scholarly journals Did the Tea Party Movement Fuel the Trump-Train? The Role of Social Media in Activist Persistence and Political Change in the 21st Century

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630511770678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deana A. Rohlinger ◽  
Leslie Bunnage
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Qualitative Comparative Analysis ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
White House ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Political Communities

Arguably, the Tea Party movement played a role in Trump’s rise to power. Indeed, it is difficult to ignore the similarities in the populist claims made by Tea Partiers and those made by Trump throughout his campaign. Yet, we know very little about the potential connections between the Tea Party Movement and the “Trump-train” that crashed through the White House doors in 2017. We take a first step at tracing the connection between the two by examining who stayed involved in the Tea Party Movement at the local level and why. Drawing on interview and participant observation data with supporters of the Florida Tea Party Movement (FTPM) over a 2-year time period, we use qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to assess the factors that determine whether individuals stay with or leave the movement and how the structure of the movement, which relied heavily on social media, contributed to this decision. We find that individuals who identified as libertarian left the FTPM, while those who identified as “fiscal conservatives” stayed. The FTPM’s reliance on social media further explains these results. Individuals who left the movement blamed the “openness” of social media, which, in their view, enabled the Republican Party to “hijack” the FTPM for its own purposes. Individuals who stayed in the movement attributed social media’s “openness” with the movement’s successes. We find that social media helped politically like-minded people locate one another and cultivate political communities that likely sustained activist commitment to changing the Republican Party over time.

COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE: THIN AND THICK IDENTITIES IN MOVEON.ORG AND THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT*

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deana A. Rohlinger ◽  
Leslie A. Bunnage
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Internet Communication ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

We argue that social scientists need to adopt a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between Internet Communication Technologies (ICTs) and collective identity. Here, we identify four factors that interact and make collective identity “thick” or “thin”— an organization's structure of communication, the breadth of its mobilization efforts, its goals (which may or may not include collective identity), and supporters' interest in cultivating a political community. Drawing on interviews with and participant observation data on supporters in MoveOn.org and the Florida Tea Party Movement (FTPM), we find that MoveOn, which focuses on curating donors, cultivates a thin collective identity and the FTPM, which initially focused on mobilizing citizens across political lines, nurtures a thick collective identity. In our analysis, we illustrate how the four factors interact and outline the consequences of collective identity over time. We conclude the paper with a call for additional research on collective identity.

The Mainstreaming of Racism in American Politics

Hard White ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard C. Fording ◽  
Sanford F. Schram
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Opportunity Structure ◽  
White House ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Political Narratives ◽  
Key Terms

This chapter frames the book’s analysis and provides an overview of the subsequent chapters. It explains how racism today is manifested most significantly in white “outgroup hostility” toward Latinos and Muslims as well as African Americans. It highlights the importance of race-baiting elites in exploiting a transformed media landscape to stoke white outgroup hostility and thereby mainstream racism in American politics today. The chapter introduces and defines a number of key terms, including “racialized political narratives” that operate to racialize selected groups of people to be constructed as threatening “outgroups” in opposition to whites as the “ingroup.” It emphasizes that the “political opportunity structure” for white racial extremists became more open, especially with the rise of the Tea Party movement, leading to their increased participation in conventional politics. The chapter argues that these factors had already converged prior to 2016 for Donald Trump to exploit in winning the presidency, thereby accelerating the mainstreaming of racism in American politics by putting it at the center of public policymaking in the White House.

Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats: The Asymmetry of American Party Politics

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Grossmann ◽  
David A. Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Government Action ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Group Interest ◽  
American Party ◽  
Two Sides

Scholarship commonly implies that the major political parties in the United States are configured as mirror images to each other, but the two sides actually exhibit important and underappreciated differences. The Republican Party is primarily the agent of an ideological movement whose supporters prize doctrinal purity, while the Democratic Party is better understood as a coalition of social groups seeking concrete government action. This asymmetry is reinforced by American public opinion, which favors left-of-center positions on most specific policy issues yet simultaneously shares the general conservative preference for smaller and less active government. Each party therefore faces a distinctive governing challenge in balancing the unique demands of its base with the need to maintain broad popular support. This foundational difference between the parties also explains why the rise of the Tea Party movement among Republicans in recent years has not been accompanied by an equivalent ideological insurgency among Democrats.

