Blogging while Black,British and female: a critical study on discursive activism

This study explores Black British women's motivations for divulging racial and ethnic identity in the blogosphere (sometimes referred to as blogging while Black) and their use of blogs for discursive activism. It builds on previous research that gives voice to Black womens marginalized experiences through powerful counter narratives. The blogosphere is often perceived as a racially neutral space where shared interests across geographical and temporal boundaries limit the significance of racial and ethnic identity. However, the constructed narratives of Black British women in this study highlight their experiences of subtle forms of prejudice and discrimination perpetuated through dominant discourses in the mainstream media. The findings demonstrate how they use blogs as a medium for discursive activism to challenge stereotypical raced and gendered representation in the mainstream media. Much of the research on the blogosphere in Britain reflects its use by the White majority population. This study therefore extends understanding of the blogosphere and highlights alternative modes of political communication.     

Transactional activism without transactions: network perspective on anti-corruption activism in the Czech Republic

In 2007, Petrova and Tarrow coined the term transactional activism, arguing that, despite weak individual-level political participation, civil societies in Central and Eastern Europe were surprisingly strong due to their capacity to establish transactional links. Yet the research which followed, relying mostly on quantitative data, has not uncovered much evidence of how transactional activism works. To make advances here, we take a more qualitative approach and focus on transactional ties among NGOs, developing a more fine-grained conceptualization. Specifically, we distinguish associative ties of loosely defined cooperation and interlocking ties based on the division of labour. We utilize this new conceptualization through a successful anti-corruption initiative known as ‘Reconstruction of the State’. The initiative presented itself largely in transactional terms (plurality of participating actors) and was extremely successful in the run-up to the Parliamentary elections in 2013 in the Czech Republic, inspiring similar initiatives abroad. We use social network analysis and qualitative interviews to test our concept of interlocking transactional ties. In contrast to our expectations, we find limited division of labour in the initiative, with just one organization, in the main, shouldering most of the important tasks. We use our findings to question the previously claimed importance of transactional activism in Central and Eastern Europe. Specifically, we call for more robust evidence describing how cooperation among organizations empowers civil society.     

Relationship building as a retention strategy: linking relationship attitudes and satisfaction evaluations to behavioral outcomes

The practice of public relations historically has focused on managing communications. Within the past 5 years, however, an increasing number of scholars have started to conceptualize the practice of public relations as relationship management, and have centred their research efforts on examining the factors that affect organization–public relationships. Recent research has shown that effectively managed organization–public relationships affect key public member attitudes, evaluations, and behaviors. In the current investigation, 122 participants were surveyed to determine whether student–university relationship attitudes and satisfaction evaluations distinguished those who returned to a university from those who did not. The results show that respondent relationship attitudes differentiate those who returned to the university from those who did not, which provides a quantitative illustration of the benefits of incorporating a relationally-based grounding for the practice of public relations. Implications of the findings, suggestions for managing organization–public relationships, and limitations to the investigation also are presented.     

Now and again: Eventful experience as a resource in senior activism

ABSTRACT

Shared memories shape relations among social movement participants and their organizations. However, scholars often ignore how experience operates as a means of solidifying attachment in group contexts. In contrast, I argue that activism depends on how participants publicly recall events. In this, I integrate a social memory perspective with the examination of activist movements. Through narrative, participants build engagement by presenting the self-in-history as a model for collective action. I refer to this as eventful experience, utilizing memorable moments as a resource for generating commitment. Movements depend upon members communicating the critical moments of their lives, embedding personal timelines in group culture. The linkage of personal experience and public events is a strategy by which individuals motivate collective action. Drawing on a thirty-month ethnography of a progressive senior citizen activist group in Chicago, I examine how members use an awareness of temporality to build a culture of action. Each movement group uses the past experiences of participants to build their culture – what Jasper refers to as taste in tactics, incorporating past successes, present plans, and imagined futures into a call for direct action.     

