Exploiting a Crisis: Abortion Activism and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Medical Procedure ◽

Political Debate ◽

Global Crisis ◽

Opportunity Structures ◽

How do social movement organizations involved in abortion debates leverage a global crisis to pursue their goals? In recent months there has been media coverage of how anti-abortion actors in the United States attempted to use the COVID-19 pandemic to restrict access to abortion by classifying abortion as a non-essential medical procedure. Was the crisis “exploited” by social movement organizations (SMOs) in other countries? I bring together Crisis Exploitation Theory and the concept of discursive opportunity structures to test whether social movement organizations exploit crisis in ways similar to elites, with those seeking change being more likely to capitalize on the opportunities provided by the crisis. Because Twitter tends to be on the frontlines of political debate—especially during a pandemic—a dataset is compiled of over 12,000 Tweets from the accounts of SMOs involved in abortion debates across four countries to analyze the patterns in how they responded to the pandemic. The results suggest that crisis may disrupt expectations about SMO behavior and that anti- and pro-abortion rights organizations at times framed the crisis as both a “threat” and as an “opportunity.”

Sector-Level Dynamics and Collective Action in the United States, 1965-1975

10.17813/maiq.14.3.h67h423m0864672h ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 14 (3) ◽

pp. 293-314 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Jeff Larson ◽

Sarah Soule

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Collective Action ◽

Social Movement ◽

Strong Support ◽

The United States ◽

Organizational Ecology ◽

Political Opportunities ◽

Mixed Support ◽

To explain varying levels of collective action by social movement organizations in the United States operating during the height of the 1960s protest cycle, this article examines social movement sector-level dynamics alongside indicators of resources and political opportunities. Drawing on hypotheses from neoinstitutional, organizational ecology, and embeddedness perspectives, the paper emphasizes the importance of understanding the sector-level dynamics of legitimacy, competition, and embeddedness when explaining levels of collective action. Results show strong support for neoinstitutional, organizational ecology, and embeddedness theories, but more mixed support for arguments about how political opportunities and resources affect levels of collective action by social movement organizations.

Movement Commitment among Progressive and Conservative Religio-Political Activists in the United States

Politics and Religion ◽

10.1017/s1755048316000249 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 296-308 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Laura R. Olson

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Social Movement ◽

The United States ◽

Religious Right ◽

The Public ◽

Public Religion ◽

Left And Right ◽

Religious Left ◽

AbstractIn this article, I compare progressive and conservative religio-political activists' commitment to their movements (the religious left and right, respectively). I rely on data from the Public Religion Research Institute's 2009 surveys of individuals they identified as religious left activists and religious right activists. Do these activists actually say they identify with the movement with which pollsters assume them to affiliate? How potentially influential do they perceive their movements to be? Third, to what extent do activists support their movement's core social movement organizations? I conclude by arguing that the evidence is mixed that the American religious left lacks influence because its activists tend not to be unified.

THE RISE OF INEQUALITY: HOW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS SHAPE DISCURSIVE FIELDS*

10.17813/1086-671x-21-4-413 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

pp. 413-429 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Sarah Gaby ◽

Neal Caren

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Social Movement ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Limited Attention ◽

Wall Street ◽

Term Outcome ◽

Long Term Outcome ◽

Occupy Movement ◽

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.

Bureaucracy, Power, and Threat: Unions and Strikes in The United States, 1990-2001

10.17813/maiq.15.2.a3723r8621271126 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 217-237 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Andrew Martin

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Labor Unions ◽

The United States ◽

Organized Labor ◽

Strike Activity ◽

Considerable Evidence ◽

Using Data ◽

The bureaucratization of many social movements has generated controversy among scholars and activists alike. While there is considerable evidence that formalized social movement organizations (SMOs) tend to be successful, critics maintain that such actors invariably shift resources away from protest, reducing their disruptive potential. The current research seeks to reorient this debate by introducing the concept of threat as an integral, but overlooked, dimension of protest. Specifically, I hypothesize that the costs associated with collective action will motivate formalized SMOs to leverage the threat of protest to achieve new gains. The empirical case is made using data from a sample of labor unions and their strike activity from 1990-2001, a period of growing acrimony between organized labor and firms that is particularly well suited for analyzing threat. The findings highlight the role of threat in movement challenges and how it interacts with the broader environment within which the SMO is embedded.

Coalitions and Political Context: U.S. Movements Against Wars in Iraq

10.17813/maiq.10.3.f8u6t4u2708kw442 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 10 (3) ◽

pp. 327-344 ◽

Cited By ~ 54

Author(s):

David Meyer ◽

Catherine Corrigall-Brown

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Social Movement ◽

The United States ◽

Political Context ◽

The Political ◽

Costs And Benefits ◽

Political Opportunities ◽

Movement Organizations ◽

Internal And External Factors

Although social movements in the United States are staged by coalitions, the politics of movement coalitions and the internal and external factors that affect their formation, maintenance, and dissolution are understudied. Here, we use the 2002-2003 movement against the impending war in Iraq to refocus analytical attention and sharpen theory on social movement coalitions. We contend that external circumstances, or political opportunities, are critically important factors that affect the propensity of social movement organizations to cooperate in common cause. Further, we contend that cooperation among groups can best be seen as variable, rather than dichotomous, and argue that political context affects the extent of cooperation among cooperating groups. We examine the importance of political context through a comparison of the first and second Gulf Wars. The decision of social movement organizations to join a coalition is akin to the process whereby individuals join social movements, involving an assessment of costs, benefits, and identity. As the political context changes, the costs and benefits are assessed differently and, for this reason, actively engaged coalitions are difficult to sustain over a long period as circumstances change. By looking at the antiwar movement generally, and the Win Without War coalition in particular, we show that cooperation was born in the second Gulf War out of the political opportunities presented by the George W. Bush's administration. We conclude with a call for more research on social movements as coalitions.

