The Microlevel Discourse of Social Movement Framing: Debating Antiwar Protests on a University Listserv

Abstract

Over the past two decades, researchers have increasingly employed frame analysis in attempts to understand the genesis, development, and outcomes of social movements. Relatively little attention, however, has focused on the microlevel processes involved in generating social movement frames. This paper is an effort to link theories of social movement framing with the methodology of discourse analysis. In the following, an online debate over the legitimacy of protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States provides qualitative data for a discourse analysis of microlevel framing processes. The debate occurred on a university listserv and involved more than 100 messages offered by 67 individuals over 16 days. Analyses reveal four distinct framing contests in the discourse. An initiating contest regarding a specific antiwar protest is found to generate three additional contests, the first about antiwar protests more generally, the second about the war in Iraq itself, and the third about the appropriateness of holding such a debate on a listserv sent to university employees. A framing process schema is offered to represent conflict between social movement and countermovement participants across the discourse.     

Discourse Dynamics and Cultural Context in the Antiwar Movement in the United States (2002–2004)

This paper addresses the impact of the antiwar movement (2002–2004) in the United States by analysis the three main coalitions at that time: ANSWER, UFPJ and Win Without War. New concepts and tools have been provided within discourse theory that can improve the analysis of framing and impact. Furthermore, the failure in discourse dynamics of the antiwar movement (2002–2004) is analyzed with a qualitative approach. Finally, we study the cultural context of 9/11, demonstrating that the best analysis for culture might not be ideational and static but, rather, contextual and dynamic.     

Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War

Based on empirical research among women's antiwar organizations worldwide, the article derives a feminist oppositional standpoint on militarization and war. From this standpoint, patriarchal gender relations are seen to be intersectional with economic and ethno-national power relations in perpetuating a tendency to armed conflict in human societies. The feminism generated in antiwar activism tends to be holistic, and understands gender in patriarchy as a relation of power underpinned by coercion and violence. The cultural features of militarization and war readily perceived by women positioned in or close to armed conflict, and their sense of war as systemic and as a continuum, make its gendered nature visible. There are implications in this perspective for antiwar movements. If gender relations are one of the root causes of war, a feminist programme of gender transformation is a necessary component of the pursuit of peace.     

Parental Protest,Public Opinion,and War Termination: Israel's ‘Four Mothers’ Movement

Peace movements that challenge national security policies typically remain politically marginal. However, the unusual cases that evince causal linkages among grass-roots activism, public opinion shifts, and a government's decision to change policy suggest hypotheses about the sorts of organizational characteristics and political conditions that can increase movements' prospects for influence. This article considers the case of Israel's Four Mothers – Leaving Lebanon in Peace that in the late 1990s successfully sought to end Israel's war in southern Lebanon. The article adopts a political-mediation model of peace movement outcomes that draws on Giugni's (2004) model of movements' policy impact. It finds support for the idea that when grass-roots activists and their elite supporters among politicians and the media act jointly, they can exert influence on policy outcomes. Anti-war movements led by soldiers' family members may have particularly abilities to shift public opinion against the war so as to create political incentives for office-seekers to end it.     

Strategic Role Taking and Political Struggle: Bearing Witness to the Iraq War

U.S. and Canadian peace activists traveled to Iraq as a social movement tactic, in the buildup to the war and during the war itself, in an attempt to sustain or increase peace activism at home. Based on interviews with fourteen peace activists, this study analyzes how the presence of antiwar activists in Iraq serves two social movement goals. First, their presence in Iraq bestowed activists increased access to media, bolstering their ability to reframe the war within mainstream media accounts. Second, by traveling to Iraq, activists furnished themselves with stories of the hardships and suffering of war to share with audiences at home. By retelling these narratives, activists provide opportunities and obligations for audience members to imaginatively take the role of Iraqi civilians, in the hope that audience members will practice moral reasoning and be consequently moved to act against the war. To provide these role‐taking opportunities, peace activists must also engage in a political struggle over “otherhood” by countering official attempts to dehumanize Iraqis.     

