Gendered Frames of Mobilization: Differential Participation of Women in Ethno-politics of Darjeeling

While issues related to collective mobilizations have recently attracted considerable attention, little has been done to explore and explain the differential rate of participation of women in different forms of mobilization. While addressing the issues of gender within the charred ethno-politics of Darjeeling, this article will analyse women’s participation in two successive waves of Gorkhaland movements, followed by the recent mobilization for recognition as scheduled tribes. In this regard, the article will highlight how the overt use of violence, followed by the response of the state, contributes significantly towards differential participation in ethnic movements. Looking at the changing ethno-politics of the Darjeeling hills, the article argues that the gender difference within social movements is produced through anchoring frames which use cultural cues to structure the repertoire of the movement.

Consequences of Group Style for Differential Participation

This article proposes a theory of how interaction in groups influences differential participation in political activism and interrogates this theory through an empirical analysis of online Facebook group interaction. We study the refugee solidarity movement in a mixed methods design employing online ethnography, survey, and “big” social media data. Instead of conceptualizing the group as a social network or social movement organization (SMO), we argue that the group’s culture emerges as patterns of interaction that have implications for what kind of activities in which group members participate. Based on observations from our online ethnography, we suggest that group interaction influences differential individual participation through processes of (1) encoding different habits and (2) attuning the activist to different aspects of situations. We support our theoretical propositions with six statistical tests of the relationship between the group-level variable of contentious group style and the individual-level variable of participation in political protest. The dependent variable, political protest, and a comprehensive set of controls stem from an original survey of the Danish refugee solidarity movement with 2,283 respondents. We link the survey data with “big” social media data used to estimate the focal explanatory variable, contentious group style, generated from content analysis of online interaction in 119 Facebook groups quantified with supervised machine learning. The results show that group style has a consistently positive relationship with the individual’s degree of participation independent of networks, SMO framing, and individual attributes.

Genetic analyses identify widespread sex-differential participation bias

Genetic association results are often interpreted with the assumption that study participation does not affect downstream analyses. Understanding the genetic basis of this participation bias is challenging as it requires the genotypes of unseen individuals. However, we demonstrate that it is possible to estimate comparative biases by performing GWAS contrasting one subgroup versus another. For example, we show that sex exhibits autosomal heritability in the presence of sex-differential participation bias. By performing a GWAS of sex in ∼3.3 million males and females, we identify over 150 autosomal loci significantly associated with sex and highlight complex traits underpinning differences in study participation between sexes. For example, the body mass index (BMI) increasing allele at the FTO locus was observed at higher frequency in males compared to females (OR 1.02 [1.02-1.03], P=4.4×10-36). Finally, we demonstrate how these biases can potentially lead to incorrect inferences in downstream analyses and propose a conceptual framework for addressing such biases. Our findings highlight a new challenge that genetic studies may face as sample sizes continue to grow.

HIGH- AND LOW-RISK ACTIVISM: DIFFERENTIAL PARTICIPATION IN A REFUGEE SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT*

This article presents a quantitative study of differential participation in low- and high-risk activism in the Danish refugee solidarity movement. Distinguishing between low- and high-risk activism, it shows the fruitfulness of combining what are often considered competing theoretical explanations related to (1) values, (2) microstructures, and (3) emotions. We analyze data from a unique survey of 1,856 respondents recruited via Facebook. The results show that low- and high-risk participation strongly correlate but are influenced by different factors. For low-risk activities, the most important factors are emotional reactions, structural availability, and predispositions in the form of basic human values. For high-risk activity, the important factors are prior history of activism and emotional reaction. Values, microstructures, and emotions interact in relation to participation in both kinds of activism, which points to promising avenues for integrating and developing the theoretical framework of differential participation and recruitment.

Understanding Persistence in the Resistance

Since Donald Trump’s Inauguration, large-scale protest events have taken place around the US, with many of the biggest events being held in Washington, DC. The streets of the nation’s capital have been flooded with people marching about a diversity of progressive issues including women’s rights, climate change, and gun violence. Although research has found that these events have mobilized a high proportion of repeat participants who come out again-and-again, limited research has focused on understanding differential participation in protest, especially during one cycle of contention. This paper, accordingly, explores the patterns among the protest participants to understand differential participation and what explains persistence in the Resistance. In it, we analyze a unique dataset collected from surveys conducted with a random sample of protest participant at the largest protest events in Washington, DC since the inauguration of Donald Trump. Our findings provide insights into repeat protesters during this cycle of contention. The paper concludes by discussion how our findings contribute to the research on differential participation and persistence.