LGBT Candidates and Elected Officials in North America

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1184 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Joanna Everitt ◽

Manon Tremblay

Keyword(s):

Media Coverage ◽

Role Models ◽

Political Action ◽

The United States ◽

Political Action Committees ◽

Political Ambition ◽

Policy Positions ◽

Movement Organizations ◽

Elected Office

The representation of LGBTQ individuals has improved substantially in Canada, Mexico, and the United States in the past few decades; however, the numbers holding elected office are still quite small. Several factors have contributed to the level of success of these candidates, including: changes in public opinion toward LGBTQ individuals and LGBTQ candidates in particular, their own levels of political ambition, their alignment with different political parties and the support that they receive from these organizations, media coverage of their candidacies and their policy positions, and finally their support from institutions of civil society such as political action committees or other social movement organizations. It is clear that in all three countries these candidates, when elected, contribute symbolically, through serving as role models to other LGBTQ individuals and increasing levels of acceptance among their non-LGBTQ colleagues. They also promote substantive representation through their support and promotion of policies that address LGBTQ issues and concerns.

Envisioning Land Seizure

American Behavioral Scientist ◽

10.1177/0002764211419354 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 56 (2) ◽

pp. 151-171 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Christopher Wetzel

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Social Movement ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Physical Space ◽

Visual Images ◽

Social Scientists ◽

Tourist Destination ◽

A Site ◽

Although land seizure is designed to be an evocative and provocative tactic for social movement organizations, how are groups’ members, goals, and claims portrayed in subsequent media coverage? Focusing on the Indians of All Tribes’ occupation of Alcatraz Island, this article qualitatively analyzes photographic representations of protest in three national newspapers. Images published during the occupation (1969 to 1971) represent Indian activists as lazing or inactive, politically ineffectual, and invisible. When foregrounding contention, photographs showed negatively affected non-Natives or Indians being arrested. By contrast, images published after the occupation (1972 to 2000) generally concentrate on the physical space of the island as a tourist destination rather than a site of conflict. Social scientists should critically assess the media’s role in shaping collective perceptions about social movements through visual images, particularly when tactics are designed to garner media attention.

Social Movement Organizations and Response to Environmental Change: The NAACP, 1960-1973

Social Problems ◽

10.1525/sp.1984.32.1.03a00020 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 16-30 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Martin N. Marger

Keyword(s):

Environmental Change ◽

Social Movement ◽

Movement Organizations ◽

Response To Environmental Change

Learning to Detain Asylum Seekers and the Growth of Mass Immigration Detention in the United States

Law & Social Inquiry ◽

10.1017/lsi.2021.11 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-29

Author(s):

Smita Ghosh ◽

Mary Hoopes

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Infectious Diseases ◽

Cognitive Dissonance ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Asylum Seekers ◽

Ad Hoc ◽

The United States ◽

Critical Component ◽

Immigration Detention ◽

Important Shift

Drawing upon an analysis of congressional records and media coverage from 1981 to 1996, this article examines the growth of mass immigration detention. It traces an important shift during this period: while detention began as an ad hoc executive initiative that was received with skepticism by the legislature, Congress was ultimately responsible for entrenching the system over objections from the agency. As we reveal, a critical component of this evolution was a transformation in Congress’s perception of asylum seekers. While lawmakers initially decried their detention, they later branded them as dangerous. Lawmakers began describing asylum seekers as criminals or agents of infectious diseases in order to justify their detention, which then cleared the way for the mass detention of arriving migrants more broadly. Our analysis suggests that they may have emphasized the dangerousness of asylum seekers to resolve the dissonance between their theoretical commitments to asylum and their hesitance to welcome newcomers. In addition to this distinctive form of cognitive dissonance, we discuss a number of other implications of our research, including the ways in which the new penology framework figured into the changing discourse about detaining asylum seekers.

Influence of the pandemic lockdown on Fridays for Future’s hashtag activism

New Media & Society ◽

10.1177/14614448211026575 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 146144482110265

Author(s):

Jörg Haßler ◽

Anna-Katharina Wurst ◽

Marc Jungblut ◽

Katharina Schlosser

Keyword(s):

Social Movement ◽

German Language ◽

The Public ◽

Twitter Activity ◽

Social movement organizations (SMOs) increasingly rely on Twitter to create new and viral communication spaces alongside newsworthy protest events and communicate their grievance directly to the public. When the COVID-19 pandemic impeded street protests in spring 2020, SMOs had to adapt their strategies to online-only formats. We analyze the German-language Twitter communication of the climate movement Fridays for Future (FFF) before and during the lockdown to explain how SMOs adapted their strategy under online-only conditions. We collected (re-)tweets containing the hashtag #fridaysforfuture ( N = 46,881 tweets, N = 225,562 retweets) and analyzed Twitter activity, use of hashtags, and predominant topics. Results show that although the number of tweets was already steadily declining before, it sharply dropped during the lockdown. Moreover, the use of hashtags changed substantially and tweets focused increasingly on thematic discourses and debates around the legitimacy of FFF, while tweets about protests and calls for mobilization decreased.