A History of the Black Women's Movement in Brazil: Mobilization,Political Trajectory and Articulations with the State

This study examines the trajectory and consolidation process of the Black Women's Movement (BWM) in the Brazilian public sphere since the 1980s. Our objective is to understand the processes that underlie the constitution of this social movement, as well as its points of convergence and divergence with the black and feminist movements. Furthermore, this study discusses the movement's process of institutionalization/bureaucratization, its articulation with the Brazilian state and the relationship between gender and race in its internal structure and external claims. The study is based on two research projects conducted between 2005 and 2011. The first, carried out between 2005 and 2007, deals specifically with the consolidation of the BWM, while the second, a four-year study completed in 2011, focuses on the relationship between the black movement and the adoption of race-based public policies in Brazil and Colombia. Data for this research were collected from the BWM's internal documents (a compilation of pamphlets, newsletters and proposals), government documents and informal conversations and semi-structured interviews with 12 black women activists from different regions of the country. Throughout the work, we consider the BWM's internal processes of creating an autonomous movement as well as its external processes of bureaucratization and interconnection with the state. Focusing on these parallel processes allows us to better understand the movement's internal conflicts, its articulations with other social movements, its challenges and methods of navigating political/institutional spaces and the ways in which the emergence of black women as political actors has impacted Brazil's public sphere.     

Social media and Umbrella Movement: insurgent public sphere in formation

The study examines the role of social media during the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong that lasted from September to December 2014. By interviewing a random sample of 1011 respondents over the telephone before the end of the Umbrella Movement, it was found that social media had become an insurgent public sphere (IPS) in the protest movement. Data showed that acquisition of political news through social media was related positively to support for the Umbrella Movement and adversely with satisfaction and trust of established political authorities, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, the Hong Kong police, and the Chinese central government. The insurgent public sphere role of social media, its implications, and likely development vis-à-vis the state and the market are discussed.     

The Dual Strategy and Gender Policies of the Women's Movement in Korea: Family Headship System Repeal through Strategic Innovation

Abstract

Social movements sometimes successfully attain their goals by implementing policies and laws that represent their claims. Movement leaders raise issues susceptible to enactment as policies or laws, exploit legally and institutionally assured resources, and even participate at times in governmental policymaking and parliamentary lawmaking processes. This engagement strategy maximizes a movement's power to achieve its goals only when it is combined with the conventional activities of mobilizing collective action and forming dense networks across movement organizations to pressure the state. Based on the case study of Korean women's movements and their efforts to abrogate the patrilineal succession of family headship, I argue that movement activists' strategic innovation of blending “institutional politics” with conventional “movement politics”—that is, pursuing a dual strategy (Cohen and Arato 1992) and evolving into “movement institutionalization”—is critical to accomplishing gender policies and laws that, at least institutionally and legally, ensure gender equality.     

Framing and counter-framing a Peace March in Russia: the use of Twitter during a hybrid war

ABSTRACT

Framing is vital to the capacity of social movements to enlist popular support and sustain contentious collective action. Using the case of a Peace March held in Moscow on 21 September 2014, the article examines how antiwar activists and their opponents framed a protest against Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. The study argues that different interpretations of patriotism underpinned divergent evaluations of the conflict and the construction of opposing identities. An analysis of Twitter posts on the eve of the march shows that peace activists positioned themselves as citizens with high moral standards and a healthy dose of patriotism, criticized the Russian government for military intervention in Ukraine, and called for a peaceful conflict resolution. In turn, opponents of the march considered themselves as real patriots and their adversaries as national traitors, denied Russia’s military presence in Ukraine, and fomented an attack on critics of Russian foreign policy. The study contributes to social movement literature by analyzing the framing of antiwar activism on a social media platform in the midst of a hybrid war, marked by a great deal of ambiguity and deception about causes, dynamics, and consequences of military operations by state and non-state actors.     

The Disability Rights Movement in Japan: past, present and future

This paper introduces the history of the modern disability rights movement in Japan, which has been a driving force for change in social norms and policies, and for improving the lives of disabled persons and their families. It presents the traditional social norms and policies that resulted in the confinement of disabled people in their parents' homes and in institutions, a radical movement of people with cerebral palsy active in 1960-1980s, the emergence of the independent living movement in 1980s, and the current disability rights movement and its future challenges. This paper is based on a review of documents and on interviews conducted during the spring of 2000 in Japan with disability rights advocates and personnel working for centres for independent living.     