The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Williamson ◽  
Theda Skocpol ◽  
John Coggin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Business Elites ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Electoral Defeat ◽  
Conservative Media

In the aftermath of a potentially demoralizing 2008 electoral defeat, when the Republican Party seemed widely discredited, the emergence of the Tea Party provided conservative activists with a new identity funded by Republican business elites and reinforced by a network of conservative media sources. Untethered from recent GOP baggage and policy specifics, the Tea Party energized disgruntled white middle-class conservatives and garnered widespread attention, despite stagnant or declining favorability ratings among the general public. As participant observation and interviews with Massachusetts activists reveal, Tea Partiers are not monolithically hostile toward government; they distinguish between programs perceived as going to hard-working contributors to US society like themselves and “handouts” perceived as going to unworthy or freeloading people. During 2010, Tea Party activism reshaped many GOP primaries and enhanced voter turnout, but achieved a mixed record in the November general election. Activism may well continue to influence dynamics in Congress and GOP presidential primaries. Even if the Tea Party eventually subsides, it has undercut Obama's presidency, revitalized conservatism, and pulled the national Republican Party toward the far right.

Faith and the Free Market: Evangelicals, the Tea Party, and Economic Attitudes

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Deckman ◽  
Dan Cox ◽  
Robert Jones ◽  
Betsy Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Public Investments ◽  
Economic Attitudes ◽  
Evangelical Protestants

AbstractWe argue that concerted efforts by Tea Party leaders, Republican politicians, and leading Christian Right figures to establish and promote a connection between Christian faith and the free-market system has helped shift the economic attitudes of white evangelical Protestants in a more conservative direction. Our analysis of Public Religion Research Institute survey data finds that white evangelical Protestants express greater skepticism about an active role of government in society and believe economic growth is more likely to be spurred by a reduction in taxes rather than in public investments. Moreover, we find that identifying with the Tea Party has a conservatizing influence on their economic issue positions. While we find that partisanship, class, and in some cases, age, serve to modify the views of some evangelicals, by and large, evangelicals have come to embrace the conservative fiscal message promoted by both the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement.

Has the Tea Party Era Radicalized the Republican Party? Evidence from Text Analysis of the 2008 and 2012 Republican Primary Debates

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (04) ◽  
pp. 806-812 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juraj Medzihorsky ◽  
Levente Littvay ◽  
Erin K. Jenne
Keyword(s):  
Text Analysis ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Ideological Position ◽  
Single Dimension ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Presidential Primary ◽  
Mitt Romney

ABSTRACTMuch ink has been spilled to describe the emergence and likely influence of the Tea Party on the American political landscape. Pundits and journalists declared that the emergence of the Tea Party movement pushed the Republican Party to a more extreme ideological position, which is generally anti-Washington. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed the ideological positions taken by candidates in the 2008 and 2012 pre-Iowa caucus Republican presidential-primary debates. To establish the positions, we used the debate transcripts and a text-analytic technique that placed the candidates on a single dimension. Findings show that, overall, the 2012 candidates moved closer to an anti-Washington ideology—associated with the Tea Party movement—and away from the more traditional social conservative Republican ideology, which was more salient in the 2008 debates. Both Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, the two candidates who ran in both elections, shifted significantly in the ideological direction associated with the Tea Party.

