From grassroots to digital ties: A case study of a political consumerism movement

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Parigi ◽  
Rachel Gong
Keyword(s):  
Community Organizing ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Grassroots Organizations ◽  
Political Consumerism ◽  
Network Ties ◽  
Social Network Ties ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
And Behavior

New grassroots organizations that target ethical consumer choices and behavior represent a departure from traditional social movement organizations. In this article, we study the activists of one of these organizations and show that social network ties formed mainly online greatly reinforce commitment toward the goals of the movement. We suggest that online ties, that is, digital ties, are important for political consumerism movements because they create audiences for private actions. It is because of the presence of these audiences that the individual participants can reinterpret their actions into public ones. We used an online survey to collect data on the users of the Transition US social website on Ning.com. Over half of the respondents have experiences with political activism. However, their responses indicate that they are dissatisfied with traditional means of political participation (e.g. rallies) and prefer non-contentious collective actions (e.g. local gardening). Respondents perceive community organizing to be the most effective way to bring about social change, deprioritizing connections to local government. Furthermore, respondents who formed digital ties with other activists were significantly more likely than respondents who had no ties with other activists to adopt consumer changes consistent with the goals of the movement. We interpreted this finding as an indicator that digital ties share some of the characteristics of strong ties, and we explored this similarity in this article.

Protest, Social Movements, and Spaces for Politically Oriented Consumerist Actions—Nationally, Transnationally, and Locally

2018 ◽  
pp. 68-88
Author(s):  
Francesca Forno
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Predatory Lending ◽  
Grassroots Organizations ◽  
Political Consumerism ◽  
Consumer Organizations ◽  
Ethical Criteria ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses the relationship between social movements and political consumerism. Besides traditional consumer organizations that seek to protect customers from corporate abuse (such as unsafe products, predatory lending, or false advertising), political consumer practices have become increasingly employed to achieve diverse political and social goals. Calls to citizens to take action in their role as consumers have been made by social movement organizations of various types, either to build up transnational awareness so as to step up pressure on corporations or to facilitate the purchase of goods/services that meet specific ethical criteria. Along with large-scale boycotting and global fair trade initiatives, market-based actions have entered the repertoire of a number of local grassroots organizations seeking bottom-up solutions for sustainable development, within which the act of shopping moves beyond a form of individuals taking responsibility to become a tool for constructing collective, citizenship-driven alternative styles of provisioning.

The Urban Politics of Human Rights Practice

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-427
Author(s):  
Paula Fernandez-Wulff ◽  
Christopher Yap
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Grassroots Organizations ◽  
Human Rights Practice ◽  
Movement Organizations

Abstract Social movement organizations are increasingly developing human rights strategies at the municipal level, particularly in European urban contexts. Yet critical scholarly work on human rights has overlooked two related realities: non-state-centric, social movement use of the tools and discourses of rights, and the strategic participation of citizen groups in municipal urban policy spaces. This article builds on critical human rights theory through the experiences of three grassroots organizations claiming and exercising social rights in urban policy spaces of Barcelona, Valladolid, and London. It engages with a number of scholarly critiques of the state and human rights, particularly focusing on those critiques that question their compatibility with autonomy, democracy, and self-government at the local level. While the value of such critical literature is undeniable, we show how urban grassroots practices and experiences with social rights-based strategies in the context of housing, water, and participation can circumvent some of these critiques on the ground, pointing at new avenues for critical legal research when infused with other critical discourses, including urban politics.

Town Heterogeneity and Affiliation: A Multilevel Analysis of Voluntary Association Membership

2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Rotolo
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Voluntary Association ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Network Ties ◽  
Ceteris Paribus ◽  
General Hypothesis ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Social Network Ties ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Voluntary Association Membership

This article develops and tests a general hypothesis derived from a theoretical perspective that links the individual-level outcome of voluntary association membership to the aggregate-level feature of town heterogeneity. The hypothesis predicts that heterogeneity will be negatively related to membership because, ceteris paribus, the potential for homophilous social network ties decreases with heterogeneity. The research examines heterogeneity with respect to four sociodemographic variables: education, income, industry, and race. To correctly separate individual effects from structural effects, nonlinear hierarchical models are employed. The results from models separately including each type of heterogeneity provide support for the hypothesis. Estimates from a model including all four types of heterogeneity suggest that race heterogeneity has the strongest impact on affiliation, although the effect of education heterogeneity also remains. The article concludes with a discussion of how future research on voluntary associations might further consider heterogeneity, with special emphasis on race heterogeneity.

scholarly journals THE CONSEQUENCES OF SOFT REPRESSION*

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-404
Author(s):  
Jan Jämte ◽  
Rune Ellefsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Radical Left

This article examines the consequences of soft repression on social movement activists. By drawing on activists’ perceptions, we develop a multilayered analytical framework that captures the experienced effects of soft repression at the individual, organizational, and movement levels. Our results show that soft repression—in particular, labeling, and stigmatization—primarily affect the individual level by triggering self-policing and self-control. By introducing a model that incorporates several radical social movement organizations, we also show how labeling and stigmatization affect different radical groups in different ways. These measures sometimes fail to demobilize the primary targets of the repressive actions, the most militant and clandestine groups. Instead, the demobilizing effects seem most evident in organizations that mobilize openly and inclusively. Our analysis is based on in-depth interviews with activists from the radical left-libertarian movement (RLLM) in Sweden, most of which have been active in organizations labeled as “violence-affirming extremists” by the Swedish government.