Social Mobilization and Political Representation: The Women’s Movement’s Struggle for Legal Abortion in Uruguay

This article analyzes the political process leading to the recent legalization of abortion in Uruguay, underlying the multiple strategies resorted to by the women’s movement to create a social consensus around women’s rights—and, more generally, around sexual and reproductive rights—as belonging to the realm of human rights. It seeks to identify the main reasons accounting for the movement’s success, which appear to be connected to the breadth of its repertoire of actions, progressively expanded to include various (and sometimes innovative) strategies operating in both the realm of civil society and public opinion and the sphere of political institutions and political representation. Focusing on the dyad speech action, the article examines the movement’s broadened repertoire of actions as well as its discourse setting human rights as a horizon of legitimacy in the context of a cultural war against a countermovement organized in defense of the status quo. Last but not least, it analyzes the issues pertaining to political representation brought to the forefront by the clashes, discrepancies, and disconnections between social movement and political institutions.     

The Impact of the Conservative Protestant Movement on Social Policy

This article presents an analysis of the impact of the conservative Protestant movement on social policies of particular interest to the social work profession in the United States. In the light of the success of conservative Christian groups, suggestions for policy praxis are offered to promote progressive social policies.     

Change in the Chilean social model

Chile modernized its social model in two stages characterized by different strategies: developmentalism (1924–73) and the Washington Consensus (1973–2008). In the first stage, the State pursued both social policies of universal coverage and land reform, while also building up the country's economic and institutional infrastructure. After the 1973 military coup, some public services were dismantled and privatized, and the labour movement was suppressed. Since the end of the dictatorship in 1990, resistance to state regulation and an anti‐labour bias have persisted, albeit to a diminishing degree due to advances in democratization and, latterly, the current world economic crisis.     

Law,campus policy,social movements,and sexual violence: Where do we stand in the #MeToo movement?

In the last 8 years, activist pressure has increased attention to sexual violence at universities. Most recently, the #MeToo movement has widened the conversation about sexual violence. This increased public attention has coincided with changes in federal guidelines, state laws, and campus policies on sexual violence as well as social movement activity by survivor‐activists and emerging counter‐movements. I argue that sociologists—specifically researchers who study gender and/or law and society—are uniquely situated to contribute to the study of sexual violence on campus. I synthesize a growing sociological and interdisciplinary literature on sexual violence—legal changes, policy effects, and social movement struggles—in order to advocate that sociologists study laws, campus policies, and social movements simultaneously.     

Effort-Shape Characteristics of Emotion-Related Body Movement

The purpose of this study was to characterize the movement qualities of 5 target emotions during walking. We used an autobiographical memories paradigm for elicitation and observer judgments for emotion recognition. For each of the felt and recognized emotion portrayals, 6 Effort-Shape qualities were judged on a continuum between opposite qualities at the anchor points. Three general categories of movement style emerged, so that anger and joy shared anchor qualities at one end of the continuum, sadness had qualities at the opposite anchor, and content and neutral had qualities between the anchor extremes. The Effort-Shape profiles were unique for each target emotion, however, and mean scores were different between emotions even when emotions shared similar qualities. Emotions were classified using the Effort-Shape scores with accuracies ranging from 74–32 % for sad, anger, content and joy, respectively. For most of the target emotions, decoding accuracy was related to at least 4 Effort-Shape qualities, suggesting that decoding accuracy may be associated with a profile of movement qualities. This study highlights the importance of movement quality in bodily expression of emotion and demonstrates the effectiveness of Effort-Shape analysis in distinguishing among emotion-related movement styles.     

Palestinian National Authority's public relations policies relating to Israel: Current attitudes among Palestinian officials and media experts

This study investigates attitudes about Palestinian public relations policies during the Palestinian struggle in the Israeli media war and future challenges that will face the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in public relations planning. This study shows that Palestinian groups have mixed attitudes toward PNA's public relations plans and policies. The media experts tend to see the PNA's efforts as reactive, not pro-active. The experts think that PNA's main concern has been to follow up on daily political events, and thus its approach to public relations has been more of a reaction to Israeli practices rather than a strategic pro-active plan.     