Czech lesbian activism: gay and lesbian parental rights as a challenge to patriarchal marriage

In their advocacy for the legal recognition of same-sex relationships during the 1990s, prominent Czech gay rights activists focused only on issues of sexuality and did not question the essentialist understanding of gender, especially in parenting. Consequently, even though the Czech Republic legalized registered partnerships for gays and lesbians in 2006, legal barriers now exist regarding parental rights for same-sex couples, who are prohibited from adopting children and accessing reproductive technology once they register with the state. This article examines a rising, new wave of Czech lesbian activism that has focused on gaining legal parental rights for registered same-sex couples. While lesbian activists were disempowered in terms of their public visibility as well as political involvement during the 1990s, the recent growing prominence of lesbian groups has been enabled by their stronger political focus and organizational coherence. Analyzing the lesbian activists' strategies, I show not only how lesbian activism can advance the public debate about traditional gender roles, but also how lesbian activism can strengthen the critique of the ideology of marriage.     

Social accountability as social movement outcome: Protests in a Chinese city

ABSTRACT

Social accountability is a concept that has been used much in development studies and democratic theory to study informal ways for civil society to achieve social change and hold governments accountable. Surprisingly, it has been far less used in social movement scholarship and we argue that social accountability, understood as a combination of answerability, legal claim attainment, and sanction, is a useful way to examine social movement outcomes in China. Social accountability directs the focus of research towards the target of protest and not only whether the protest resulted in policy changes or not. Based on field work in 2013–2015, this article examines four cases of social protests in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. In line with previous research we find that when citizen claims accord with government policies and protesters are well-organized, local authorities tend to accommodate the protesters’ claims. However, answerability and sanction do not always follow the same pattern. Answerability can be relatively high also when legal claims are unsuccessful. This means that cases that are commonly seen as unsuccessful protests because the legal demands were not accommodated may still result in partial social accountability. In addition to the presentation of original empirical findings, the study makes a theoretical contribution by linking the two research fields of social movement and social accountability, which will be of interest to a wider scholarly audience.     

Minority environmental activism in Britain: From brixton to the lake district

Historically, the British environmental movement has been devoid of minority participation, but this is changing very slowly, with the emergence of ethnic minority environmental groups and multiracial environmental alliances. These groups have argued that ethnic minorities have little or no access to public funds earmarked for countryside and wildlife preservation issues. They argue that white environmental organizations do not pay attention to the needs of inner-city minority residents and minority access to the countryside. Increased access, community improvement and beautification projects, environmental education, youth training, community garden projects, and issues of environmental racism are all foci of ethnic minority environmental movements. While some white environmentalists have been supportive of them, others have been uncomfortable with them or even hostile to their existence.     

The problem of intersectionality as an approach to digital activism: the Women’s March on Washington’s attempt to unite all women

ABSTRACT

This study examined the convergence of activism and intersectionality to understand how communicators create messages about social justice issues using social media. This is particularly relevant for public relations today, as digital activism almost ubiquitously involves bringing together conflicting publics who are active and social media-savvy, meanwhile maintaining an organizational brand/mission. Using the 2017 Women’s March on Washington (WMW) as an object of study, we explored how campaign messages reflected principles of intersectionality, consensus- and dissensus-based communication, and organizational self-reflection. We conducted a thematic analysis of posts from the WMW’s social media accounts as well as media quotes by the organizational leaders to get at the leaders’ intentions in their message design. Data suggested that messages of inclusivity as well as of necessary discord were employed to enact political change for WMW’s publics. We argue that although the WMW was not wholly intersectional, particularly in determining its political agenda, the efforts toward intersectionality are notable for theory-building and reflective practice, particularly for social mediated campaigns. The study proposes a theory for digital intersectional communication to guide future research and advocacy work.     

