Activating Activists

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the pedagogical and practical importance of learning skills around political advocacy and community engagement in prison-based classes. The primary focus of the exercises described here is upon engaging students in exercises that develop their skills in advocating for social policies that affect them directly. Learning objectives include understanding the challenges of community organizing and consensus-building, developing policy proposal- and grant-writing skills, and developing skills around public messaging.

The effect of corporate political advocacy on brand perception: an event study analysis

Purpose In recent years, brands have increasingly engaged in corporate political advocacy (CPA; also termed brand activism or corporate sociopolitical activity) by taking positions on polarizing sociopolitical issues. Recent experimental research suggests that consumers respond to CPA based on its alignment with their own values, and that it typically induces an overall negative response. This study aims to provide additional insights by exploring consumer brand perceptions following CPA. Design/methodology/approach An event study of 106 CPA events and weekly consumer brand perception data was conducted. A regression model was used to investigate the moderating effects of CPA effort, concurrence and the strength of the online protests evoked by the CPA. Findings The results show that CPA had a negative effect on consumers’ brand perceptions and that the effect was stronger for customers relative to non-customers. The negative effect was attenuated by CPA concurrence and amplified by effort. Additionally, online protests were driven by the CPA effort and had a strong negative effect on brand perception. Online protests were stronger in the past, and, in turn, the negative effects of CPA on brand perceptions have slightly weakened in recent years. Originality/value This study contributes to the existing literature by highlighting the role of online protests following CPA and distinguishing consumer and customer responses. This study also provides converging evidence of the moderating effects of effort and concurrence identified in previous studies.

“Cuando confluimos, influimos”. Una aproximación a la idea de unidad en el activismo feminista contemporáneo

“Cuando confluimos, influimos”, fue una frase pronunciada por una veterana feminista. A partir de ella, este artículo explora la idea de unidad manejada en el activismo feminista testándola mediante una de las cuestiones que más controversia suscitan dentro de los movimientos sociales: la incidencia política sobre las instituciones. La aproximación a estas cuestiones se realiza mediante el estudio de la Marcha estatal contra las violencias machistas, que tuvo lugar el 7 de noviembre de 2015 —más conocida como 7N— considerada un hito del feminismo reciente. Esta manifestación unitaria y masiva, que interpelaba directamente al Estado y a sus instituciones, la convierten en un campo de investigación privilegiado para profundizar sobre la cuestión planteada. "When we converge, we influence", was a phrase uttered by a veteran feminist. From there, this article explores the idea of unity in feminist activism, testing it through one of the most controversial issues within social movements: political advocacy on institutions. The approach to these issues is conducted on the study of The State March Against Machist Violence, better known as 7N, considered a milestone in recent feminism. This unitary and massive demonstration, which directly challenged the State and its institutions, makes it a privileged field of research to delve into the question posed.

From Fiqh to Political Advocacy: Muhammadiyah’s Ecological Movement in the Post New Order Indonesia

This paper investigates how Indonesia’s Islamic modernist movement, Muhammadiyah, is responding to issues such as environment degradation, global warming and climate change. Muhammadiyah has not adopted the ecology paradigm used by Islamic environmentalism group, focusing instead on theological reform and social and economic welfare and justice, but members of its elite have begun inserting ecological concerns into the organisation’s programmatic orientation. This paper argues that, although these efforts are not well organized and maintained, they have enormous potential to transform Muhammadiyah into a right-green organization, as demonstrated through its progressive initiative on the environment and its efforts institutional and theological reform (fiqh of water) and in its involvement in judicial review of state policy (known as ‘jihad konstitusi’/judicial review) as political advocacy practice. However, the main feature of Muhammadiyah’s environmental activism is its continued emphasis on economic justice rather than on building ecological security and conservation movement.

Fatherhood and gender relations in the manosphere: Exploring an Italian non-resident fathers’ online forum

In the last few years, the informal network – called manosphere – of forums, websites and blogs, where commentators are mainly men and focus on issues relating to masculinity, has been gaining members and visibility. The article’s objective is to explore the politics of fatherhood and masculinity that an Italian non-resident fathers’ online forum engages in to assess whether the claims for fathers’ rights are a move towards a new form of involved fatherhood or if they are only useful to rebuild a solid traditional male identity. By conducting an explorative content analysis on their Facebook group and page, we found that fatherhood is an ‘empty box’ and that fathers’ rights are used in a strategic way to justify hegemonic masculinity, gender-based violence, as well as antifeminist and antifeminine ideas, and to promote political advocacy cooperating with right-wing parties. The article also reflects on the connections between hegemony and power using the concept of hybrid masculinities.

Doubling the fantasy, adapting the reel: Entertaining transmediation as a collaborative narrative strategy

Can we move fan participation and the co-creation of storylines outside the sphere of the culture industry to better understand their potential functions for constructing individual subjectivity and empowering social change? With an attention to experiences of migration, exile and detainment, and through close readings of documentary The Wolfpack (2015), HBO’s bilingual horror comedy series Los Espookys (2019) and Manuel Puig’s novel, El beso de la mujer araña (1976), I argue that it is necessary to move beyond a speaker–audience dialectic, as in traditional storytelling, and towards transmediated activity, where static or linear temporal and spatial orders are both reproduced and subverted. By converging performance studies with border studies and phenomenology, this contribution counters assumptions about submissive viewership while unpacking the political utility of entertainment. Ultimately, ‘Doubling the fantasy, adapting the reel’ challenges what it means to be a ‘storyteller’ and what constitutes a useful ‘story’ in the context of political advocacy and activism.