Hard White

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard C. Fording ◽  
Sanford F. Schram
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Opportunity Structure ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Opportunity Structure ◽  
White House ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
To Come

This book analyzes data from a variety of sources to understand the mainstreaming of racism today, putting this research in a historical context. With issues of globalization, immigration, and demographic diversification achieving greater public salience, racism is now more likely to manifest itself in the form of a generalized ethnocentrism that expresses “outgroup hostility” toward a diverse set of groups, including Latinos and Muslims as well as African Americans. Changes in both structure and agency have facilitated the mainstreaming of racism today. Changes in the “political opportunity structure,” as witnessed by the rise of the Tea Party Movement, enabled the mainstreaming of white extremists into the Republican Party and established the basis for an electoral politics focused on giving voice to white people more generally acting on their outgroup hostility. Changes in the political opportunity structure were matched by the appearance of a charismatic leader in the person of Donald Trump, who made great use of a transformed media landscape to stoke white people’s outgroup hostility. Trump won the presidency by strategically deploying his demagoguery to mobilize white nonvoters in swing states, with the end result greatly accelerating the mainstreaming of racism and placing it at the center of policymaking in the White House. Providing extensive empirical evidence, this book documents how the mainstreaming of racism today began before Trump started to run for the presidency but then increased under his leadership and that it is likely to be a troubling presence in U.S. politics for some time to come. The findings provided create the basis for suggestions on how to push racism back to the margins of American politics.

Social Media Literacy For Housewives In Kanoman Maguwoharjo Village, Sleman, Yogyakarta

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dewi Novianti ◽  
Siti Fatonah
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Focus Group Discussion ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Group Discussion ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Research Subjects

Social media is a necessity for everyone in communicating and exchanging information. Social media users do not know the boundaries of age, generation, gender, ethnicity, and religion. However, what is interesting is the user among housewives. This study took the research subjects of housewives. Housewives are chosen as research subjects because they are pillars or pillars in a household. If the pillar is strong, then the household will also be healthy. Thus, if we want to build a resilient and robust generation, we will start from the housewives. A healthy household starts from strong mothers too. This study aims to find out the insights of the housewives of Kanoman village regarding the content on smartphones and social media and provide knowledge of social media literacy to housewives. This study used a qualitative approach with data collection techniques using participant observation, interviews, focus group discussion (FGD), and documentation. The results of the study showed that previously housewives had not experienced social media literacy. Then the researchers took steps to be able to achieve the desired literacy results. Researchers took several steps to make them become social media literates. They become able to use social media, understand social media, and even produce messages through social media.

Change in Service Provision Networks: The Case of Animal Welfare Services

2021 ◽  
pp. 0160323X2110092
Author(s):  
Laura A. Reese ◽  
Xiaomeng Li
Keyword(s):  
Service Provision ◽  
Survey Design ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Major Change ◽  
Network Evolution ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Organizational Ties ◽  
The Impact

This research focuses on change within informal service provision networks, specifically examining the impact that changes within a key organization can have on the larger network. Employing a before and after survey design with a treatment at the midpoint and participant observation, it asks: What is the impact of a major change within one organization on the larger external network? What is the nature of the organizational ties? and, How do political factors exogenous to the network impact the network evolution process? The findings suggest that internal change within a focal actor can have ripple effects throughout the network increasing density. Public service provision at the local level can be enhanced through an increase in partnerships between the public and nonprofit sectors. However, network evolution can be limited by the larger political environment and lack of a coordinating role on the part of local government.

scholarly journals It takes two to tango: the interplay between decision logics, communication strategies and social media engagement in start-ups

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Rudeloff ◽  
Stefanie Pakura ◽  
Fabian Eggers ◽  
Thomas Niemand
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Fuzzy Set ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Qualitative Comparative Analysis ◽  
Communication Models ◽  
Social Media Engagement ◽  
Start Ups

AbstractThis manuscript analyzes start-ups’ usage of different communication strategies (information, response, involvement), their underlying decision logics (effectuation, causation, strategy absence) and respective social media success. A multitude of studies have been published on the decision logics of entrepreneurs as well as on different communication strategies. Decision logics and according strategies and actions are closely connected. Still, research on the interplay between the two areas is largely missing. This applies in particular to the effect of different decision logics and communication models on social media success. Through a combination of case studies with fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis this exploratory study demonstrates that different combinations of causal and absence of strategy decision logics can be equally successful when it comes to social media engagement, whereas effectuation is detrimental for success. Furthermore, we find that two-way-communication is essential to create engagement, while information strategy alone cannot lead to social media success. This study provides new insights into the role of decision logics and connects effectuation theory with the communication literature, a field that has been dominated by causal approaches.

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