforms that enable new identities, organizational forms, and practices. We review recent research focusing on the ways in which movements shape and are shaped by the media environment and the ways in which changes in the media environment have reshaped participation, mobilization, and impacts of activism. We conclude with the following recommendations for scholarship in this burgeoning area: move toward a broader conception of media in movements; expand engagement with scholarship in neighboring disciplines that study politics, media, and communication; develop new methodological and analytical skills for emerging forms of media; and investigate the ways in which media are enhancing, altering, or undermining the ability of movements to mobilize support, shape broader identities and attitudes, and secure new advantages from targets and authorities.

This article charts the emergence of protest in the wake of the 2016 presidential election describing trends in protest activity from the first to second Women's Marches. We document characteristics including the magnitude, issue diversity, geographic range, tactical repertoire, and persistence of street protest, and we highlight key similarities and differences between this wave of protest and other recent episodes in the U.S. We conclude by pointing to important empirical and theoretical questions that movement scholars should address through analysis of this case.