Experiments in evaluation capacity building: Enhancing brain disorders research impact in Ontario

This paper is the introductory paper on a forum on evaluation capacity building for enhancing impacts of research on brain disorders. It describes challenges and opportunities of building evaluation capacity among community-based organizations in Ontario involved in enhancing brain health and supporting people living with a brain disorder. Using an example of a capacity building program called the “Evaluation Support Program”, which is run by the Ontario Brain Institute, this forum discusses multiple themes including evaluation capacity building, evaluation culture and evaluation methodologies appropriate for evaluating complex community interventions. The goal of the Evaluation Support Program is to help community-based organizations build the capacity to demonstrate the value that they offer in order to improve, sustain, and spread their programs and activities. One of the features of this forum is that perspectives on the Evaluation Support Program are provided by multiple stakeholders, including the community-based organizations, evaluation team members involved in capacity building, thought leaders in the fields of evaluation capacity building and evaluation culture, and the funders.     

Twitter and video activism as tools for counter-surveillance: the case of social protests in Spain

From a communication perspective, social movements of international significance such as the Arab Spring, Toronto G20, Spanish 15M or Occupy Wall Street have been characterized by the use of mobile communication and social media as tools for video activism and counter-surveillance against the abuse of power committed by the state forces. A representative case of this reality, which reached a high coverage and support in social media environment, can be found in the riots that took place in the Gamonal neighbourhood (Burgos, Spain) in January 2014. In this regard, this article focuses on the denunciation of police violence through video activism by Twitter users during the demonstrations across the country, applying a quantitative–qualitative mixed methodology. First, by means of a content analysis, a sample of 784 tweets linked to videos is analysed in order to identify the main topics and functions of the shared content. Second, a textual analysis of those linked videos of a violent nature recorded by witnesses in order to document police interventions is carried out. The prominent use of Twitter for distributing videos to denounce police violence stands out among the main findings, underlining the audiovisual exposure and ‘secondary visibility’ of the police officers. The results obtained also reinforce the idea of citizen empowerment through the development of an alternative form of journalism, as a practice to criticize the mainstream media coverage of the protests. Additionally, this article sheds light on the open debate about the relevance of social media to encourage citizen involvement in a face-to-face interaction.     

Subject to a new law: historicizing rights and resistance in Maya anti-mining activism

ABSTRACT

Since 2004, the Marlin Mine, located in North-west Guatemala, has produced conflict between Goldcorp, the Guatemalan state and the primarily indigenous Mayan communities affected by the mine. This conflict has generated local anti-mining movements that organized community consultations which, grounded in indigenous rights law and Mayan decision-making practices, allow affected communities to decide whether or not to permit mining in the region. While communities resoundingly rejected open-pit mining, and while this decision received international support, the Marlin Mine continues operations. Drawing on field research and new developments in philosophies of rights, this paper makes two related arguments. First, Mayan anti-mining resistance must be situated within a broader colonial history defined by exploitation and primitive accumulation. Second, Mayan activism challenges current conceptions of the relationship between rights, cultural identity and political agency; most significantly, Mayans do not only claim rights on the basis of identity, they enact and politicize the form in which these rights potentially take place.     

From democratic participation to civic resistance: the loss of institutional trust as an outcome of activism in the refugee solidarity movement

Adding to the literature on non‐institutional political action and trust, this article argues that the loss of institutional trust is not only a cause but also an outcome of political activism. Studying the Danish refugee solidarity movement in a mixed‐methods research design including survey and qualitative interview data, the article shows that three kinds of activism – political activism, humanitarian activity, and civil disobedience – relate differently to the loss of trust in the institutions of the Parliament, the legal system, and the police. Political activism primarily affects a loss of trust in the Parliament due to low external efficacy and a closed political opportunity structure. Civil disobedience affects a loss of trust in the legal system and the police due to a perceived lack of procedural justice. Humanitarian activity does not affect a loss of institutional trust because it does not imply interaction with the institutions to the same extent as the other kinds of activism. The consequence of losing trust in the political institutions is not an abandonment of democratic values, nor political apathy, but rather a change in civic engagement from a mode of democratically legitimizing participation in the institutions to a mode of contending and questioning the legitimacy of the political institutions. This finding indicates that in turn loss of institutional trust may cause an increase in extra‐institutional political action which is consistent with the commonly assumed causality in the literature. This leads to a final integrating argument for conceptualizing activism and loss of institutional trust as reinforcing factors in a process where, in line with the main finding of this study, activism may cause a loss of institutional trust which, in turn, may cause additional activism, as argued in the existing literature.     