Habermas and Social Movement Theory

This article outlines Habermas' social movement–related ideas and reviews the critical reception of them from within critical theory and social movement studies more widely. Criticism of Habermas' explanation of the new social movements has been wide-ranging and persuasive. There have however been some contemporary critical engagements with Habermas' ideas within social movement studies. The direction they take suggests (1) the concept of 'colonisation' finds political relevance in the twenty-first century context of global capitalism and resistance to neo-liberal policies; (2) that recent engagements with Habermas loosely unite in a concern with the 'applied turn' in critical theory; and (3) there is some potential for aspects of Habermas' theory to be used in ways that make him capable of engaging in dialogue with the current concerns of social movement theory.     

Palestinian Society

Conclusion Several observations are in order. One is that despite a considerable divergence in the points of view, the authors of the works under review share a single language and methodology, that of the modern social sciences, and a common commitment to understanding Palestinian society. There is a significant overlap of subject matter as well. It is not always possible to infer the personal sympathies of the author from his or her essay.Since the illusion of a Palestinian military threat to Israel has been dispelled, these volumes' lasting contribution is the findings they provide on the political economy of Palestinian society. The Palestinian's future on the West Bank and in Gaza will depend on the differential impact of these territories' incorporation into the Israeli economy on specific groups within the society, as well as by Israeli policies of control, and the will and capacity of the Palestinians to resist them. The work of Tamari, Graham-Brown, Taqqu, Lustick, Migdal, and others contained in the volumes under review here provides a necessary perspective from which to observe events. To the extent that the complex dispute between Israelis and Palestinians turns on the land question, the specific ways in which land is alienated and peasant populations are transformed into workers has a major bearing on ultimate outcomes.Consideration of Palestinian society raises significant theoretical issues. These include the impact upon agricultural societies of their integration into the capitalist world market, the role of the state in the rule of minorities, the study of elite factionalism, and the development of national consciousness. The findings of the works on Palestinian society suggest the following hypotheses: that agricultural populations respond to the market in differential ways, which can work against the emergence of both nationalist and working class consciousness; that the policies adopted by states confronted with highly politicized minorities can have significant impacts; that factionalism is a product of state policy choices (and not foreordained), and that national consciousness does not diminish (and may increase) with economic incorporation. The recent literature on Palestinian society thus has strategic contributions to make to the social sciences.Finally, in studying Palestinian society, we come to grips more directly than we might in a less highly conflicted subject with the problematic epistemological grounds on which the social sciences are erected. Here we can see (somewhat more clearly than normally) the ways in which the questions asked by social scientists derive from their positions in the political and intellectual fields of their societies. This may be a salutary and sobering experience.

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The Women's Suffrage Movement

ABSTRACT

The women's suffrage movement is explored as a social movement and an argument is made that analysis of the outcomes of social movements is central to those engaged in effecting social change. A set of five factors that influenced the movement's success is explored. These factors are: (1) The framing processes of the Women's Suffrage Movement (WSM) enhanced collective and individual identity, while fueling participants' emotions and actions; (2) A movement community developed that supported the goals of the WSM and held a radical flank effect; (3) External resources were constant; (4) The WSM experienced an infusion of new ideas as a result of cross-national interaction; and (5) The WSM benefited from committed and innovative leaders throughout the movement. These factors are not viewed as exhaustive; rather they are components that were critical to success.     

Incomplete Role Exit and the Alimony Reform Movement

This analysis explores men's role exit process from being married to divorced in the context of the alimony reform movement in the United States. Those considering potential role exit may face governmental policies that either support or oppose them in making these personal changes. In this case, mostly men want to leave their husband roles behind but legally imposed alimony, in their view, unfairly binds them to their former spouses. This analysis uses 182 narratives to map out how major collective action frames—based upon the highly valued, masculine concept of autonomy—are generated in this social movement. Overall, this research demonstrates the importance of both considering the operation of governmental policies in producing successful or incomplete role exit for individuals, and how these same individuals can respond using collective action frames drawn from privileged notions of masculinity as they aim for significant life change.