Cell Phone Use with Social Ties During Crises

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Kavanaugh ◽  
Steven D. Sheetz ◽  
Francis Quek ◽  
B. Joon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Text Messaging ◽  
Cell Phone ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Critical Periods ◽  
Network Ties ◽  
Cell Phone Use ◽  
Emergency Situations ◽  
Patterns Of Communication ◽  
Social Network Ties

Many proposed technological solutions to emergency response during disasters involve the use of cellular telephone technology. However, cell phone networks quickly become saturated during and/or immediately after a disaster and remain saturated for critical periods. This study investigated cell phone use by Virginia Tech students, faculty and staff during the shootings on April 16, 2007 to identify patterns of communication with social network ties. An online survey was administered to a random sample pool to capture communications behavior with social ties during the day of these tragic events. The results show that cell phones were the most heavily used communication technology by a majority of respondents (both voice and text messaging). While text messaging makes more efficient use of bandwidth than voice, most communication on 4/16 was with parents, since the majority of the sample is students, who are less likely to use text messaging. These findings should help in understanding how cell phone technologies may be utilized or modified for emergency situations in similar communities.

Cell Phone Use with Social Ties During Crises

2013 ◽  
pp. 84-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Kavanaugh ◽  
Steven D. Sheetz ◽  
Francis Quek ◽  
B. Joon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Text Messaging ◽  
Cell Phone ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Critical Periods ◽  
Network Ties ◽  
Cell Phone Use ◽  
Emergency Situations ◽  
Patterns Of Communication ◽  
Social Network Ties

Many proposed technological solutions to emergency response during disasters involve the use of cellular telephone technology. However, cell phone networks quickly become saturated during and/or immediately after a disaster and remain saturated for critical periods. This study investigated cell phone use by Virginia Tech students, faculty and staff during the shootings on April 16, 2007 to identify patterns of communication with social network ties. An online survey was administered to a random sample pool to capture communications behavior with social ties during the day of these tragic events. The results show that cell phones were the most heavily used communication technology by a majority of respondents (both voice and text messaging). While text messaging makes more efficient use of bandwidth than voice, most communication on 4/16 was with parents, since the majority of the sample is students, who are less likely to use text messaging. These findings should help in understanding how cell phone technologies may be utilized or modified for emergency situations in similar communities.

Persuasion and Non-Party Groups in the Digital Age

2019 ◽  
pp. 320-339
Author(s):  
Deana A. Rohlinger
Keyword(s):  
Political Change ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Grassroots Organizations ◽  
Internet Communication ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Change Projects ◽  
Movement Organizations

Non-party groups increasingly go after the electorate in their efforts to force politicians to take up their issues. Internet Communication Technologies (ICTs), which allow non-party groups to communicate with voters directly, aid in their efforts. How non-party groups try to tip the political scales in their favor is the topic of this chapter. This chapter outlines three ways that non-party groups, or groups that are not affiliated with, based on, or representing a political party, influence politicians and political parties in the digital age: framing issues; mobilizing consensus among a broad swatch of the populace; and mobilizing some subset of the electorate to action. The chapter begins by distinguishing three types of non-party groups—grassroots organizations, social movement organizations, and astroturf organizations—which vary in resources and capacity. It argues that these differences affect not only how groups use mass media, and ICTs specifically, to affect political change, but also how they frame issues and mobilize the electorate to action. The chapter concludes with a call for additional research. Social scientists need to pay close attention to astroturf groups, which seem to coopt legitimate political change projects for their own purposes.

scholarly journals Transnational Social Movement Organizations and Counter-Hegemonic Struggles Today

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jackie Smith ◽  
Basak Gemici ◽  
Samantha Plummer ◽  
Melanie M. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Network Ties ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Organizational Infrastructure ◽  
Systems Analysts ◽  
Issue Frames ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
Inter State

World-systems analysts have drawn our attention to the importance of the long-standing worldwide struggles of subaltern groups to defend their livelihoods and address fundamental conflicts of our times. Climate change, financial volatility, and rising inequality are exposing the existential threats the global capitalist system poses to growing numbers—many of whom once enjoyed some of its benefits. These urgent challenges create possibilities for social movements to attract more widespread support for alternatives to global capitalism. Using data on transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs) from 1953-2013, we assess possibilities for counter-hegemonic movements to provide the organizational infrastructure for a global movement to transform the world-system. We describe the organizational foundations for transnational cooperation among social movements and consider what changes in the population suggest about its counter-hegemonic potential. Our study reveals substantial organizational expansion, greater participation from actors in the periphery, regionalization, radicalization in the issue frames pursued by activist organizations, and network ties that suggest more limited and strategic engagement with the inter-state system. We attribute these changes to U.S. hegemonic decline, the end of the Cold War, and changes in inter-state institutions.

Temporal Focus

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbie J. Shipp
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Psychology Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
The Future ◽  
Behavior Based ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Temporal Focus

Temporal focus is the individual tendency to characteristically think more or less about the past, present, and future. Although originally rooted in early work from psychology, research on temporal focus has been steadily growing in a number of research areas, particularly since Zimbardo and Boyd’s (1999) influential article on the topic. This chapter will review temporal focus research from the past to the present, including how temporal focus has been conceptualized and measured, and which correlates and outcomes have been tested in terms of well-being and behavior. Based on this review, an agenda for research is created to direct temporal focus research in the future.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document