scholarly journals VALUING THE CAUSE: A THEORY OF AUTHENTICITY IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS*

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Edward T. Walker ◽  
Lina Stepick
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Relational Perspective ◽  
Movement Organizations

Scholars of contentious politics expect that social movement organizations (SMOs) are valued according to their ability to craft resonant frames or to enact displays of worthiness. We offer an alternative, relational perspective highlighting the critical role of authenticity in shaping an SMO's perceived value. Unlike frames and intentional displays, calculated efforts to proclaim authenticity often backfire. We distill two orthogonal types: grassroots (in)authenticity, based on idealized notions of civil society, and institutional (in)authenticity, rooted in culturalcognitive schemas used to judge fit with established SMO categories. Grassroots authenticity benefits an SMO's fundamental legitimacy, while lacking it entirely (i.e., “astroturfing”) severely harms public support. Institutional authenticity increases resources and survival chances, intelligibility to elite observers, and clarity of collective identities; still, lacking this (via hybridity) may assist in recruitment and outreach. We build propositions that elaborate these expectations and argue that authenticity should become a more central concept in social movement research.

scholarly journals Valuing the Cause: A Theory of Authenticity in Social Movements

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward T. Walker ◽  
Lina Stepick
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Cognitive Schemas ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Movement Organizations

Scholars of contentious politics expect that social movement organizations (SMOs) are valued according to their ability to craft resonant frames or to enact displays of worthiness. We offer an alternative, relational perspective highlighting the critical role of authenticity in shaping an SMO’s perceived value. Unlike frames and intentional displays, calculated efforts to proclaim authenticity often backfire. We distill two orthogonal types: grassroots (in)authenticity, based on idealized notions of civil society, and institutional (in)authenticity, rooted in cultural-cognitive schemas used to judge fit with established SMO categories. Grassroots authenticity benefits an SMO’s fundamental legitimacy, while lacking it entirely (i.e. “astroturfing”) severely harms public support. Institutional authenticity increases resources and survival chances, intelligibility to elite observers, and clarity of collective identities; still, lacking this (via hybridity) may assist in recruitment and outreach. We build propositions that elaborate these expectations and argue that authenticity should become a more central concept in social movement research.

Mobilizing in Black Boxes: Social Networks and Participation in Social Movement Organizations

2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Kitts
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Black Boxes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
Movement Participation

Recent research has focused on the role of social networks in facilitating participation in protest and social movement organizations. This paper elaborates three currents of microstructural explanation, based on information, identity, and exchange. In assessing these perspectives, it compares their treatment of multivalence, the tendency for social ties to inhibit as well as promote participation. Considering two dimensions of multivalence—the value of the social tie and the direction of social pressure—this paper discusses problems of measurement and interpretation in network analysis of movement participation. A critical review suggests some directions for future research.

scholarly journals Beyond contention: urban social movements and their multiple approaches to secure transformation

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 557-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Mitlin
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Global South ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Alternative Strategies ◽  
Urban Social Movements ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
Movement Organizations

This paper explores the strategies of social movement organizations working in towns and cities of the global South to secure justice for their members and address poverty and inequality. The paper argues that there has been a false distinction between alternative strategies of resistance. Drawing on research in Kenya and South Africa, I argue that, rather than seeing strategies of contention, collaboration and subversion as separate approaches, they can best be understood as alternative strategies, adopted simultaneously and iteratively by urban social movements. Movements, I suggest, move among contentious politics, efforts at collaboration with the state, and subversion (often taking the form of encroachment), to address the survival imperatives of their members.

Social Movement Campaigns: Mobilization and Outcomes in the Montreal Women's Movement Community

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Staggenborg ◽  
Josée Lecomte
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Community Resources ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Agenda ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Movement Organizations

Social movement campaigns help create the networks and collective identities needed to build social movement communities, which in turn support subsequent collective campaigns. This article examines the interactions between movement communities and campaigns using the case of the 2000 World March of Women in Montreal. We find that movement community resources and networks, mobilized by leaders in stable movement organizations and institutions, support campaigns. Centralization, diversity, and size of movement communities affect campaign mobilization. Movement campaigns alter movement communities by creating bonds that form the basis for subsequent campaigns and by keeping movement communities politicized. Prior campaigns generate public consciousness, put issues on the public agenda, create new frames and discourse, forge connections to new constituents, and leave behind new networks, coalition organizations, leaders, and activists. Our research contributes to an understanding of the connections between the submerged networks of social movement communities and the contentious politics of movement campaigns.

scholarly journals Build Locally, Link Globally: The Social Forum Process in Italy

2010 ◽  
pp. 63-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Della Porta ◽  
Lorenzo Mosca
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Organizational Models ◽  
World Social Forum ◽  
Global Justice Movement ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Movement Organizations

Considered an innovation because of its capacity to develop transnational processes, the World Social Forum however also has strong local roots as well as effects on organizational models and collective identities at the domestic level. Focusing on the Italian case, this article shows how local social forums, as arenas for exchanges of ideas, played a cognitive role in the import, but also the translation of new ideas, as well as helping the emergence of dense network structures and tolerant identities. The first section of the article examines how local social forums contributed to innovation in the organizational formulas of the Global Justice Movement—considering both structure (organizations) and process (methodologies) aspects—through the development of different, more participatory conceptions of internal decision making. It then addresses the innovations in the definition of collective identities, stressing the linkages of local struggles and global framing as well as the development of a cross-issue discourse around an anti-neoliberal frame. The final section will discuss the contribution of local social forums to contemporary social movements, stressing the role of these new arenas for the cross-fertilization among different movement families and spreading a method of working together that becomes part of the repertoire of action of local social movement organizations. The empirical research consists mainly of in-depth interviews and focus groups with activists from social movement organizations which were involved in local social forums.

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

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110265
Author(s):  
Jörg Haßler ◽  
Anna-Katharina Wurst ◽  
Marc Jungblut ◽  
Katharina Schlosser
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
German Language ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Twitter Activity ◽  
Movement Organizations

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.

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

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Kate Hunt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Medical Procedure ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Global Crisis ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Movement Organizations

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.”

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