Relationships as organizational resources: Examining public relations impact through its connection with organizational strategies

This study empirically examined the oft-ignored link between public relations and strategy by incorporating the resource-based view (RBV) from management literature. Thirty-three interviews with public relations managers and strategy managers in China were conducted to explore relationships as organizational resources and their contribution to strategy implementation. Within the major theoretical framework, this study found that relationships possessed these key features for resources that could lead to competitive advantages: valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and hard to be substituted. Relationships contributed to strategy implementation in general and were used also to achieve a fit with different strategies.     

Homelessness as one component of housing instability and its impact on the development of children in poverty

The number of families with children living in poverty and experiencing housing instability and homelessness has increased dramatically over the last two decades. Current public policy decisions will lead to further increases. Understanding the impact of this instability on the emotional, behavioral, and cognitive development of children is imperative. Few studies critically examine the effects of instability on both domiciled and homeless children. This research examined the effects of homelessness and housing instability on 133 children 8 to 12 years of age living in poverty. Results indicate that whether a child is currently homeless is not as significant as overall stability which may have a long ranging effect on a child's future development.     

Workplace aesthetics: impact of environments upon employee health as compared to ergonomics

Associations between self-reported needs for aesthetic and ergonomic improvements were studied to analyse a possible impact of aesthetic needs on job performance as compared to ergonomic needs in 11 occupational groups. Employees at Swedish broadcasting company were invited to participate in a cross sectional study. 74% (n=1961/2641) fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Demographic data from company files and a pre-validated questionnaire were used. 'High rank' and 'low rank' aesthetic and ergonomic needs were compared. The perceived needs for aesthetic and ergonomic improvements showed significantly different distributions (p<0.001). Aesthetic needs were more frequently reported. No gender related differences were observed. Differences between occupational groups were shown (p=0.006, 0.003).'High rank' needs for aesthetic and ergonomic improvements were similarly associated to psychological demands, stress, pain and age. 16/24 factors showed significant differences between 'high and low rank' aesthetic needs, whereas 21/24 between ergonomic needs. Sick leave was stronger related to ergonomics. The study results show a relation between not only work place ergonomics but also work place aesthetics to health and well-being. Future work health promotion and prevention may benefit from the inclusion of workplace aesthetics.     

The Organic Crisis of the British State: Putting Brexit in its Place

The Brexit vote was a singular event that is one symptom of a continuing organic crisis of the British state and society and a stimulus for further struggles over the future of the United Kingdom and its place in Europe and the wider world. This crisis previously enabled the rise of Thatcherism as a neoliberal and neoconservative project (with New Labour as its left wing) with an authoritarian populist appeal and authoritarian statist tendencies that persisted under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition (2010–2015). The 2015 election of a Conservative Government, which aimed to revive the Thatcherite project and entrench austerity, was the immediate context for the tragi-comedy of errors played out in the referendum. The ensuing politics and policy issues could promote the disintegration of the UK and, perhaps, the EU without delivering greater political sovereignty or a more secure and non-balkanized place for British economic space in the world market.     

Theorizing issue-driven public attention and expectations in audience responses to corporate sociopolitical activism: A mixed-method analysis

This study develops an issue-driven framework to theorize the role of public attention, support, and expectations in audience responses to corporations’ engagement in contested issues. Based on a mixed-method study using an online survey (N = 817), we investigate how two forms of expectations—normative and predictive—are associated with motivating cognitions, attitudes toward the social impacts of corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA), and buying intentions. Thematic analysis reveals a four-quadrant typology characterized by varying degrees of public attention and support: legitimate engagement, identify alignment, emergent norm, and obscure practice. The structural equation modeling results demonstrate that predictive expectations are a consistent antecedent to the perceived company–issue fit, perceived issue salience, and issue position. In contrast, the associations between normative expectations, the perceived company–issue congruence, and cognitive involvement are contingent on issue types. Perceived advocacy fit and cognitive involvement positively predict attitudes toward the social impacts of CSA. Buycotting intentions, however, are only determined by individuals’ issue position.